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Is true innovation a career killer in the sciences today?

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Probably, by definition. So thinks Roberta B. Ness, veep for innovation at the University of Texas Health Science Center:

How have you come to recognize that a lot of young scientists are getting the message that true innovation is a career killer?

This is very personal. I have been working on questions of innovation for the last half-dozen years. My most recent book, The Creativity Crisis, is the fourth book in a series on innovation. My first book, Innovation Generation, was really about how to teach people a systematic method to think very differently, very radically, very innovatively. I’ve been happy to say that most of the major American universities have invited me to come out and give a talk about this. In many of those conversations, at the end of the question and answer period, a young person would raise their hand from the back of the room, get up, and say, “Dr. Ness, this was inspirational and I would love to be able to do this and think this way and work this way. But if I did it would destroy my career. I would never be able to get funded.” More.

Good thing if none of the students  ever suggested they doubted Darwin or some crackpot ecology claim or something.

Kid, keep that to yourself and die another day,

The whole thing is worth reading. Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose

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