Winner takes all in science

摘要

Many researchers on Twitter have been sharing an article that supports their hard-won observations: science funding doesn't always go to the most deserving. The article, by sociologist Yu Xie at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, notes that science now resembles a "winner-takes-all" system that awards a disproportionate share of resources to a minority of researchers and institutions. Timothy O'Leary, a neuroscientist at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, tweeted that "inequality is OK provided the 90% can make a living". But even that is proving difficult. "Postdocs are having permanent conversations about making the transition out of science," he says. "They have to move up or move out."