The essence of scientific research
“I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go.” — Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) (yet another of my Indy Jones’s quotes) In recent times (and in some countries more than in others), there is an increasing debate about what scientists do. The various challenges humankind faces, from global change, to sustainable food production or antimicrobial resistance, heed urgent solutions for which, a vast part of modern society agrees on, should be based on science. The urgency for scientist to get down to work and solve our ‘big’ issues, resonates with (some) research agencies and employers. It is not new to many of us, that via oriented research grant windows, we are drawn towards studying new issues or systems which match our interests with those of the funders. Needless to say, here, research needs funding (I say this because it seems to me that not all employers in the Global South are fully aware of this connection). However nowadays, we see a stronger pressure to purs