When I read the article by David Cryanoski, title ‘The Valley of Ghost”, published in Nature, Volume 436, August 2005. I couldn’t help nodding my head in agreement with his view.
Sad to say, I am one of the hopeful, who had waited in vain for the materialization of BioValley. I remember the single word BioValley very clearly. Without fail, my lecturer (head of program) will punctuate every sentence with BioValley. She was very excited about BioValley and all the ‘deliverable’ that it can deliver. She said BioValley would be like Silicone Valley, expect that this will be full of life. Listening to her, I got inspired. That’s perhaps why; I choose to major in Biotechnology or even Biology for that matter. It’s the promise of future. But sadly, the future keeps on postponing to the next future and next next future. Until I decided that I couldn’t wait for the next future. I quit Biology. I quit Biotechnology. (Oh ya, one year ago, when I visited her, she didn’t mention BioValley anymore).
It is sad to say that this sentiment is not only share by me. But, echo deep and far among life science grad. Take my batch for example. Only 1 out of 20 of us opts to further our studies (Master) in Biotechnolgy or biology related course. None of us work for Biotechnology or Biology companies which does R&D. Most of my course mate are either in sales (i.e. medical rep) or lab technologist (i.e. doing routine blood check).
None of the job above utilized what we had learnt. It is like what we learnt is for show only. Ironically, I know a few friends, who are trained locally but contributing to our Southern neighbor development. It’s like we are preparing the man power for their usage. How kind of us?
In my opinion, I think it’s true that the culture of research is lacking. I don’t see any of my lectures publishing papers. All I can see are ‘old’ papers, published decades ago (probably, those papers are from their doctoral times). In other words, the papers dwindled proportionally after obtaining their doctoral degree. To aggravate the matter, nobody cares about retaining and attracting talents (I echoed David observation strongly). I was so shocked to see a well known local professor, now lecturing at our Southern neighbor country. Shocked, because he had been with the university for a long time. We often joked that he is rooted in the university (obviously, he proves us wrong in that matter). He is one of the senior lecturer / researcher, together with his wife. Even though, I didn’t attend his lecturers before. All I hear were good praises from my fellow course mate (I took the same paper earlier). I can’t be certain but I got a strong feeling that his wife has followed his footstep. It would be sad, because we would lost (God know, how many we lost already?!) another good lecturer with strong interest and commitment in doing real R&D.
I suppose, it’s easy, with one magic stroke. We can label them unpatriotic and selfish. But I think the wiser and more productive move, would be self-reflection. Are we setting the wrong policy?
Disclaimer: This opinion is purely my own thought only.