The system is broken
Not just from the outside attacks. Yes, the anti-science rhetoric is real. Yes, the coordinated assaults on academic institutions and research funding are dangerous. But those attacks only worked because the rot was already here, eating away from the inside.
I hear it in every conversation with clients. Every single one.
"I need to submit this grant even though it's not ready.""It's not my best work, but I have to get something in.""My department says I need more submissions."
This isn't science.
This is survival theater.
When did we become grant-submission machines? When did the metric become how many half-baked ideas you can shove out the door? When did we stop caring about the actual science?
The joy dies first. Then the quality. Then the meaning. What's left is a hollow game of CV padding and ego points. Scientists pretending to do science while actually just feeding a bureaucracy that stopped truly caring about discovery years ago.
And we did this to ourselves, before any politician pointed a finger at us.
The people who built this broken system can't fix it. They won't fix it. They're too deep in it, too habituated to the dysfunction.
And they're on the way out. The Baby Boomers are already heading for the exits. Gen X never had the numbers to change anything anyway.
Which leaves you.
Millennials. Gen Z. You're inheriting this mess whether you want it or not.
The wrecking ball from the outside isn't done swinging. We both know that. But wrecking balls eventually stop. They have to. And when the dust settles, someone has to build.
That someone is you.
This should be depressing. A burned field. A gutted system. Your inheritance is rubble.
But rubble is just material waiting to become something else.
Every time you resist the pressure to submit garbage. Every time you choose quality over quantity. Every time you say "this isn't good enough yet," you're laying the foundation for what comes next.
Because there will be a rebuild. There always is.
The question isn't whether science will continue. It's what kind of science it will be.
Will you recreate the same panicked, metric-obsessed system that's failing right now? Or will you build something that actually serves discovery? Where funding follows vision, not volume. Where scientists can be scientists again, not grant-writing machines.
The habits you set now - in this messy, uncertain moment - these are the blueprints for whatever comes next.
You think you don't have power because you're junior? Because you're not tenured? Because you're still figuring it out?
Wrong.
You have the only power that matters: You're going to outlast everyone who created this mess. You're going to be here when the rebuilding starts. You're going to be the ones holding the tools.
So stop waiting for permission. Stop hoping someone else will fix it. Stop acting like the broken system is the only system possible.
Start now. Choose quality. Choose the long game. Choose science that matters.
Not because someone told you to. Because in ten years, fifteen years, when you're running the labs and the departments and the funding agencies, you'll either be perpetuating the same broken games or you'll have already started building something better.
The system is broken.
Good.
Now you get to build the next one.
