Everyone would agree with me that recently, science is doing so much good for the world and in the future, it is going to do more for us than it is doing for us today. Talk of cancer and other diseases which had no cure back then. Today, we are able to synthesise drugs for such patients very quickly and even if we aren’t able to synthesise a drug, something can be done to keep the going until their last days. This to me is a very great development.
However, they say everything that has a good part also has a bad part. I’ve been in the science field since I high school. I’ve studied science, conducted researched and worked on so many projects. And if there’s one thing I’ve noticed, it’s that researchers are very passionate about their research. Some may be too passionate to the extent of even using their research findings the wrong way.
During the days of Covid, a research Center I was working with was conducting a research on the Covid virus and so we had samples from all part of Ghana and neighbouring countries coming in on the daily basis. Then, it was a risk we were taking and that’s to the hard work of researchers and scientists, we were able to get a drug dosage for the virus. In all my years of research, I don’t think I’ve come across a bad scientist or a researcher who uses his finding for the wrong purposes. As much as research is great, there are measures put in place to keep everyone on track. And that’s why every researcher has reviewer of his project, mentors and other collaborators and colleagues working with them.
What I have come across (if it counts as using research the wrong way) is people who are higher in ranks in the field of science or research trying to steal the research of young and upcoming researchers. I’ve seen and of situations where mentors try to steal the work of their mentees for publication and honestly, when the victim speaks of their experience, no one believes them. It’s all starts with your mentor or supervisor telling you this your prefect or research can’t be published. Once you just, they then start finding petty mistakes in your work and it keeps going. If you’re not smart and don’t know your to play your cards right, you would end up being the bad person and probably even losing your research fund.
I’d like to believe this also happens in other fields and it shouldn’t be the reason why we won’t go in to what we want. The world is for us, let’s explore, do great thing and change the world into the place we wish for it to be.
