To be or not to be a scientist

After being in the business (ie, conducting scientific research) for long enough time, I started to think maybe I should do something else. I have had the thought since 2007. It all started from experiencing a hard time to get my ideas accepted by my peers. I wouldn’t give a damn (pardon my language) if my ideas got accepted or not if it weren’t for the fact that our career status critically depends on the number of publications and grants. It has become increasing annoying to see crappy papers get published while I have to work extra hard to get my ideas/work accepted published. It is also getting annoying that I have to educate my peers on some of the subjects that they should be familiar with. It is even annoying to find errors in the publications, and I have to ask myself why reviewers did not pick them up on these mistakes. Some mistakes are very obvious. I used to write short papers and tried to be succinct, but have been forced to elaborate on things that I thought my peers would surely know.

Now I just think the whole peer review process is nothing more than a joke. The journal ranking is also laughable. I think I should do something other than science. Doing scientific research is hard but supposedly fun as well. Now I just feel a bit sick of the mentality of the scientific community. Scientists are merely a bunch of close-minded people with a subjective view and they think their views are always in the right. Most of them don’t even dare to think outside the box. Scientists are supposed to be open-minded with an objective view. I’m simply disappointed in my peers and wonder if I should do something else that is easier to get satisfaction.