Brian Keating

“Battle is an apt metaphor for what we scientists do. There is a fierce competition that begins the day you declare yourself a physics major. First, among your fellow undergraduates, you spar for top ranking in your class. This leads to the next battle: becoming a graduate student at a top school. Then, you toil for six to eight years to earn a postdoc job at another top school. And finally, you hope, comes a coveted faculty job, which can become permanent if you are privileged enough to get tenure. Along the way, the number of peers in your group diminishes by a factor of ten at each stage, from hundreds of undergraduates to just one faculty job becoming available every few years in your field.”
― Brian Keating, Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science's Highest Honor

“In an ideal world, scientists could practice their craft without regard to politics. But in reality, big science takes big bucks. No university can support the large, experimental projects that are required to detect new forces and new particles. Only federal agencies like the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation have the resources. Sadly, federal funding for science has been in decline; it is at its lowest level since Eisenhower was president.”
― Brian Keating, Losing the Nobel Prize: A Story of Cosmology, Ambition, and the Perils of Science's Highest Honor