[gtmitchell]

I immediately Ctrl-F'd for 'funding'. There's your problem right there. If there's no money to support graduate students, you're never going to get enough researchers to replace the ones you have.

Additionally, graduate students tend to avoid selecting research areas they dislike or find disgusting. The most disturbing presentation I've ever watched was a slideshow given by a parasitologist in which I saw worms in parts of the human body I never imagined it possible for worms to be in. No wonder students aren't lining up to spend years of their life working with them.

[thaumasiotes]

> The most disturbing presentation I've ever watched was a slideshow given by a parasitologist in which I saw worms in parts of the human body I never imagined it possible for worms to be in.

I read an essay once by someone who intentionally incubated some kind of fly in himself, and wrote that, after all the effort of being infected and incubating the fly, it chose to emerge while he was at a baseball game, where, he lamented, it was immediately killed by horrified fans over his protests.

The fans were clearly in the right.

[matheusmoreira]

Parasites are neglected tropical diseases. That's an euphemism for "third world shithole problems". These things aren't much studied because there is no actual need to study them. They are solved by civilization.

Developed nations solved parasites naturally as they developed. Infrastructure, basic sanitation, standards for food production... All of these things interrupt the natural fecal-oral lifecycle of parasites, solving the problem.

Naturally, developing nations are terrible at all of those things. To put it mildly. And thus parasites are endemic. They are literally every day things. It's actually kind of surreal.

It doesn't matter how much funding people put into parasitology, it doesn't change the fact the true solution is to develop the nation into a proper civilization.

[082349872349872]

During the most disturbing* presentation I ever watched, the simultaneous translation went dead for a good 15-20 seconds; I assumed the translators had muted their mikes to cover the dry heaves?

* one could always spot the reconstructive surgeons at these conferences; they were the ones who could wander around the poster session, all while calmly nibbling away at their hors d'oeuvres.

[nemo44x]

The best way to get funding is for your idea to either have economic potential or to be politically useful. Both of those outcomes generate power. Ideas that don't generate power go to the back of the line when it comes to funding.