Email
Academics are rated on how many publications we produce, how often we publish, and in which journals and our CVs boast of every printed word. It all amounts to one thing: publish or perish.
This is note entirely a bad idea: scientists should be productive to justify their funding. The various sources of money for science – taxpayer-funded research councils, charitable trusts or industry – all want to see a return on their investment. Understandably, they will favour proposals from scientists with a proven track record.
With academic departments increasingly dependent on research funding to balance the books, the appointment of academic staff has focused on an individual's ability to secure lucrative grants , rather than their competence in the classroom.
On the front line of this battle for funding are post-doctoral researchers. We're the foot soldiers, sent into battle by our professorial generals. We collect and analyse data and often do the bulk of the writing.
Postdoc life is insecure
But post-doctoral life is fundamentally insecure. We exist on short-term contracts, hired for the duration of a single research grant.
We're driven on only partly by a passion for our subject. High in the mind of every postdoc is the fear that the money will dry up before they secure a permanent job. Given that perhaps only 10% of postdocs will achieve some sort of tenured academic position, the pressure to perform is extreme.
Long hours and sleepless nights can easily spill over into stress-related health problems and psychological malfunctions. Burnout rates are high.
Compounding the problem is the nature of the scientific press. Journals are loath to publish negative results, and professors are equally loath to submit them, given their Sisyphean quest for funding.
Should a project fail to produce publishable data, there is often scant time to reassess before the funding stops, and the postdoc is dead in the water. Professors overseeing a failed grant may face sanction by the funding body and may even have the funding recalled. It's a wonder that scandals involving the fabrication of data are not more common.
Massaging and rushing
But it is common for researchers to gently massage data, to conveniently forget about inconvenient samples and to spin even the most atrocious of experiments to cast them in a positive light.
I have also known of several cases where work was published in haste by a pushy professor, the postdoc still unhappy with the data, only for it to be proven wrong by a rival group at a later date. These practices may not be entirely fraudulent, but they reflect a weakness inherent in the system, and the consequences are entirely predictable.
Propping up this whole grand edifice is the creaky doctrine of peer review. Widely regarded as the least bad system available, peer review is the oversight committee, the quality control board and the proofreading service all rolled into one.
In its purest form it should work admirably, but politics and conflicting interests can and often do put a fly in the ointment. Papers written on niche topics will invariably find their way on to the desks of rival groups, simply because the community is so small. At the very least, such reviewers might seek to stall publication so that they can claim the scoop, or even to recommend outright rejection to an editor should the paper's claims run contrary to their own hypotheses.
The fact that the authors' names are known to a reviewer, but that reviewers can hide behind a blanket of anonymity does little to improve the system. I have had one paper languish unpublished for almost eight years. Each submission is rejected by, I suspect, the same shadowy figure or their associates despite a handful of excellent reviews from other more objective scientists (of course it might be that the paper actually is rubbish).
And not only is this bad science, it's also personally frustrating because as a postdoc I need every publication I can get.
Not all bleak
If this paints too bleak a picture, it shouldn't. Early career researchers have made many of the most important discoveries in science. The system does work. Good scientists publish excellent science and establish successful careers.
But this comes at a price. It places an unnecessarily high burden upon the inexperienced shoulders of the contract researcher. This chasm between success and failure invites malpractice – it's thankfully rare, but it rightfully hits the headlines when it happens.
And at a time when the scientific community is desperately trying to reach out to the public, to remove the image of the ivory tower and engage with some of the most important issues facing society, then we can ill-afford even the hint of such scandal.
The essence of the scientific method is to test a hypothesis until it comes apart, figure out what went wrong, and then start again. Perhaps it is fitting that the structures through which we fund science and disseminate knowledge are being tested to breaking point, but I'm not sure the same should be true for the researchers themselves.
This content is brought to you by Guardian Professional. Looking for your next university role? Browse Guardian Jobs for hundreds of the latest academic, administrative and research posts.
;