Originally posted by NuLife:
where do u get this no unity thing from???
I thought this biopolis thing is suppose to encourage
unity and bring several related research together??
That's the spin. In fact it has become extremely divisive. They are supposed to be the elite of Singapore research and take precedence over everyone else. Those not in biopolis feel slighted and will not cooperate with those in the elite group. Doctors in the two health clusters compete with each other and so refuse to work with each other. It is easier to collaborate with an overseas researcher than it is with someone in the other cluster. As for biopolis, everyone (not in it) hates them.
Remember during the SARS crisis the government claimed to be able to produce a diagnostic kit within days, which stretched to weeks and months. Where are the thousands of dollars that were supposed to come from this research? The doctors who were treating SARS patients felt they were the heartlanders who took the risk and did the work whilst the elite got the attention. Do you expect good co-operation with the elite?
I am not surprised when nobody wants to work together. It's a replay of the elite versus the heartlanders...
it is often those that are
lead by reknown researchers as their experiences
will guide the rest in the right direction[/quote]
Unfortunately there has been no spillover effect. Look at the John Hopkins Medical Centre which was supposed to bring Singapore to the top ranks of health care. In fact, they did their own thing and there was absolutely no synergy. Even the Minister is disappointed with them.
We certainly need top notch researchers but what we are doing now is to exclude local researchers by diverting all our resources to the foreign talent. I now find former colleagues working at senior positions in top universities in the world. We have all come to recognize that a prophet is never respected in his own village. Unfortunately, many of us may never return..
[quote]Originally posted by NuLife:
Cos in my understanding, normally research is abt publications.
only when it is done with the right direction for biz gains,
this emhapsis of publications will get less.
By business culture, I mean the emphasis on the bottomline. In commerce, the bottomline is dollars and cents; whilst in research, the common perception is that it is publications. By focusing on short term goals such as number of publications, we are telling researchers to produce papers rather than adopt innovative lines of inquiry that may not easily get a paper published. Innovation is always risky. Many Nobel prize winners have been considered daft because their ideas were too radical for the time. If a scientist knows that his pay may be cut if he does not have a publication by the end of the year, he will work on something far less risky.
What I mean is, I can easily work on something 'safe' to guarantee a publication but that does not translate into tangible benefit for Singapore or the world at large. But if I work on a totally novel idea, I might lose my funding and even my job. Consider this, the drugs we use to treat many cancers today are essentially no different from what we used 20 years ago, despite the millions of publications in cancer research. (There are few recent novel therapies based on targeted anti-cancer effect but these are expensive and are not available to the vast majority of our patients, unless they are very rich).
This problem is not unique to Singapore. There is a very perceptive article in Fortune magazine that puts my point across much better than I can:
"According to PubMed, the NCI's online database, the cancer research community has published 1.56 million papers—that's right: 1.56 million!—largely on this circuitry and its related genes in hundreds of journals over the years. Many of the findings are shared at the 100-plus international congresses, symposiums, and conventions held each year.
Yet somehow, along the way, something important has gotten lost. The search for knowledge has become an end unto itself rather than the means to an end. And the research has become increasingly narrow, so much so that physician-scientists who want to think systemically about cancer or the organism as a whole—or who might have completely new approaches—often can't get funding..."
(THE WAR ON CANCER: Why We're Losing the War on Cancer—and How to Win It, Fortune magazine, 22 Mar 2004).
You can read more at this link: http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,15114,598425,00.html