学术研究是一个竞争性很激烈的职业，尤其是工作在那些活跃在前沿的领域。往往要求研究者夜以继日的工作。下面这两篇文章值得读一读。有两点有些感触
1. Quality not quantity：尽量发高水平文章，关键是开创性和重要性。
2. Time for tea： 人需要休闲时间，来为创新的思想提供基础。
我个人觉得24/7 不可取，但是同时要认识到科学研究的艰苦性。
Two articles in Nature recommended:
1. 24/7 isn't the only way: A healthy work�life balance can enhance research
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7362/full/477027a.html
2. Work ethic: The 24/7 lab
The 24/7 lab: Nature's readers comment online
ReplyDelete----------------------------------------------
Nature 477, 280 (15 September 2011) doi:10.1038/477280c
Published online 14 September 2011
A taste of the lively discussion on working 24/7 (Nature 477, 5, 20–22 and 27–28; 2011).
Kausik Datta says:
Hard work is essential, but most major scientific discoveries are arrived at by serendipity, the appreciation of which requires creativity and a thinking, enlightened mind. A slave-driving mentorship that encourages drone-like devotion to work and assembly-line productivity will only result in early burn out and the loss of love for science.
kdatta1@jhmi.edu
Jessica Mark Welch says:
Science demands hard work, but to sacrifice your health and your family life, so that while nominally spending time with your kids you are on the phone with your lab? How unreconstructed. I do not want a world where only people who can live that way can be scientists.
jmarkwelch@mbl.edu
Burkhard Haefner says:
All of us need time to relax and think or even to dream — to let the soul dangle, as we say in German. We all know the story of Isaac Newton wasting away his time, or so it seemed, lying under an apple tree.
bhaefner@its.jnj.com
Dean Griffiths says:
Rarely do insights occur after 14 hours of picking colonies. While it may be great for a PI [principal investigator] to publish lots of mediocre papers, students and postdocs require big papers to become established — and constantly working insane hours is unlikely to achieve this. Plus there really are times with your family that you can never get back. Is it worth missing them to do another PCR?
dsg29@cam.ac.uk
Maya Capelson says:
An average life scientist in the lab, grad student or postdoc, working 50–60 hours per week, will probably produce at least one paper in 4–5 years. Twenty-seven people working over 100 hours a week [in the lab profiled] produce just 29 papers in 5–6 years. So pretty much the same productivity as a scientist working for only half that time.
capelson@salk.edu
Chris Wood says:
I respect Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa for his honesty and the fact that he screens out his applicants to ensure they fully realize what they are getting into. And if they cannot stay the pace, he supports them in transferring somewhere more appropriate.
chris@ibt.unam.mx
Srikrishna Pandey says:
Some researchers and engineers really enjoy their work, so when they have to work overtime it doesn't occur to them to resent it.
srikrishnapandey@gmail.com
Julien Marquis says:
Some PIs may never have experienced the devastation of trashing a year's work. It is important and even pleasant to work very hard, but not always and not on anything. So PIs — if you want your crew (particularly naive PhD students) to work hard, ensure that they are pursuing a promising track.
julien.marquis@epfl.ch
To join this debate, go to http://go.nature.com/djydhr.