Blog of Joos Buijs

Science is still a `vague’ thing for people outside of academia (e.g. most family and friends of people in academia). Recent news reports of people in academia ‘borrowing’ texts, ‘inventing’ data or getting a PhD approved at a ‘philosophy’ university while it was rejected at a technical one, do not really help in explaining what academia really is about…

The following picture describes it rather well I think. It also helps in explaining why people tend to borrow text, invent data or really want a reward for their hard work (assuming they did)…

I’m currently in my 3rd instance of ‘Hmm not quite going as expected’, hoping for ‘amazing results’ by tomorrow, or at least next Monday when the paper is due.

PS My supervisor recently published a book (http://www.processmining.org/book/start) where he thanks his wife for understanding that “science is more rewarding than running errands”. I totally second that and so far my girlfriend allows me to do more science than running errands.