IMHO the big problem in experimental sciences is what the article kindly describes as power imbalances. I'd call it perhaps neofeudalism.
I've seen many cases where principal investigators / professors are completely disconnected from research, including an absolute lack of any basic knowledge related to the field. They are just middlemen. For someone coming from pure mathematics, where professors routinely come up with great results themselves, this was incredibly shocking.
Those I've met who don't know much always run the same scheme. They have a few postdocs doing all work and writing all grant proposals, but never getting their names on them. They always work towards some vague promotion that never comes. Whenever they obtain any good result, the professor or principal investigator will take all credit. Usually they will get diluted quickly, by simply pushing follow up experiments to others.
Bell Labs, MRC LMB and Cold Spring Harbor were somewhat successful in preventing this kind of middlemen behavior. Among other things, they banned anyone from supervising more than 5 people. It worked.
This is quite typical in academia, especially in biology and medicine.
I finished my PhD recently. Examiners asked me to rewrite some sections and resubmit my thesis because one of them didn't "believe" my results. Believing in this context actually meant I made lots of his stuff outdated / irrelevant using mathematical models instead of hand waving. Models led to precise findings, which had some lab validation by the time I submitted.
At the same time my university, which is a really famous one, was encouraging me to patent my results. And my supervisor applied for massive funding as if all was his idea. 2 major clinical trials are now recruiting to test my findings.
Least to say, I refused and got a new exam with some honest people.
I've seen many cases where principal investigators / professors are completely disconnected from research, including an absolute lack of any basic knowledge related to the field. They are just middlemen. For someone coming from pure mathematics, where professors routinely come up with great results themselves, this was incredibly shocking.
Those I've met who don't know much always run the same scheme. They have a few postdocs doing all work and writing all grant proposals, but never getting their names on them. They always work towards some vague promotion that never comes. Whenever they obtain any good result, the professor or principal investigator will take all credit. Usually they will get diluted quickly, by simply pushing follow up experiments to others.
Bell Labs, MRC LMB and Cold Spring Harbor were somewhat successful in preventing this kind of middlemen behavior. Among other things, they banned anyone from supervising more than 5 people. It worked.