The onset of perspective

For three days now I  have been sat in a childrens hospital by my sons bedside. The fragility of the things that really matter to you will of course lead to achange of current perspective. Not much else matters other than my sons condition and the state of the rest of my family, not work, not academia or its lack. Physics matters a bit as I talk to the doctors and explain that I am science conversant and I understand the science behind nuclear medicine and i understand cause and effect. There is no intellectual competition going on,  I just want to understand whats happening. I suppose the powerlessness and lack of control have the effect of making you try to have some influence. scientifically speaking we tend to call the shots on what we do in the lab. So many times do we assume mastery over nature, its all a bit different when there is nothing we can do.

Wait for me, I want to do research too.

If it is a love of your subject that drives you, a desire to 'do research' then there are some things that you need to consider regarding how you undertake that research. In the modern age there are certain things that are taken for granted, so how would you cope witout those things. Let me explain. Research in industry or in government labs doesn't have the same freedom as is generally available to academia. This is most often to do with security ;- be that national security or commercial security - but it is also about cost. Here are a list of things that I cant do:

Due to concerns over network and information security I cannot make use of external sharing and storage sites. Now this may not seem all that serious, and its not, its just inconvenient. In a collaborative proposal with a university I was sent a link to a dropbox folder where all the documentation and proposal information was being kept. The idea being of course that with several of us providing input we could keep an up to date current version that was accessible to all parties. Except me. I needed to do all communication via email which is somewhat slower and less efficient for all concerned.   I could of course access dropbox from home, however I am not allowed to send company related information or documents to our home via email or any other means, due to concerns about the security of our home computers. So no working at home then.

Email is one of those troublesome issues. I cant access my email if I am not at my desk. This is partially my fault. I cannot log in to my company email acccount from any of my own devices. I would need a dedicated device supplied by the company, just for the purposes of email. So I would have to carry this around as well as all my own devices. Also I need to complete a business case to say why I need it. I am not keen . Although I have contributed to this situation the net result is that I am often out of touch. A number of times I have been visiting people who have emailed some instructions which I simply could not use because I could not pick up the email.
All personal electronic devices are banned from the work place. This can discomfort some visitors who are suddenly separated from their mobile phones for  number of hours. You can almost feel their sense of loss as they itch to check their messages. This reduces the methods of communication, which is part of the security but does not help in keeping in touch with colleagues outside of the organisation.

 The internet is the lifeblood of civilisation it seems, so of course we have internet access, but the firewalls and protection that is in place can often block access to potentially useful information - like blogs. Bad luck if you want information thats on a social network. But the biggest problem is access to scientific information. Most scientific literature is behind a paywall and there are no subscriptions to learned journals. It is basically impossible to get to the bottom of a subject by viewing all the scientific literature or even a good chunk of it. Google scholar is essential as it can point you to freely available sources. Open access publications are a godsend. If you have taken your institutional subscription to various publishing houses for granted them imagine having no access to any of those interesting looking papers, or being able to look at the forward citation chain. It is hugely restricting in terms of understanding a subject and for trying to get a substantive set of references for a publication. Open access publication can have an economic impact by speeding up research and for preventing reinvention.

One of my colleagues went to check up on a paper he has submitted to a journal. He found he could not get access to the site because the web browser we have to use (for security purposes) is so wildly out of date that the site wont deal with it. There is no chance of getting it upgraded because there is always a security person who knows better than you do! .. and as he is not supposed to work from home he is rather hamstrung about how to get his paper published. 

It is as if he last decade has not happened  - and yes I am still using XP. The capability to communicate freely and find any piece of information in the digital world has lead to a backlash in security that clamps down on that freedom. It's getting worse and going backwards.
So why might I be interested in moving to academia? - because I want to actually do some research and do it efficiently. This is why the cost of doing business is so expensive. Security kills freedom and process kills creativity. It's a different world out there and the grass might look greener because it is painted.

plus ca change, plus cést la meme chose

For many years I have not understood economics. To a physicist the idea that, overnight the value of the country or even the planet can change suddenly, where no physical change has occurred, is somewhat of an anathema. The amount of stuff can remain the same so how can the value change. Its all related to confidence. A bit wishy washy to a scientist.
But now I have had my own version of that peculiar scenario.Yesterday I received a rejection after applying for an academic position. It seems that everything I have done and achieved counts for nought. It wasn't that I expected to get the job, I didn't. But I did think i'd done enough to get an interview.
So now the following day nothing has changed, except that everything has changed. I now realise that no matter what my particular individual talents, I cant see me ever getting into academia, because I have spent so many years doing something else -whilst being a professional physicist. My confidence has taken a big hit and I have to reconsider how I might direct my career.