few days ago I read an article Malpensante in which exposed the farce of academic publications in Colombia. The author showed how a circle of reviewers and revised the system is worth colciencias generated to calculate the salary of a teacher to bleed the public treasury. The author particularly critical of the human sciences, and indeed naively assumed that these things do not happen in the hard sciences and / or engineering. Unfortunately for the author of that article, my experience has shown that these aberrations occur even in the most important circles of engineering. To support what I say, I can talk about my own experience.
few years ago, before emigrating to Colombia I had the opportunity to bond as a research assistant on a project developed by a prestigious university, funded in part by colciencias and another by a well known Colombian company. At that time was a recent graduate and idealistic. Dreamed of doing research for his belief in science, so I did not hesitate a few seconds to take the job.
After months of working on software that no one had any idea how should operate so that the requirements changed every day. Having difficulty trying to contact and / or personal interview within the company. The project came to an abrupt end as soon as it published an article in a conference. Painful for me was the fact that aside the only person who believed in our project, the director of this not considered relevant and frankly I believe, was no longer interested in the project. At that moment I realized the sad reality. No one was interested in our work and the reasons for which this project was due more to economic and reputational reasons, that a love of science.
The business works like this: the company partly funded the project and that this was taking place was only interested in two things, first, a discount, equivalent to 120% of project cost, in taxes. Second, maintaining a reputation as a company sponsoring the research. The project director, was interested in publishing an article for that, as evidenced by the Malpensante article, we go up the job. But that does not end there. At the start of the project passed a budget Colciencias, which stipulates that the project costs will be, these expenses include items such as new computers, assistants' salaries, expenses for meetings of socialization, even had an item for a meeting rather large for the launch of the project. If the chief saving money on those items he was the difference. Obviously is not as fast as that, but if you knew the right people, that was the result.
These things disappointed when you believe in science. Before this story took place, belonged to a lab where things were done with idealism. People love working for what he did. Clearly, these projects, which if science had never managed colciencias sponsorship. Probably due to its enormous budget was bled in similar projects to that in which I worked.
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