Research outputs, money, and how to destroy medical innovation.

There was an advert in the BMJ a few weeks back for an academic vascular surgeon at a certain UK medical school. The blurb included the following two phrases: ‘you will be able to define, develop, and establish a high quality patient-centred research programme’, and ‘in addition to the above, you will be expected to raise substantial research income and deliver excellent research outputs’. Chew on that, and any of you still  thinking of a career in science, read this: ‘How Academia and Publishing are Destroying Scientific Innovation: A Conversation with Sydney Brenner‘, one of the handful of scientists who made the revolution in biology in the twentieth century. I don’t think he will be applying, (and not just because he failed his undergradaute surgery exam first time round).