D became an Intel STS semifinalist today, will it help her HYPS application?

Dbate
Sat, 31 Jan 2009 10:04:37 +0000

“So, are these high school students who work in the research labs taught that real science plays it safe with the incremental approach or that real science involves taking risks,”



Another factor is reputation, many PhD are trying to get tenure and to get tenure you have to be producing something, if you are researching this new field there are going to be some failures and well failures don’t result in published paper and therefore no awards for the research and vis a vis the university. So it is more incentive for the researcher to “play it safe” accomplish something and then get tenure.
And even after they get tenure, they still have to keep thier rep up they don’t want to push something new only to have it revealed to be a complete failure. If you read through the articles of the non-major journals you see alot of research published that is not groundbreaking.

Also like mathmom said, money is a drive NOT to find cures for diseases. I do not know anyone with parkinson, but if it is like any other major disease there are treatments galore. These treatments cost money and are a continual amount of money for the companies that make the products. If the person with parkinson’s is cured then away goes the money. I am very convinced that if companies wanted to develop cures the money and talent is there to make it happen, but I think alot of pharma research is focused on developing products that treat and don’t cure. The only way to develop a cure would be from NIH funding or some other federal source and that occurs at research universities where the above problem may occur.