The 7 biggest problems facing science, according to 270 scientists

"Science, I had come to learn, is as political, competitive, and fierce a career as you can find, full of the temptation to find easy paths." - Paul Kalanithi, neurosurgeon and writer (1977–2015)

"Is the point of research to make other professional academics happy, or is it to learn more about the world?"  - Noah Grand, former lecturer in sociology, UCLA
(1)   Academia has a huge money problem

"When funding and pay structures are stacked against academic scientists," writes Alison Bernstein, a neuroscience postdoc at Emory University, "these problems are all exacerbated."

"As it stands, too much of the research funding is going to too few of the researchers," writes Gordon Pennycook, a PhD candidate in cognitive psychology at the University of Waterloo. "This creates a culture that rewards fast, sexy (and probably wrong) results."

"The NIH and NSF budgets are subject to changing congressional whims that make it impossible for agencies (and researchers) to make long term plans and commitments," M. Paul Murphy, a neurobiology professor at the University of Kentucky, writes. "The obvious solution is to simply make [scientific funding] a stable program, with an annual rate of increase tied in some manner to inflation."

(2)   Too many studies are poorly designed. Blame bad incentives.

"Science is a human activity and is therefore prone to the same biases that infect almost every sphere of human decision-making." - Jay Van Bavel, psychology professor, New York University

(3)   Replicating results is crucial. But scientists rarely do it.

(4)   Peer review is broken

"I think peer review is, like democracy, bad, but better than anything else."

—Timothy Bates, psychology professor, University of Edinburgh

"We need to recognize academic journals for what they are: shop windows for incomplete descriptions of research, that make semi-arbitrary editorial [judgments] about what to publish and often have harmful policies that restrict access to important post-publication critical appraisal of published research."

—Ben Goldacre, epidemiology researcher, physician, and author
(5)   Too much science is locked behind paywalls

"My problem is one that many scientists have: It's overly simplistic to count up someone's papers as a measure of their worth."

—Lex Kravitz, investigator, neuroscience of obesity, National Institutes of Health

"I personally spend a lot of time writing scientific Wikipedia articles because I believe that advances the cause of science far more than my professional academic articles."

—Ted Sanders, magnetic materials PhD student, Stanford University
(6)   Science is poorly communicated to the public

"Being able to explain your work to a non-scientific audience is just as important as publishing in a peer-reviewed journal, in my opinion, but currently the incentive structure has no place for engaging the public."

—Crystal Steltenpohl, PhD student, community psychology, DePaul University
(7)   Life as a young academic is incredibly stressful

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