In 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) came up with a new classification system for antibiotics on its essential medicines list: Access, Watch, and Reserve. Antibiotics on the Access list were narrow spectrum antibiotics — only effective against a small range of organisms — that would be recommended as first and second treatment options for common clinical infections. Those on the Watch list were broader spectrum, able to tackle a wider range of pathogens and therefore considered more important for human medicine. The Reserve list describes antibiotics of last-resort; only for use when all other antibiotics had failed. As SARS-CoV-2 wreaks havoc around the world, antibiotics have fallen off the agenda; they are completely ineffective against a viral infection. But antibiotics do work against the disease-causing bacteria that are responsible for millions of deaths worldwide each year. Antibiotic resistance was a critical health issue long before COVID-19 exploded into hospitals and headlines, and it will continue to be one long after the pandemic has been brought under control. Antibiotics on the Access list are the ones that should be the most widely available and the most widely used, and the WHO says by 2023, 60% of all antibiotics consumed should come from the Access group. Unfortunately in India, that trend is going in the opposite direction, says Jyotsna Singh, program officer at humanitarian organisation Medicins Sans Frontiers’ Access campaign in Delhi. One 2017 analysis found that while sales of key Access antibiotics had risen 20% since 2007-2008, sales of Watch group antibiotics had risen by 73% and sales of Reserve antibiotics increased by 174%. “What we are seeing is that in the Access category there are medicines which are in shortage, which is becoming a huge problem,” Singh says. It means that instead of treating infections in a targeted fashion, with antibiotics specifically tailored to individual pathogens, doctors are using broader spectrum antibiotics from the Watch and Reserve categories. Not only are these antibiotics supposed to be used only for more difficult infections, but they are associated with a higher likelihood of resistance developing. “You have to save Watch and Reserve for certain infections which cannot be treated otherwise,” she says, “or in the long term patients’ health will be put at risk.” This has already cost lives. Each year, more than 58,000 newborns in India are estimated to die from bacterial sepsis that is resistant to first-line antibiotics. Individuals in India infected with bacteria resistant to more than one antibiotic are two to three times more likely to die than those with non-resistant infections. Another study has found that 40 per cent of pregnant women and 60 per cent of schoolchildren are carrying strains of E. coli bacteria resistant to at least one antibiotic. In 2019, India scored highest of 41 countries on the Drug Resistance Index — a measure combining both antibiotic use and resistance levels, and by 2050, antimicrobial resistance has been forecast to claim an additional two million lives per year in India. But Satya Sivaraman, who develops communications strategies on antibiotic resistance with ReAct Asia Pacific — one arm of the global ReAct network created in 2005 to focus on antibiotic resistance — says many healthcare professionals face a bigger issue. “If you talk to doctors on the ground about antimicrobial resistance, they’ll say ‘yes it’s a problem in some cases, but the bigger problem is that we don’t have antibiotics at all,’” says Sivaraman. In a country with such a high incidence of infectious disease, the lack of any treatment is killing more people than treatment resistance. It also means India is a huge reservoir of infectious pathogens: a “factory of disease production,” he adds. At the same time, antibiotics are being overused and misused to such an extent that even India’s massive generic drug manufacturing industry can’t keep up with demand. New antibiotics Singh says generic drug manufacturers — many of which produce copies of brand-name medications in India’s thriving pharmaceutical manufacturing sector — blame the shortage on the low price set for antibiotics by India’s price control mechanism, which limits what pharmaceutical companies can charge the government and consumers for essential medicines and makes them a far less attractive business. Some state governments in India are taking matters into their own hands to ensure a supply of antibiotics. In 1974, for example, the state government of Kerala established its own, government-run pharmaceutical manufacturing operation — Kerala State Drugs and Pharmaceuticals — which supplies essential and life-saving medicines, including antibiotics, to government hospitals. The other problem is that, around the world as well as in India, pharmaceutical companies are pulling out of research and development of new antibiotics, leaving it to governments to pick up the slack. Sidarth Chophra, microbiologist and professor at the Central Drug Research Institute (CSIR) in Lucknow, India, is hunting for new molecules specifically targeted at drug-resistant bacteria. One focus is the so-called ESKAPE pathogens which are responsible for the majority of hospital-acquired infections and which all show resistance to multiple existing antibiotics. CSIR is directly funded by the Indian government. The speed with which bacteria evolve resistance to new antimicrobials presents a huge challenge, says Chopra. “I tell my students all the time, this is like playing chess with a grandmaster,” he says. Chopra and colleagues are trying every trick in the book to gain the upper hand. First, they’re looking at existing drugs to see whether any might also show antimicrobial activity, because that can help speed up the drug development and testing process. One molecule showing antibiotic properties is disulfiram, which is normally used to treat chronic alcoholism. They’re also looking at molecules that might otherwise not be considered potential candidates because they don’t meet the so-called Lipinski’s rule of five for predicting compounds that are likely to succeed as drug candidates. “We are more than happy to look at unconventional molecules which a normal medicinal chemist would not touch with a barge pole,” Chopra says. Funding healthcare Even if vital antibiotics become more widely available in India, there is still the problem of how, in a country with an overwhelmingly private healthcare system, many citizens could afford to access the doctors who prescribe them. A report published in April this year by the Center For Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy, a public health research organisation based in Washington DC and New Delhi, found that 65% of health expenditure in India comes from the pockets of individual patients, compared to 13% in Germany. The cost of health care is estimated to drive 57 million Indian residents into poverty each year. Philip Mathew, a public health consultant with ReAct, says that universal health coverage might help enable many poorer patients to access essential medicines such as antibiotics. “A universal health care system in developing countries can solve many, many issues associated with access to essential antibiotics,” he says. The Indian government is moving in that direction. In 2018, it announced the creation of the ‘Ayushman Bharat — National Health Protection Mission’ to provide health coverage worth up to 500,000 rupees (US$7,000) per family for 100 million poor and vulnerable families. The plan also includes ‘health and wellness centres’, which are intended to provide primary care, free diagnostic services and essential drugs. But there are questions about how the government of India will pay for the scheme, given its spending on public health is one of the lowest among low-middle income countries. Another challenge is ensuring that clinicians in that healthcare system prescribe antibiotics appropriately. Because of their seemingly miraculous curative powers, antibiotics have become a victim of their own success. Patients — not just in India but around the world — have come to view antibiotics as a magic bullet for all ailments, and expect them from their doctor. “They are paying some fee to the private doctor for the consultation, and they want to know that they’ve actually taken some strong medicine back with them, so this whole cycle, the patient-doctor cycle, is completely skewed,” Sivaraman says. This situation is further exacerbated by climate change, which is changing patterns of infectious disease outbreaks, and contributing to the emergence of new diseases for which there are no or only recently developed vaccines, such as dengue and chikungunya. The latter re-emerged in India in 2005 after a twenty-year hiatus and since then, over one million cases of the mosquito-borne viral infection have been reported. A vaccine is now available, but has limited efficacy. “These viral fevers get confused with bacterial infections and then people tend to use antibiotics, so that contributes to the problem,” says Jyoti Joshi, head of South Asia at the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy in New Delhi. Changing the minds of doctors is one thing; changing the expectations of patients is another, says Ramanan Laxminarayan, director of the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics & Policy in Washington DC. “Here you’re saying ‘don’t take an antibiotic, not because it will necessarily harm you but because you’re ruining the chances for someone else to be treated with that antibiotic. Human beings tend to work in selfish ways and in this instance it doesn’t work out so well for us.” Cost of resistance Every year in India, 1 million children die in the first four weeks of life. 190,000 of these deaths are attributable to neonatal sepsis, and just over 30% of those sepsis deaths are attributable to antibiotic resistance. But the true scale of the antibiotic resistance is concealed by a lack of data, because when someone dies in hospital from infection, it’s rarely recorded as a death from antibiotic resistance. “It’s not something that the common man observes to say, ‘oh my God: people are dying of drug resistance’,” Laxminarayan says. It is clear, at least, that antibiotic resistance rates continue to increase. Since 2008, the proportion of pathogenic bacteria found to be resistant to important antibiotics has risen significantly; in some cases, tripled or even quadruped. In 2017, the Indian government released its National Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance. This identified six strategic priorities including improved awareness, better surveillance, reducing infection rates, and improved antibiotic stewardship. The priorities were aligned with global action plans on antibiotic resistance, but Joshi says this approach is not a magic bullet for all developing countries. “The models that have worked in the ‘developed’ world cannot be copied back and implanted here … so you can't copy and paste,” she says. While India now has an action plan, she says it’s going to take some time for that cookie-cut plan to adapt to the Indian way of doing things. “We need to really dirty our hands and get models that work for us in our settings with all the resource limitation and competing priorities, and try them out to control the scourge of antimicrobial resistance,” she says. While there are likely to be successes and failures, she believes the country will learn from those experiences, “and then come out and say, ‘yes, this is what can be done, and this is how it should be done.’” Bianca Nogrady is a freelance science writer in Sydney, Australia.   Antibiotics in agriculture Studies show that India’s booming poultry industry is a potential danger to health. While antibiotic use in agriculture has caused headaches in many western countries, India’s primarily vegetarian diet has meant the problem of agricultural antibiotic use is much less severe. But, thanks in part to a booming poultry industry, it’s becoming a bigger issue. Poultry samples have found resistance rates to streptomycin as high as 75%. Resistance rates to other antibiotics including ampicillin and rifampicin were over 40%. “You have these huge poultry farms where there’s a huge amount of overcrowding, and antibiotics are used to cover up your hygiene and biosecurity practices,” says Robin Paul, Quality Manager in the State Laboratory of Kerala’s State Veterinary Department in Kochi. A 2019 study identified India and China as the largest low-middle income global hotspots of antimicrobial resistance in animals, and singled out the antibiotic colistin — an antibiotic that the WHO recommends be reserved to treat multi-drug-resistant human infections — as a particular source of resistance and public health concern. In July 2019, India followed China and banned the sale and use of colistin in the agricultural industry, because of the risk to human health. But Paul says more needs to be done to help farmers better manage their farms without resorting to antibiotics. “The crux of animal health is to manage the health of animals so that they don’t need to go on antibiotics,” he says. But that can be challenging in a nation such as India, where there is widespread malnutrition and rising demand for protein, and Paul says farmers are likely to oppose any restrictions that could impact production. BN   Image: “Women queue at a medical centre in New Delhi, India, during a dengue and chikungunya outbreak in September 2016. (Photo by Saumya Khandelwal/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)"

What do you do? Do you enjoy it? Why? I am a doctoral candidate at the National Institute of Technology Karnataka. My dissertation focuses on intelligent systems for predictive modelling in financial applications.  Aside from my PhD research topic, I enjoy working on problems that have the potential to make an impact through different aspects of research such as social, business and technology. Through my PhD programme, I have moulded research skills to work on funded projects or serve as independent consultant. What were your early career ambitions? After not performing well at school, my parents suggested that I take up a course at an ITI (Industrial Training Institute). This meant that I would be a skilled technician in an organisation after graduating. However, I decided to study for a Diploma in Electronics and Communication Engineering, which is technically a higher degree, as I did not want to limit my career prospects. The initial semesters were tough, but later I picked up with the help of learning in peer student groups. How did you make the decision between pursuing a career in academia or industry? Once I completed my diploma, thoughts of applying for jobs surfaced. However, at that time in India, a new scheme was introduced whereby diploma holders could apply and join the second year of an undergraduate programme. I stayed at the same institute where I had studied for my diploma and was awarded a BTech in Information Technology in 2007. Around this time, the economic recession was prevailing, the dot-com bubble had mostly subsided and the industry in India was changing rapidly. I felt that my place was not in industry, as I did not believe I had the excellent coding skills it required. I took up my first job as a lecturer on a contractual basis at Cochin University Engineering College at Kuttanad, which is a state-funded public university. After my first stint as a lecturer, I personally felt that academia provided a better comfort zone and space for professional growth. What were some of the challenges on your journey? Most of colleges where I worked already started to regulate for more qualified (PG/PhD) teaching staff. I was interviewed and received a job offer from Amrita University in Quilon in early 2008. But in that year, a breakthrough occurred while I was trying to qualify for GATE (Graduate Aptitude for Engineering), a national exam that provide chances to pursue Master’s and PhD programmes. More recently, this exam has been a criterion for selection for some positions public sector companies. I received a strong grade and rank, which I don’t think I would have got without the exposure and subject knowledge I’d acquired during my undergraduate training. What did you do next? After unsuccessful applications to graduate schools for Master’s programmes, I worked for a short period as technical staff at an institute for a government funded project on digitisation of a library with nationwide reach. Later in 2009, I applied for an MTech (Master of Technology) programme at a state public university and was selected for a teaching assistance scholarship. As part of the dissertation project work, I applied for an internship at ISRO (Indian Space Research Organization). Even without support from the university or a scholarship from ISRO, I worked on a two-semester project on the development of a software tool prototype for space research applications, which resulted in a related IEEE publication. How does being based in India affect the way you work? There have not been many drastic changes in India, from academic point of view, in recent years. There are constant checks and performance reviews either in government posts or private institutions. To an extent, although private institutions offer higher salaries, they also demand a higher workload as part of accreditations that may actually work positively in long run. What advice would you have for others trying to work in a similar sort of environment? There can be a sense of lethargy and inertia certain positions. The best policy is to keep searching for grants for funded projects, extend your professional skills, such as research reviewing and talking at conference and workshops. Undertake student support programmes like mentoring and community initiatives for spreading knowledge. What do you love about living and working in India? In my case, the government funded my research and hence I feel a sense of moral duty to give back to my nation. India has potential for growth both scientifically and economically; at least historically that has been evident. What’s your top career tip to younger colleagues? Stay focused and keep your eyes open for higher education and research opportunities. Reach out to your seniors, teachers and peers for advice. What else would you say to others trying to build a scientific career in India? From my experience, joining the best-ranked institute does not necessarily mean you will receive top training or skills, unless you have a true passion for your research.  Smart work and motivation can instil students with the confidence to perform well and be recognised in academia. Make use of generous government scholarships as well as privately funded schemes.

Practices might differ from country to country, but undergraduate students can be better served in research, says Shaun Khoo. One of the things that excited me about taking up a Canadian postdoctoral position was that, for the first time, I would get a chance to work with and mentor enthusiastic undergraduate researchers. I looked forward to the chance to gain mentorship skills while helping out future scientists, and maybe, eventually, freeing up some of my own time. As an Australian, I had never been pressured to volunteer in a lab — most Australian students don’t do any undergraduate research unless they enroll in an extra honours year, because the law prohibits unpaid student placements that are not a course requirement. This hasn’t held back overall research productivity in Australia, but it is a stark contrast to the North American environment, where many undergraduates feel pressure to get research experience as soon as they begin university. Most graduate medical students, for example, have previous research experience, and North American graduate schools have come to expect this from applicants. In Canada, nearly 90% of graduate medical students have past research experience1. Numerous articles extol2,3,4 the virtues of undergraduate research experience, but, unfortunately, evidence supporting the benefits of undergraduate research is limited. Most studies on the topic rely exclusively on self-reports that are corroborated less than 10% of the time by studies using more-direct measurements. For example, surveys find that undergraduate student researchers say that they have developed data-analysis skills — something that would normally involve lots of practical work — yet, when interviewed, most of them admit to never having done any data analysis. Like many postdoctoral researchers and graduate students, I spend most of my time with undergraduate students working on technical skills that they might need to work in the lab, but that don’t necessarily improve their conceptual understanding. For example, if I teach a student how to use a cryostat, they might become proficient in slicing brains, but they won’t necessarily learn how synaptic transmission works. Even if we manage to instil excitement for the intricacies of research in our undergraduate students, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that for the vast majority that continue in academic research, there will be no permanent jobs — we might just be saddling our undergraduates with unrealistic expectations. So how do we avoid wasting our time as mentors and our students’ time as learners and researchers? Here are my suggestions. Consider long-term goals. Undergraduate students should reflect on how their research experiences will prepare them for professional success. Should they be aiming for research experiences that are based on their courses, because it will better improve their understanding of scientific concepts? Will a given opportunity help them to reach their career goals by getting into a professional graduate programme? Can they commit to staying with a research programme long enough to become effective and potentially be a co-author? Acknowledge and offset opportunity cost. Undergraduate research requires significant time investments from both students and research supervisors. Undertaking such research might mean forgoing paid employment or other experiences, such as student societies, sport, performing arts or campus journalism and politics. Mentors can help undergraduate students by facilitating summer-scholarship applications or finding ways for students to get course credit for their work. Train for diverse careers. Most undergraduate students will pursue non-research careers or join professional graduate programmes. Those who try to continue in academia will eventually face a bleak post-PhD academic job market. Just as PhD students need preparation for a wide range of careers, so do undergraduate students need to build a transferable skill set. Mentors can encourage undergraduate students to build communication skills by, for example, encouraging them to present in lab meetings, or facilitating teamwork by having groups of undergraduate students complete a project together. Improve undergraduate research experiences. There’s limited non-anecdotal evidence that undergraduate research improves a given lab’s research productivity, or even student learning, but such research isn’t necessarily a waste of time. Before undergraduate students pad their CVs with research experience, they should reflect on what they will achieve by conducting research, and they should seek out meaningful projects to work on and develop relevant skills for their future career. For mentors, we have an obligation to consider the career development of undergraduate students and, for the sake of our publication records, we should aim to work with students who can commit at least a year to our projects. And, as much as possible, we should try to take the pressure off undergraduate students to do research, so that it can be an enjoyable learning experience rather than a box they need to check. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-07427-5 This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged. You can get in touch with the editor at naturejobseditor@nature.com.   References 1. Klowak, J., Elsharawi, R., Whyte, R., Costa, A. & Riva, J. Can. Med. Educ. J. 9, e4–e13 (2018). PubMed Google Scholar 2. Smaglik, P. Nature 518, 127–128 (2015). PubMed Article Google Scholar 3. Ankrum, J. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-018-05823-5 (2018). Article Google Scholar 4. Trant, J. Nature 560, 307 (2018). Article Google Scholar Download references

Drive for accessibility sees research relayed in regional tongues instead of English Scientists and policymakers across India are aiming to bring science to the nation’s citizens and residents whose main language is not English. They’re producing content such as articles and podcasts, and giving talks about discoveries and studies in health science, biology, biotechnology and astronomy in some of the nation’s 22 official languages, including Hindi, Marathi, Kannada and Tamil. As one of the languages used officially by the Indian government, English is largely considered to be the country’s language for science — but just 12% of the nation’s 1.3 billion citizens can speak and write it. Those who are trying to broaden the mix note that many more people will be able to access scientific content if it is available in other languages. “Speaking and writing in regional languages makes science more inclusive,” says Maggie Inbamuthiah, founder of Mandram (which means ‘platform’ in Tamil), an organization based in Chennai that seeks to create a platform on which ideas in science and technology are communicated in regional languages, including Tamil and Kannada. Initiatives to write about science and produce science-related content in languages other than English have been under way for several decades, as many urban schools and most higher-education institutions moved to an English-based curriculum. Those multi-language efforts started to expand with the advent of the Internet, which has provided easy access to content, new media, platforms for distribution, and the ability to find collaborators and new audiences. Digital spaces and media have brought new players to the undertaking, and have re-energized those who have been involved in these efforts for years. Language evolution Although digital platforms and social media help researchers and others to communicate scientific findings and discoveries to the public, any such endeavour is pointless if readers, viewers or listeners cannot speak or read that language. Few of India’s languages have an up-to-date lexicon of scientific terms, and many researchers in the country have long become accustomed to thinking and writing about science in English, says Inbamuthiah. Still, she notes, language is fluid and adaptable. “We enrich a language by adding new words,” she says. “With time, we become more comfortable using them.” Today, the effort to communicate science in multiple languages has a number of participants. Kollegala Sharma, a zoologist and senior principal scientist at the Central Food Technological Research Institute (CSIR) in Mysuru, India, has been producing Janasuddi (jana means both smart and knowledge and suddi means news in Kannada), a weekly science podcast, since September 2017. The 20-minute episodes, which comprise science research, news and interactive sessions that might include audience questions or comments, is in Kannada and is circulated through the WhatsApp platform. Listeners mainly include public high-school teachers — about 1,000, up from the 20 or so when Sharma first launched the programme. It’s also available on public radio. The Indian government is supporting the endeavour. K. VijayRaghavan, a molecular biologist and principal scientific adviser for the government, is a vocal proponent of making science accessible to people in their first language. He is working to provide increased funding and support for such efforts, and engages with many science communicators on social media, including Twitter. Spreading influence Other initiatives are emerging. Research Matters, a website that curates science news and articles in multiple languages and has more than 700,000 visitors, launched in November 2016. TED Talks India was launched in December 2017, and features prominent scientists who discuss topics such as neuroscience and astronomy in Hindi, the most widely spoken language in India. In January, the Indian Department of Science and Technology teamed with Doordarshan, a public service broadcaster, to launch two science-communication initiatives, DD Science, shown on Doordarshan, and Internet-based India Science. Both feature science-based programming in Hindi and English. Others are also exploring the podcast realm. Last July, IndSciComm, an online science-communication collective, started Sea of Science, a podcast series in Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Assamese and Tamil that talks about model organisms used in biological research. The series producers say that it is challenging to translate scientific terms and concepts into regional languages. “But working on them is just as much about love of language and wanting to reach out to people as it is an exercise of scientific understanding and language experience,” says Shruti Muralidhar, a neuroscience postdoc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, and one of the producers. She says that they had to turn to online dictionaries, scientific lexicons and Google for support. The producers also worked out a system of ‘romanization’ that helped them to keep some terms intact while maintaining the cadences and sentence structure specific to the language. While writing the script for the Tamil podcast, producer Abhishek Chari, a freelance science communicator in Cambridge, Massachusetts, had to translate the English word ‘metabolism’ into Tamil. Etymologically, it comes from the Greek word metabolē (from metaballein, ‘to change’) plus the suffix ‘-ism’. But trying to directly translate this word into Tamil (possibly with the term maatram, meaning ‘change’) won’t capture the biological meaning that the word ‘metabolism’ is used to convey, says Muralidhar. “Looking it up on Google Translate, valarchithai came up as a Tamil equivalent of metabolism. This worked perfectly because valarchithai is a compound word consisting of ‘grow’ (valar) and ‘disperse or shatter into pieces’ (chithai), so the term would mean ‘grow plus disperse’,” she says. “The agglutinative (putting multiple words together) nature of the Tamil language came to our rescue.” Last June, Inbamuthiah partnered with the Bangalore Life Science Cluster (BLiSC) to organize The Jigyasa Project, a one-night presentation in Bengaluru of science talks and audience-interactive sessions in Kannada, Hindi and Tamil. A second presentation was held in December 2018. Each event included six scientist-presenters, had 100–150 attendees, and covered topics from genetics to intellectual property. The organization plans to continue to hold events every June and December. The 12 scientists who took part agreed that their presentations were challenging because they required them not just to translate talks into another language, but also to translate the underlying scientific concepts. “I was quite nervous giving a talk in Hindi, and it was a big challenge for me,” says Uma Ramakrishnan, a molecular ecologist at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru. “I thought about what I was going to say, and rehearsed it with some of my Hindi-speaking students, just to make sure I was communicating my thoughts correctly. Local benefits Ramakrishnan thinks that the effort to communicate science in languages other than English is very important, especially for field researchers like herself, whose work is local and regional, such as investigating tigers in Rajasthan or biodiversity in the Western Ghats, a biodiversity hotspot along India’s west coast. “Doing fieldwork across India, my team and I have often informally communicated our research in Hindi or Malayalam to local people,” she says. “For the people who live in these places, this is one way in which science can feel tangible and local. Platforms like Jigyasa provide an opportunity to make this more accessible to a larger audience.” Mahinn Ali Khan, spokesperson for BLiSC, says that she observed a real sense of camaraderie between the audience and the scientists at Jigyasa. “Speaking in your own language helps you immediately drop the formality and reserve,” she says. Khan thinks that, although researchers are eager to engage with non-scientists, the shift to accepting science as a subject that can be discussed in a language other than English still faces some resistance from the public. “At this point, these are passion-driven projects for most of us,” agrees Inbamuthiah.   If you have a career story that you'd like to share, then please complete this form, or send your outline by email.

Microbiologist Yogesh Chawla was part of the team that led the protests demanding hike in research fellowships in India during 2014-15. He rues in this guest post that not much seems to have changed in the country’s treatment of its research scholars since. Following months of agitation by young scientists across India, the Indian government announced a hike in fellowships for research scholars earlier this month (February 2019). The stipends for junior research fellows (JRFs) were raised from a monthly Rs 25,000 to Rs 31,000, and that for senior research fellows (SRFs) from Rs 28,000 to Rs 35,000. The research scholars have been protesting every few years to bring to light the abysmal pay parity, delayed and irregular disbursal of stipends, semester fee charges, and scarcity of fund allocated to science. The protests typically last for a few months reaching a crescendo on social media, and finally end with the science administration promising and then delivering a hike. India’s current government has enhanced their fellowship twice, almost doubling it from Rs 16,000 in 2014 to Rs. 31,000. It is a step, albeit small, in the right direction to bridge the gap in pay disparity of researchers. However, the challenges facing India’s research scholar are far from over. History of protests During the fellowship hike movement of 2014-15, five of us scholars represented the protesting researchers in negotiations with the institutional authorities and government representatives. Several issues were discussed at length then, and still remain unresolved. Policy changes that were mooted then to streamline the system are still pending. A hike is not the only thing to fulfill the vision of better scientific rigour or improvement in the quality of Indian science. One of the objectives of such fellowship hikes is to attract talent to science disciplines by providing economic emoluments parity, laurels, awards and recognition. The need of the hour is to have a multi-pronged approach to bring Indian science at par with world standards, to make Indian research relevant to the country’s needs, to transform India into a torch bearer of scientific excellence, technological advancements and innovations. These are important but imposing challenges for India and the country’s science policy is a key tool to overcome them. Rewarding merit How do we bring rigour into India’s science? Can we have measures to reward scholars – the backbone of our scientific quest – who work tirelessly beyond stipulated office hours? Will rewarding the first author for publishing quality research be a game changer?  Publishing in high impact journals may not be the ultimate or accurate parameter of judging the quality of science but it is a practical parameter. A thorough scientific study in a reputed journal does suggest a work of excellence. Impact factors, citations or the impact of research on problems specific to India can be taken as criteria to judge merit. The overarching idea is to reward hard work, judged and scrutinised for scientific quality and rigour by independent peers. This way, we would be able to bring equity to the hard and diligent work. Any scientific misconduct or falsification of data should be made punishable. Currently, Indian authors publish around 100,000 articles every year but their average citation impact is around 0.8, which is nearly half of the citation impact of articles published from USA or UK (~1.6)1. Rewards for and equity to good quality work would boost the overall scientific rigour. It wouldn’t cost much to the government exchequer but would certainly impact the morale and enthusiasm of researchers favourably. It could be a robust way to kick start ideas, innovations and excellence. Likewise, universities, departments and institutions should be rewarded for their scientific excellence. However, when impact factors of publications become the criteria for a reward, they potentially exclude scholars and scientists looking at grass root problems (that may not be very popular research areas but are high on social benefits) or high impact work in a scientific journal. Scholars of such fields should be recognised through other laurels and awards. Another policy change that may ensure a respectable life for senior researchers wanting to continue research in India is to enhance the fold increase of the fellowships between JRF to SRF and SRF to the postdoctoral level (say, around 1.4 to 1.5-fold of their previous level). SRF and postdoctoral researchers are generally in their late 20s or early 30s, a time they typically start or support a family. Scholars who earn their PhDs in Indian institutions should be rewarded since many JRFs leave Indian PhD programmes to pursue PhDs in foreign labs or institutes. JRF fellowship shouldn’t be a stop-gap arrangement for aspiring graduates of foreign universities. A JRF scholar who continues research in India and gets promoted to SRF should be rewarded with a healthy raise in stipend to pursue research in India. The same logic applies to postdoctoral fellows. The long-debated issue of brain drain could have a solution in a good postdoctoral fellowship with independent grants. The Chinese initiatives “Thousand Talents Plan” and “Thousand Youth Talents Plan”2are great examples of how to attract scholars to postdoctoral positions through government grants and fellowships and to pursue them to return and serve home institutions. This way, trained and qualified PhD scientists could fuel the nation’s economic and scientific growth and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cry of “Jai Jawan, Jai Kisaan, Jai Vigyaan and Jai Anusandhaan” would sound real. India by the numbers China’s plan to recruit talented researchers (Yogesh Chawla is a PhD from the National Institute of Immunology, New Delhi and currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Weill Cornell Medical College, New York. He can be contacted at yogi1chawla@gmail.com.)

More than 100 researchers describe their work and the struggles they face, including gender bias and achieving a positive work–life balance. Two science journalists in India continue to build on The Life of Science, a multimedia website that they designed and launched in 2016 to highlight the research and lives of more than 100 women in the country. The site, founded and run by Nandita Jayaraj and Aashima Dogra, aims to chronicle the scientists’ experiences in the lab and field. Jayaraj and Dogra, who work full-time on the site, compile feature stories, blogposts, podcasts, video and picture features about the women, whose work spans the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The journalists met in 2014 in Bangalore, while working on a now-defunct children’s science magazine. When this shut down in 2015, they decided to explore their mutual interest in science communication. Dogra had already planned to travel the country on a brief busman’s holiday, and visited the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in Kalimpong to talk to women who worked there. Meanwhile, Jayaraj was interviewing geophysicist Kusala Rajendran at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and biophysicist Aruna Dhathathreyan at the Central Leather Research Institute in Chennai. When the two journalists conferred about the information they had gathered, they decided to create a website to publicize the stories. “We were curious about the science under way in laboratories in our back yard,” says Jayaraj about the site’s early days. “We also wanted to break the stereotype of the scientist as an old male person.” As the two began writing full-time, they crowdfunded for their work on the Indian platform BitGiving. Jayaraj and Dogra have since launched a second campaign to fund their work on the site, which includes compiling some of the content into two books. Each scientist’s story offers a glimpse into her world — from the physical environment in which she lives and works, to the nature of her research and how she reached her present position. “I particularly like how the narratives let us see the woman behind the science and scientific journey,” says Vidita Vaidya, a neuroscientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, who is featured on the site. The site showcases India’s diverse research landscape. Some of the scientists work with state-of-the-art equipment such as dilution refrigerators, confocal microscopes and high-performance computing clusters; others make the most of sparse funds and scant supplies. Yet the stories’ common threads resonate with many others who aspire to, or are navigating, a scientific career: the struggles to balance family life and career, and to counter bias and stereotypes. The interviewees offer ideas for ameliorating some of the struggles, such as establishing campus child-care facilities and promoting female scientists into leadership positions. “Nothing on this scale has ever been done before,” says Vaidya. She hopes that the site can help bring together those who are profiled, as well as other women who work in STEM in India. Jayaraj and Dogra continue to find more women to profile. Viewer numbers and other metrics are not available, but the developers intend to continue the site in perpetuity. Indian online news sites including The Wire and Firstpost have syndicated some of the articles. Those profiled are delighted at the chance to connect with readers. Number theorist Kaneenika Sinha at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Pune has received e-mails from parents seeking suggestions for training their mathematically talented child, junior scientists who plan to repatriate and want ‘insider’ information, and students with questions about her work. Jayaraj and Dogra are experimenting with different formats, including photo stories, cartoons and podcasts. “We see The Life of Science not really as an entity or ‘our’ project,” the two say, “but what it stands for — and that is the voices of women in science.”    

Illustration by Michelle Thompson; Photos: Getty, Shutterstock A push to reverse its brain drain is providing the expertise to tackle its domestic problems. When Anil Koul told his friends that he would be moving to India to start working at a government research and development organization, most of the reactions were of disbelief, “even sympathy”, he says. “Some thought it was a crazy idea — moving from the world’s largest health-care giant to a governmental, bureaucratic set-up.” Koul took charge of the Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH), in the northern city of Chandigarh, in 2016, relocating from Johnson & Johnson in Belgium, where he was senior director and head of the respiratory diseases group. The move to IMTECH — a branch of India’s government-run Council of Scientific and Industrial Research — was atypical. Few scientists return to India after holding top positions abroad, and fewer still move into the less-lucrative public sector. The scientific landscape that Koul has returned to is vastly different from the one he left in 1998. India is now actively participating in and, in some cases, leading advances in pharmaceuticals, agriculture and energy. The country’s efforts in space exploration are a point of particular national pride. India is preparing for its second Moon mission in 2018 after a successful maiden Mars mission in 2014, and is spreading its wings in international astronomy collaborations. The country will host the third laboratory of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) project in Hingoli, while the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics in Pune is working on the design of the ‘Telescope Manager’ — the central command system of the Square Kilometer Array. These could be signs that India is enjoying ‘brain gain’ — Indian researchers are returning to their country of birth with newly minted research skills gained while abroad. This is a far cry from the state of the country’s scientific sector 40 years ago, when entire cohorts of graduates from India’s research institutes left for US institutions in search of better economic and educational opportunities. “We are now in an era of globalization and international cooperation,” says immunologist Indira Nath, a member of the Indian National Science Academy. “Scientists going abroad is no longer a big issue.” To-do list But India still faces significant challenges. It is home to one-quarter of the world’s tuberculosis (TB) cases, and continues to be ravaged by mosquito-borne infections including malaria and dengue fever. Around 700 million Indians (56% of the country’s population) have no sanitation, 240 million have no access to electricity and 97 million lack clean drinking water. Natural disasters such as droughts, floods and storms — already common across Southeast Asia — are set to increase in frequency and ferocity as the world’s climate changes. It falls on publicly funded research to take the lead in finding solutions. Since India gained independence from British rule 70 years ago, every prime minister has emphasized the role of science in the country’s development. The current incumbent, Narendra Modi, told a meeting of leading Indian science officials in July that science, technology and innovation are the keys to the progress and prosperity of India and that the government aims to apply science to solve the country’s problems. As various policy initiatives make clear, India is betting on science to address its pressing challenges in energy, environmental protection, food, water, sanitation, health care and unemployment. To achieve this, the government is hoping to find more scientists like Koul, who sees his role as an “opportunity to address bigger social as well as scientific challenges”. This is a tall order, and there’s an elephant in the room. Government funding for Indian research and development has stagnated at around 0.85% of gross domestic product for more than a decade, compared with at least 3% invested by technologically advanced nations such as Denmark, Japan and Sweden. Koul is nonetheless optimistic, and has helped to forge a collaboration between IMTECH and Johnson & Johnson, announced in August. They will work in parallel on four new molecules as potential drug targets and explore shorter, safer and more-effective oral treatment regimens for various strains of TB. Biopharma strides Koul’s collaboration is well placed to take advantage of the success of India’s pharmaceutical industry. Building on the solid foundations of the country’s expertise in academic chemistry, major pharmaceutical companies have set up factories to make affordable generic antibiotics, vaccines, and diabetes and HIV medicines. This strength is paying dividends. According to Hyderabad-based Sathguru Management Consultants, India’s pharmaceutical industry was worth US$18.8 billion in 2010 and $41.1 billion in 2017, and is expected to expand to an estimated $72.4 billion in 2022. One-fifth of the world’s generic drugs are made in India, and around half of this manufacturing is based in Hyderabad. The production of generics has certainly helped the sector, but many people hope to see the country grow beyond manufacturing. “We now need to be recognized for new drugs that address unmet medical needs,” says Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, managing director of biopharmaceutical company Biocon in Bangalore. The firm’s growing pipeline of biologics ranges from oral insulin for diabetes to monoclonal antibodies for use in cancer therapy. “There is incredible potential within India to become a powerhouse driving biopharma innovation in the Asian market,” says Vaz Narasimhan, himself a second-generation Indian American and chief executive of Novartis, a pharmaceutical company in Basel. The biopharma industry is increasingly looking for new types of talent, says Narasimhan. He gives the example of data analysts and mathematicians who he says are driving the next wave of medical innovation. Meenakshi Diwan works on a solar panel in India’s Odisha state in 2009 — then part of a burgeoning solar grid with a capacity of less than 10 MW. Now, India has a solar capacity of more than 6,000 MW.Credit: Abbie Trayler-Smith/PANOS Narasimhan’s confidence in Indian pharmaceutical development is significant. Most pharma companies have been reluctant to take on costly research and development to combat ‘poor-man’s diseases’ such as malaria and TB, says Soumya Swaminathan, one of India’s leading experts on TB. Swaminathan was appointed deputy director-general for programmes at the World Health Organization in October. She has led an effort to consolidate India’s fragmented TB research, previously supported by four separate institutions, under one umbrella organization — the IndiaTB Research Consortium. “These diseases are our problem,” she says. “And it is pointless expecting Western pharma companies to be interested in them.” When asked, Indian pharmaceutical companies say they are reluctant to take up research in these areas, citing a lack of government funding for early-stage research, and reams of red tape once a product reaches clinical trials. Pollution pains In April, a collaboration between researchers in Germany and Anil Dayakar, an environmental activist in India, reported that Hyderabad’s pharmaceutical manufacturing was polluting the region’s water system to an “unprecedented” degree, and hurrying the development of drug-resistant forms of bacteria (C. Lübbert et al. Infection 45, 479–491; 2017). The researchers suggested that more regulation was needed to prevent further pollution in the region. The pharmaceutical industry in India is not the only source of contamination — pollution is common to many of the country’s cities, and India’s capital, New Delhi, spends its winters wrapped in smog. Krishna Ganesh, director of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Tiruptai, hopes that science can help. “The focus in chemistry is now shifting into areas that involve green and sustainable chemistry,” he says. Research topics include non-toxic chemicals, environmentally benign solvents, organic production and renewable materials. “The main aim should be to get rid of toxic chemicals produced in industrial manufacturing,” and to prevent gases escaping into the atmosphere, he says. Nanotech hopes India’s strength in chemistry has aided its effort to become a leader in the interdisciplinary field of nanotechnology. It’s an especially tempting area of research because there’s a deep vein of funding to mine, says Kizhaeral Subramanian, a researcher in the department of nanoscience and technology at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore. “Global funding for nanotech had increased from $1 billion in 2000 to $2 trillion in 2016,” he explains. On top of that, Subramanian says that the country has a strong talent pool to draw from owing to the proliferation of nanotechnology degree programmes across the country. From a developmental perspective, the field is a sensible focus as well. As India’s population swells further, the demand for food and clean water is rising. “Nanomaterials can help in water cleansing from bacterial and metal contaminants,” says Ganesh, and nanomaterials may also be able to help with crop protection. For example, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University is researching the production of non-toxic herbicides and fertilizers, as well as emulsions and films that improve the shelf life of fruits and vegetables. Energy dark holes Of India’s 1.3 billion citizens, almost 20% still lack electricity. To help combat this, the country has launched an ambitious renewable-energy plan, broadly focused on solar and wind power. Overall, the country hopes to produce 175 gigawatts from renewable energy sources by 2022 — meeting around 20% of the country’s predicted electricity demand. According to Tata Narasinga Rao, associate director of the International Advanced Research Centre for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials in Hyderabad, India enjoys between 250 and 300 clear sunny days each year — ideal for solar technologies. The energy plan is helped by cheap land, a vast pool of talent to draw from and enthusiastic government support and infrastructure, says Rao. In a review published this year, the International Renewable Energy Agency lists India among the six countries — with Brazil, China, Germany, Japan and the United States — that accounted for most of the renewable-energy jobs in 2016. One research programme, the Solar Energy Research Institute for India and the United States, brings together the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Denver, Colorado, to accelerate the development of solar electric technologies by lowering the cost of production. As part of this venture, scientists developed a new nanotechnological solar absorption system in 2015. The prototype, Rao says, costs half as much as the non-vacuum tubes currently used in solar collectors worldwide and have enormous potential for industry. There are local quirks to take into account before any company starts cashing in on a solar goldmine. Manufacturers still haven’t worked out what to do about monkeys and rats, which relentlessly and indiscriminately chew telephone, electrical and fibre-optic cables across the subcontinent. Meanwhile, Indian researchers are using crop residues, normally burnt as waste by farmers, to develop advanced biofuel systems and products such as biogas and biomaterials. “India’s strong knowledge base in biotechnology, chemistry, engineering and process engineering can be tapped to do research in the biofuel sector,” says Ahmad Kamal, a chemist at the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology in Hyderabad. Calling young scientists back To achieve its grand ambitions, India needs to nurture its new-found brain gain, and is fighting to make itself as attractive as possible through the Department of Science and Technology (DST), one of India’s largest research-funding agencies. In June, for example, the DST announced endowments of $10,000 a month for researchers who choose to move to India from labs overseas. Lipi Thukral, a computational biologist at the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi, thinks that the Indian research sector has been unfairly stereotyped abroad. “It is a myth that Indian salaries for scientists are low. They are very good when one factors in the purchasing power of the rupee,” she says. “One can do great science here, too.” Thukral uses high-performance computers to study the movement of biological structures and to model protein folding. After a PhD in Germany, and a postdoc in the UK, she returned to India in 2012 under another DST scheme. Shalini Gupta, a chemical engineer at the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, returned to India in 2009 after earning a PhD in chemical and biomolecular engineering from North Carolina State University, in Raleigh, and a postdoc from Imperial College London. Gupta’s team is working on cheap, portable medical tools to rapidly diagnose sepsis, a serious complication of many bacterial infections. For her, India makes the perfect laboratory. “We have the advantage of having ready access to patients, samples and field trials.” Meanwhile, the Indian government plans to develop 20 existing universities into ‘world class’ research institutions with an incentive of $1.54 billion of funding. Policymakers hope this will free the country’s best universities from reliance on the country’s grant commission and associated red tape, and encourage greater institutional autonomy. “There are always challenges in working in a third-world country, but India’s role in the development of next-generation technology cannot be ignored, especially in the fields of pharmaceuticals, agriculture, energy and environment,” says Gupta. “If you are situated close to a problem, you have a bigger advantage in terms of solving it.” Nature 552, S41-S43 (2017) doi: 10.1038/d41586-017-07771-y

Farah Ishtiaq shares her experience on how age and success are linked in acquiring faculty positions in India India has recently been portrayed as a land of abundant opportunity in academia, investing seriously in research and development to attract skilled scientists. The government has introduced several attractive funding opportunities, with the aim of bringing back scientists working abroad to establish a long-term career here, and improving the overall research infrastructure. Wellcome Trust/DBT India Alliance (WT/DBT) fellowships, for example, have no age or nationality restrictions, relying on qualifications, research experience, career trajectory and the candidate’s determination to establish their own independent research. The WT/DBT India alliance was initiated to develop a large cohort of internationally competitive researchers and help in developing scientific excellence and leadership; a model recently adopted and launched by the Alliance for Accelerating Excellence in Science in Africa (AESA) as well. Since Africa shares a similar burden of healthcare with India, as well as many workplace challenges, Indian scientists are perceived as key collaborators in this mission. There’s a problem here though: age limits on academic positions. Prospective candidates for assistant professor posts in India are preferred by academic institutions to be younger than 35. Although funding bodies are not hiring agencies, the age limit imposed on faculty positions by academic institutions sabotages the driving principle behind these new funding opportunities — the current system is unable to absorb enough competent, experienced scientists. The dilemma for early-career researchers is serious; many fellows are facing this harsh reality and an uncertain future. Every research position has a maximum age limit in India; from a junior research fellow (JRF), with a cut off at 28 years old, to postdoctoral researchers where it is 35 (or 40 years for women). These limits put the Indian academic landscape in stark contrast with many other countries that also follow a tenure-track system. Overall, this makes India a viable option and destination only for scientists of a selected age class. And it certainly gets more complicated for women who want to pursue a career in science and raise a family, with very little allowance made for taking time out for such. I am now in my 40s, which prevents me from being offered an entry-level faculty position. I am also a recipient of a WT/DBT India Alliance fellowship. My funding allowed me to establish an independent laboratory to study the ecology and evolution of emerging infectious diseases in wild bird populations, but despite this incredible research opportunity, I feel my career clock is ticking faster than ever. Getting funding to do science is no longer a problem, but academic policies that prevent competent scientists becoming established are preventing me from succeeding. I feel redundant — surely the quality of my science should be the focus rather than my age? What I would have done differently Hopefully, this should give others like me some insight into avoiding some of the mistakes I made. First, I should have found a trustworthy mentor who could have helped me to navigate my career path. Never put all your eggs in one basket. I should have pitched my grant idea to multiple host institutions to maximise my likelihood of finding an institution that would guarantee a more permanent position by this stage. Do your homework in understanding the system and host academic institution. Even though I deferred my fellowship for a year as my daughter was too little to be left in a crèche, I realise I should have used that time to negotiate or better understand the policy or the institute’s vision for a research fellow like me. Many academic institutions have no guidelines on the role, involvement and career development of academic fellows.   Many academics fail to understand the role and potential of fellows like me and often consider them just as an extended postdoc — not as a long-term prospect or potential collaborator. Hence, I did not get enough of an opportunity to teach and to mentor PhD students. Having my own PhD students would have bolstered my career at this stage, and allowed me to evolve as a mentor. Local advice & mindset I’ve received various pieces of advice for improving my faculty application and to enhance my chances of a secure job — this was to publish my current research: i) without foreign authors; and ii) as senior or first author in more prestigious journals such as Science, Nature or PNAS. Whilst the first is possible, the second is easier said than done. Apparently, that was the only thing my CV was missing — a clearer demonstration of my calibre and merit as an independent researcher. Interestingly, for established faculty struggling to earn tenure in India, the culture emphasises quantity of publications rather than quality. And, whilst the second piece of advice (primarily from engineers, cell or molecular biologists) is sound, what was missing was perspective on research in the field of ecology — collecting and publishing groundbreaking ecology data in top journals can take years longer than other disciplines. The journals I have been publishing in are not familiar to some of the members of recruitment panels I’ve met with. I have even been asked if ‘Ibis’ and ‘Parasites & Vectors’ were proper journals. Should India be a role model for developing nations? We are struggling to keep our skilled workers, despite the spending per researcher being equivalent to a developed nation like the UK. I hope other developing countries don’t replicate the above policies, as they certainly don’t help to address some of the major longer-term developmental challenges, including a shortage of researchers. In India, with only 200,000 full time researchers (and only 14% of them women) from a population of 1.3 billion, new research institutes currently being developed end up short of skilled workers and blinkered to new research areas. This all said, I am still very excited. I have a competitive edge and enthusiasm for research where I can play a leading role in high-quality research. Perhaps, it’s time to explore science career options elsewhere, maybe in Africa, and hope no one will question my age?

Open data can help us avoid inherent biases in our work, says Ayushi Sood Better Science through Better Data writing competition winner Ayushi Sood   Recently, an economist friend told me that “scientific inquiry is inherently cursed.” At first I was offended. But I had to agree after he elaborated further – science today suffers from something economists enigmatically call the “winner’s curse”. The first scientific journals were print editions — something akin to a printed memo — circulated among researchers to update them of the findings of others in the field. To submit a paper for publication, only the observations required to prove results needed to be included in a manuscript, and rightly so: if every paper included every shred of data, journals would run into thousands of pages. This means, though, that what was communicated to the scientific community was only a fraction of what could have been communicated: only the observations that were ‘winners’ – the ones which best supported a result – would be presented, and the others would be effectively relegated to obscurity. Although we’re not limited by paper and page counts today, the same pattern of data use continues. This leads us to the problem of the winner’s curse: by the process of selection, the ‘winning’ observation oversells itself. In economics, the winner’s curse refers to situations in auctions where the winner tends to overpay, because the actual value of the product is the average of the bids, not the highest bid. In scientific research, the curse takes hold in scientists who aim for publication in the most selective journals, with the most impressive results being favored. This ignores all the other results — the ones which weren’t so impressive — while giving disproportionate importance to the ‘winning result’. The problem with this phenomenon isn’t immediately evident — isn’t the result what actually matters? The data is, after all, just a tool, necessary only to prove what’s important — the conclusion. In looking for conclusions in data, however, researchers can forget to ask: “does the conclusion effectively justify my repeated sampling of the real world?” In other words, is reality accurately reflected by the dataset presented? All the observations we take, whether they are inconclusive, negative, or ‘winners’, represent an analysis of the natural world. By only reporting the ones that work, the other sampling efforts cannot be used by anyone else. This process confers on a small, selected number of observations the authority to predict an unpredictable future! Back in the auction house, this would mean the value of the product is set only by the winning bid. When we report only the best set of data, we are relegating the less impressive observations to obscurity, even though these also represent an analysis of the real world, with real potential to inform. So what does this mean for us? How should scientists avoid falling into the trap of the winner’s curse? One way would be to save, store and share all data — not just positive results. We are only human. By making our data openly accessible, we can avoid internal inconsistencies. The smallest of mistakes would be corrected by fresh eyes poring over the very same data. More importantly, open data could prove to be a shot in the arm for scientific inquiry as a whole. What data I find important may be perfect for my study, yet a small cluster of ignored numbers in my dataset could lead to a breakthrough for someone else, possibly in a way that I could never have imagined! Gene expression data in cancer cells could provide insights into cell signaling pathways in neurodegenerative disorders. Algal bloom observations in polluted lakes could help in effective biomass production for algal biofuel. The analysis and application of open data could usher in a new age of scientific connectivity, with the available knowledge transcending traditional discipline boundaries in way never seen before. Well, if it’s so good, why hasn’t open data been the norm since science began? We come back to the thousand-page journal here — the question wasn’t of why not, but of how. Transmitting every single byte of data through papers and talks was impossible before the advent of computers and the emergence of the internet in the 1990s. In 2017, however, we have the tools at our disposal to store, parse, organize and retrieve every single digit. The burgeoning field of data science and analysis is ours to exploit, just waiting to script the next scientific success story. So, I have to hand it to the economists on this one — the winner’s curse is alive and kicking in science. But, like any good scientist, I’m thinking of solutions, and every clue suggests that open data, accessibility and collaboration could be just the spell that breaks this curse. Ayushi Sood is an undergraduate microbiology student at Amity University, India. Her interest in what makes life tick made her fall in love with bacteria and astrobiology, and her passion for making scientific research more efficient and accessible led her to explore bioinformatics. She has been a part of research projects investigating nanoparticle-plant interactions, transgenic algae, and bacteria-algae associations.  Ayushi enjoys dance, writing, and functional DIY craft. You can follow her work on Bitesize Bio and connect with her on LinkedInor Facebook. 

By bringing together experts from different disciplines we can find the solutions for today’s global challenges. Having spent a year in a multidisciplinary research group, Mit Bhavsar shares his thoughts on the advantages and disadvantages of multidisciplinary research in science. The increasing popularity of mixed scientific disciplines like mechatronics, bioinformatics, biomedical engineering and biophysical chemistry is evidence of the importance of multidisciplinary. And, based on the number of multidisciplinary conferences taking place around the world, it seems that many policymakers agree that bringing scientists from a variety of different backgrounds together is a crucial part of fixing the world’s problems. Going multidisciplinary does not mean leaving behind your own skills — it means heading in new scientific directions using your own specialties. I completed a neurophysiology PhD in a monodisciplinary research group. Now, I’m working as a postdoc in a multidisciplinary research group in the field of regenerative medicine. Here are my perceived advantages and challenges. Advantages One problem I’ve found with a monodisciplinary research group is a lack of creativity when it comes to working out what kind of work can be done. A multidisciplinary group can combine the expertise of your field with other fields and create a varied team. Such combination can lead to creative and high impact research. For example, my lab is working on tissue regeneration and repair through electrical stimuli. For such kind of research, one often needs expertise in the field of medicine and electrical engineering. For me, the most attractive part of multidisciplinary research is that you can work on projects that involve more than one discipline of science. This meant honing my existing skills and learning a whole lot more from scientists I’d never previously had a chance to interact with. As well as that, because I’m the only expert in my field in my group, I can work independently to address problems when they come up. Multidisciplinary research also leads to unusual scientific inventions. A lot of great science has come from the robust interactions of researchers from different fields. A good example of this is the discovery of “Magnetic resonance imaging” by Paul Lauterbur (a chemist) and Peter Mansfield (a physicist) — for this they were awarded the 2003 Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine. An independent researcher designing and conducting their own separate experiments would never have had these opportunities. Challenges One of the common challenges of working in a multidisciplinary research group is a lack of a “common language.” It’s hard to find a way to start working on a problem when everyone has been trained to approach it from different directions. For me, this makes it difficult to discuss ideas with team members and get the right feedback. This problem feeds into feeling of loneliness — I’m surrounded by lab mates but I’m the only one working on this particular problem in this particular direction in my lab. Another issue: there is no meaningful criticism and evaluation of your work. Your ideas and suggestions are either accepted without any questions or they will be rejected without constructive criticism. If you can deal with these challenges, it can be very rewarding to do multidisciplinary science. To facilitate multidisciplinary research, universities and research institutes should encourage interaction between different disciplines where scientists can meet, share ideas and discuss problems.   Mit Bhavsar is a researcher living and working at Frankfurt Initiative for Regenerative Medicine (FIRM) Frankfurt, Germany. You can contact him on: mbhavsa@gwdg.de