What exactly do researchers do?

jsmoke

jsmoke

jsmoke

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In 2017/18 there were just over 100k doctorate research students in the UK, then you have all the post docs and all the other levels(research assistant, researcher, lecturer) right up to head of department. Then you have the private companies with their own research groups and even charity based organisations such as the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre. Not to mention every other country in the world taking the number of researchers to what must be millions of people.

So that's a lot of researchers, now I'm sure I'm showing my ignorance but what do these researchers do all day, is there really that much to research and discover. What would be an average day for them, are they constantly researching, does their group leader give them a task to do or are they sitting around drinking coffee all day?

I'm puzzled as to what goes on. I've read plenty of PhD titles, some are difficult to even pronounce. So I understand things get complex when studying things at an atomic, micro or macro level but I can't see the need for millions of researchers researching the same thing for example. Maybe it's just the government getting bums on seats as what else are they going to do but is there value from each researcher that passes through the system, does everybody bring something new to light?
 
checjb said:
There will always be a need for researchers. Until we - as a species - know everything then there is always something to learn. How do you think that happens? Someone asks "How does X work? Nobody knows? OK, I'll work it out by....wait for it....researching it."
Cancer research (the topic, not the charity) has huge numbers of people working on it because we don't fully know how cancers work and, therefore, we can't prevent them. Those people are working to do exactly that. It's not like they have a book they can just pick up with all the answers in it so they have to conduct research. I did my own research in biochemistry and chemistry during my degree, PhD and post-doc phases. Nothing ground breaking but my own work has been built on by those that followed me and so on. It's like building a wall. The wall in the summation of human understanding and every brick is another little titbit of info worked out by a researcher somewhere.
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Cancer research has been going on for decades, how many thousands of people have been researching it yet what's the progress, drugs that generally don't work, surgery or radiation.

Has any progress actually been made, I feel it's a dead end street.
 
Raymond Lin said:
I say this in the nicest possible way, it is clear you are not qualify but you sound like you are not smart enough to ask the question. It’s all not only naive but it’s...and I don’t want to say stupid, what’s the word.... defeatist if I am putting it nicely.

I don’t know the future but look how much progress has been add in the past 100 years, and out of the life time of our species, you think this is it? Really?
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I agree it is quite defeatist. I think it's the fact that tax payers are funding the research in the universities and little is actually of any benefit so it seems hence why I wondered what actually goes on.
 
adolf hamster said:
of course it is, phd researchers never have to leverage personal assets in their projects, everything is provided for them and they get paid a lot of money by the government....

except the ones on industrially funded contracts, or charity funded projects, or via eu funding.
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Not sure how accurate this site is but according to it a junior research fellow gets paid around £26000 a year at Oxford and about £10k a year more at most other universities, any idea why this is?

https://www.indeed.co.uk/salaries/junior-research-fellow-Salaries,-Oxford-ENG
 
Heinz57 said:
I don't know many research students who are fully funded in my department and even then it's paid fees and about £13k grant per year last time I looked. More are partially funded, but still need to pay living / accommodation costs. Most fully pay themselves. More common to be funded in science of course, more money there as scientific research (medicine etc) tends to have a larger impact on the quality of people's lives.
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PhD students were getting £15k a year in 1998 if I remember correctly. Just thought I'd add that
 
Sharkhouse said:
Yes they're absolutely furthering science. The Universe isnt a game, there isn't a maximum limit that you can hit where you've done everything. There's always something new to study from why do frogs look like that to why is maths the way it is. If theres a question, theres an answer that needs to be found. We're slowly building a map of understanding. Without which there'd be no medicine, no lights or electricity, no cars, no burgers and certainly no computers.
I applaud you for asking but you seem to be rejecting everyone's answers due to your inherent bias. If you don't want to understand how the world actually is why ask in the first place?
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It wasn't the brightest way I worded things. I was meaning more the big discoveries like gravity or relativity.
 
bayo000 said:
Not even a month ago you had ideas and said more research is needed. Now you're saying it's dead end street. What has changed in that short time?
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Well partly I'm totally out of touch, this thread has refreshed my understanding a bit. I was probably focusing more on physics than other sciences. I was actually looking up PhD thesis from friends written back in 2002 and asking myself if any of this research was actually ever used.

It was also partly about funding and why research should be funded for research that's not ever used.

I was also genuinely curious as to what a researcher does all day, are they hard at it in the lab crunching numbers or doing experiments all day or are they making cups of tea, watching YouTube and going to talks.

I'm all the wiser now though after this thread.
 
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