[data_acquired]

People’s careers are being involuntarily set back already for reasons more physical and real than the risk of being scooped.

I’ve been scooped. It sucks. The scooped paper doesn’t land in a big journal. It certainly knocked down the impact factor of the publication and my profile. The fraction of cases where a lack of a high impact paper held back a faculty applicant is likely low (see https://elifesciences.org/articles/54097 and similar surveys). I’ve absolutely seen folks land faculty positions without a crazy impact factor publication. And as you say, it’s really hard to tell if the lack of a high impact factor paper holds a particular applicant back (see other factors I listed) in a particular case. So the link between high impact publication and faculty position is tenuous, and thus the link between being scooped leading to no faculty position is questionable, which means the risk of being scooped isn’t as much of an issue compared to work conditions.

The point you raise about practically and effectiveness of a strike presupposes that a union exists. And it seems that your claim that a research institute cannot generate as much solidarity as a university is a matter of belief rather than evidence seen elsewhere that research institutes have less successful unions than universities. Unless you know of many examples of this kind.

[petsfed]

>People’s careers are being involuntarily set back already for reasons more physical and real than the risk of being scooped.

This bears repeating. I know of a fairly large number of people who left their public-sector research positions because of poor working conditions. I wonder if they measure that as better than having their careers hobbled by a strike-born scoop?