The organization of scientists and its relation to scientific productivity: Perceptions of Chinese stem cell researchers
The organization of scientists and its relation to scientific productivity: Perceptions of Chinese stem cell researchers
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科学家的组织及其与科学生产力的关系：中国干细胞研究人员的看法
作者：
Joy Y. Zhang
中国政府对研发的投入位居世界第三。然而，就单位投资的科学生产力而言，中国仅排名第17位。笔者近期对中国22个干细胞研究小组的团队结构进行了实地考察。访谈数据表明，尽管中国研究团队在许多方面与国际同行非常相似，但受访者认为也存在影响科学生产力水平的显着差异。中国科研团队的一大特点是中层岗位普遍缺乏。参与这项研究的科学家认为，经验丰富的专业人员的短缺导致了两个后果。首先，缺乏经验的学生研究人员往往构成中国科研团队的骨干，这导致研究频繁中断和实验室培训时间延长。其次，研究团队的人员数量相对较少。这些结构特征被认为造成了过度的社会界限，阻碍了信息交流并进一步加剧了资源分割。本文探讨了受访者对这些困难的本地“嵌入”理解在多大程度上可以对中国专业生物科学团队的结构和基础设施组织的分析做出富有成效的贡献的问题。
Chinese government funding of R&D ranks third in the world. Yet China ranks only 17th in terms of scientific productivity per unit of investment. The author recently conducted fieldwork on the team structure of 22 Chinese stem cell research groups. Interview data suggest that although Chinese research groups closely resemble their international counterparts in many respects, there are also significant differences which are perceived by interviewees to affect levels of scientific productivity. One characteristic of Chinese research teams is a common deficiency in middle-layer positions. This shortage of experienced professionals is perceived by scientists participating in this study to have led to two consequences. First, inexperienced student researchers often form the backbone of scientific teams in China, which leads to frequent interruptions of research and extended laboratory training. Second, research teams consist of a relatively small number of personnel. These structural features are seen to create excessive social boundaries, which impede the exchange of information and further worsens the segmentation of resources. This article engages the question of the extent to which interviewees’ local ‘embedded’ understandings of these difficulties may make a productive contribution to the analysis of the structural, and infra-structural, organization of Chinese professional bioscience teams.