I’m the boss!!

By Guillaume Filion, filed under motivation, journals, dialogue.

• 8 March 2012 •

“You know how scientists will communicate in the future, don’t you?” “Of course I do!”

It is a shameless lie, I have no clue what Frédéric has in mind, but I don’t want to look stupid.

“And you Vincent, I bet you know it too... right?”

On this afternoon of 2004, somewhere on the south coast of Madagascar, Vincent gives one of his majestic puzzled looks. That was exactly what Frédéric had hoped for.

“Well, in the future, scientists will no longer publish in journals. They will have public lab notes. They will post their results on their personal Internet page, day by day... like a blog. Peer scientists will be allowed to leave their comments, criticize the protocols and the results. In short, the information will go directly from the producers to the consumers, and it will spread much better because science will become open source.”

I believed it then.

But now, I just became an independent researcher. I have my own team. I am the boss!! And I realize that Frédéric was wrong. To stay in research you need a good track record. And as far as track record is concerned, blogging is a pure waste of time.

So, is this it to be a scientist? Worry endlessly about your track record? I must have gotten this wrong, I naively thought that becoming an independent scientist was to stop doing what you are told and start doing what’s right.

So, let’s get started with this blog...