Science is a fierce career where professionals and renowned figures have worked tirelessly to find solutions for real-world problems that could lead to meaningful impacts in biological, medicinal, and other fields. But modern science, associated with the sharp rise in technological advancements and fast-paced data sharing, faces shocking disruptions.
Both internal and external factors linked to scientific research and academic and institutional progress around the world are having a great impact on the potential for future science operations and related activities. What are those challenges as decoded by the acclaimed entrepreneur, scientist, Ph.D. holder, author, and researcher Dr. Thomas Nordström?
Dr. Thomas Nordström has highlighted the importance of adequate academic funding, strong peer chains, reliable peer review cases, and the abolishment of paywalled science data. He is a 50-year veteran in scientific and entrepreneurial fields, having worked with officials and directors leading the top Universities worldwide. He is the visionary behind the IUC model – which is a business development model – for companies in Sweden.
He dedicated over ten years of his professional life to gathering evidence and conducting extensive studies on how his innovative IVF model could fuel the implementation of reliable research for growth in the business and scientific worlds. Dr. Thomas Nordström has authored several books, including “All! Sweden's New Vision” and “Transformation Sweden Needs a Business-driven Innovation System and a New Export Model.” He reveals the following disruptions causing havoc in modern-day science operations:
Inadequate Academia Funding
Any kind of research requires finance on behalf of scientists for conducting studies, setting up experiments, subsidizing lab equipment, hiring assistance, and compensating any or all stakeholders involved directly with the liability to be paid as a result of ongoing research. Getting the required funding to conduct studies is a perennial obstacle in the way of scientists, which hinders groundbreaking discoveries.
In numerous Western countries, including the United States, which houses many globally acclaimed scientific institutions, university funding remains an inadequate source of finance. Most institutions have to apply for grants, and this delays the availability of real-time, updated data in the field.
The Irreproducibility Crisis
In scientific research, it is common practice to dig up old studies on the same subjects or experiments on account of relevance to validate and retest to acquire usable scientific data. However, with the onset of rapid scientific innovation and the stressful professional lives of young scientists, the field is facing an irreproducibility crisis where the process of replicating previous data is diminishing.
One of the biggest reasons behind this crisis involves funding agencies incentivizing the financing of studies that acquire new information instead of validating old results. Similarly, scientists confirm that numerous studies and research programs originally lacked sufficient participants to qualify the results as “replicable.”
Perversive Incentives and Poor Study Designs
Scientists receive judgment based on their research, which often puts pressure on professionals to showcase study results as splashy and “groundbreaking” even when they are not. The chance of having their name published as “author” in prestigious journals is occasionally enough for scientists to publish novel results and poorly designed studies.
Dr. Thomas Nordström, an acclaimed author and scientist, reveals that institutes and certain groups in various fields of science prefer novel results if they are exciting, even if they lack the foundation and credibility to support further studies.
