Personal

I personally consider it is unfortunate to write on differentiating between a scientist and a manager in a scientist position.

The values of science have fallen down to so low levels that it is almost taken for granted that a manager challenges saying that he can possibly get the same or even better results as any scientist can do, with his managerial skills. This is the confidence with which managers are proposing them selves and seems like they are becoming successful. 

So, what a manager in scientist position will do / can do  or is doing : 

• He will follow Dogbert's management techniques and makes a good utilization of resources around him
• He shows his accomplishments by creating a network of scientists calling these networks with flashy names
• He steals ideas from here and there and just dumps on his associates and other employees like post docs, PhDs, students etc so that they take the pain and risk. He is fine. He is able to brand himself with the Number game -
  
  • Number of publications per years , per month,
  • the number of post doctoral researchers under his belt,
  • the expanse of space he has for his lab etc. 
  • Convenes some regular yearly functions, meetings , conferences -
  • creates a flashy posters,
  • brands the university, the organization,
  • exchanges business cards, follows them up and
  • creates some collaborations 

Wow!! if this is science and this is expected of a scientist, hmmm...Give me a break for Gods sake !!! whats going on ?

Just think, where are his energies spent ? and how are his energies spent ? whats his passion ? what is driving him?

I would go ahead and call this as SMART slavery - nothing more. This is not science. He is either his own slave - ie. he wants to impress some one else or he wants impress his own ego - both are illusions deep down. 

According to me:  Focus is what differentiates a scientist from a Manager.

A manager is generally addicted and/or trained to use all resources available under his hood, optimally (really ?).

A scientist is different: He knows and is conscious of his resources, but he identifies and restricts on what resources are valuable for him to be focussed and get the problem solved. There is no objective for manager other than optimally utilizing the resources. This is a no brainer for an intellectual and it is not as important as a scientists objectives.There is definitely not as much stress as a scientist would undergo in exploring solutions for the problems he is engaged in. 

The conclusion is Scientists life is more complex and more energy intentensive than a manager for sure. It is easy for a scientist to downgrade himself to a mere Managerial attitude from a serious scientific endevor. This is possibly the most common reason why most of scientists are also behaving like managers. Why would they do that : 

1. Lack of Ideas: Idle mind is a devils workshop - these scientists most probably donot have ideas or problems for which they can propose a project and get money.
2. Frustration and Depression - After struggling hard for 20 years, a scientist's project is trashed just because he could not connect or interact well with a smiling face and display social behavior with the funder / funding agency. This is a huge depression. Take the easy way out - and that is - ACT, Be a Roman in Rome. - so is this correct?
3. The scientist is not in the good books of the funding agency or the reviewer committee.
4. The funding decisions are in the hands of managers whose goal is to minimize the expenditure and increase the profits - Does science, where parameters are unknown, really be driven that way ? come on!! The funding agencies donot want to take the extra mile of understanding the true nature of the project/ problem. They want to go the easy way - the diplomatic term used is: Rising the bar for the projects with introducing few more documents - which essentially boils down to Dogbert's Management tricks.  

A scientist should be introspective where he needs time to focus on understanding the problem. It is all because of his passion to solve the problem at hand. He is conscious of his limited energies and resources. He wants to focus on solving the problem rather doing the above totally unnecessary things. In todays branding, introspective attitude or less talkative or being focussed and serious are considered -VE. 

It is the focus which gives break throughs. To be focussed he behaves very frank, cranky,  to some extent arrogant, very disturbed, and generally misunderstood for his actions. He definitely doesnt have time for flashy life style. There is more complications to this. Once a scientists shows some value, he / she will be deliberately pushed into luxury so that the manager will have the switch and control of the scientist. Basically by showing capabilities, the scientists is dragged into a trap of illusion of luxury life style. He gets enslaved. Wow!! what a strategy to have control.

He is committed to his passion i.e problem solving. Scientific exploration is his life not survival.

The manager above - that scientific post is his survival. He wants to stick his guns to as much time as possible. Scientific break throughs doesnt immediately get the attention of the public , especially the administrators who have the key to the salaries and positions. To impress them, these scientist managers will strive to create news and create an image. However, image is still an image. But since most of the administrators again are managers, they enjoy this scientist managers' petty activities. Hence he makes sure they assure his survival.

Now think about the bigger picture. How long ? Whats happening to the Science? Where is the real progress ?

Science is NOT survival, Science is Life. only if that attitude is upheld, progress happens, else every thing is useless.

India is investing so much money on infrastructure development copying the US of A. I dont know why dont think? Why are they so blind? Why dont they ask the simplest question: Is this necessary ? Why dont they realize and remember that US of A is a country where the population is 1/4 th of India and Land is 4 times more. They can construct and dismantle the infrastructure whenever they want and whenever they need. They have that space and the population is easy to be controled with more rules/slavery.

Whats the use of billions of dollars of infrastructure investments if there is no scientist - a true scientist - to solve a problem. This will be the fate of the world in the next 10 years. Every position will be occupied by managers and there will never be innovation, there will never be a solution. The whole world moves into desperation and all leads to Predator-Prey relationship - More animal behavior than Human.

The world is on the downward trend in all aspects and especially science, since higher scientific positions are taken up by administrators who dont have a clue nor understand the scientist, the problems, the content, the approach. In essence the power is in the WRONG HANDS.

To my understanding 99% of todays education systems and scientific organizations have flashy managers, not genuine scientists with objectives and passion. 

Thats about today's managers taking the scientist positions or why scientists are turning to lower energy states, less risky states.

One day, out of the blue I was compelled to read about 30 minutes notes from a book called 'Dogbert's top secrete Management tricks'.

The first thought was " Hurray !! I am on the right direction of analysis". Why ? 

I always felt that managers are infilterating every domain where they are suitable and where they are not supposed to be. 

Later I did some research and realized that Scott Adams had written this as a satire. People totally forgot that it is a satire and they should learn to understand the satire in the satirical way. But the unfortunate fact is: The guys / girls have made it their bible for survival, their bible for success and their bible for acting.

This always influences the progress. 

Interesting that Scott Adams has observed society so carefully and put all that in a satire. Unfortunately instead of doing good, it will eventually bring down economies because ACTING is much easier than BEING ONE. Acting cannot provide solutions. If lucky some solutions may be prove beneficial but in the long run they will influence in an irrevocable way.

He starts with saying : Acting like manager - How true it is. People have literally taking his statement. They are acting like managers.

Acting is Illusion, some day it is bound to break. How much will be the damage depends on

• how much infestation has happened with the acting managers and
• how much of these managers have created their hieraracy of less  and lesser intellectual resources below them with muddle heads

which obviously means - long term loss of intelligence and failure of the system. This also will be the fate of the countries where Flash, entertainment and media glitter is the norm. The core - I doubt. 

Some Dogbert's rules are : 

• Management time fillers  - writing mission statements, renaming the department, it goes on
• Clothes make a leader - Wow!! is that really true - think about it - Oh!!it was a satire right !!
• Leaders do what their secretaries ask/schedule them to do
• Ways to avoid making decisions -
  
  • Act confused,
  • form a task force of people who are too busy to meet,
  • send employees to find more data,
  • loose documents sent for approval,
  • say you are waiting for some other manager to 'get upto the speed'

Think about these aspects when adapted in a serious science environment -

• the boss says - he never got the document
• the boss says - he is waiting for the collaborator to respond for heads up - truth is he never contacted
• the boss says - he asks for more data
• the boss says - he asks for more validation  

imagine where is the progress going - definitely to dogs.

thats it for now.