Stoke

An article in the herald today is headlined “Australia’s young Einsteins get the red-carpet treatment”.

It then goes onto describe the work of a handful of young scientists nowhere near the calibre of Albert that have got invited to some scientific shinding somewhere, not here. And probably because they worked hard to get invited where others were not interested.

They are all working in areas of general interest – peptides to stabilise unstable drugs, epidemiology to understand infections in children, cancer research, treatment of depression, and the causes of Alzheimers.

Of course none of these scientist have had any inventions or developed any new knowledge that has led to breakthroughs in any of these areas; they are all still ‘gunnas’.

It depresses me somewhat that we in Australia continue to promote sexy ‘work in progress’ instead of genuine outcomes.

Because by doing so we are sending a signal to our scientists that results don’t matter – your egos will be satisfactorily stoked just for being active in a sexy field and by seeking publicity.