Those Ivory Towers (again)
Refreshing to read an article in which I can find something to disagree with in almost every sentence. And the title — in the print edition only —‘Taking your research to the real world” was probably the work of the subeditor. But the tired trope of academia versus the real world is like a red rag to a bull (self-reference intended). Most of all, I find the belief that unless you are changing health care in the short term is some distant country, you are somehow deficient as an academic, conceited.
Capitalism has helped lift more people out of poverty than most public health researchers; economists basic work on how societies work may do the same; and I am not certain how Watson and Crick would have fared under this self-congratulatory humbug. The real danger is that we are forgetting that universities are some of the few places left to do genuinely transformative and generative work. There are plenty of alternatives for much other ‘close to market work’: private corporations; NGOs; national health agencies; consultancies. Delivery and revolutionary science belong to different scales and cultures (mostly).