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How to find meaning in your science career: six expert tips

Philosophers, social scientists and a Nobel-prizewinning economist on how researchers can get satisfaction from their work — and make a difference to the world.
  1. Helen Pearson
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A glaciologist and climate change scientist photographs inside a moulin, an ice cave, Skaftafell glacier, Vatnajokull National Park. Iceland.

Climate-change research could help to solve one of the world’s most pressing problems. Credit: Eric Kruszewski/Design Pics Editorial/UIG/Getty

Syahirah Abdul Rahman spent five years pursuing fundamental research for her business PhD. She published her work on Malaysia’s financial markets in a leading journal. But her discovery that “only six people read it” — according to the handful of citations her paper accrued — prompted a career change. She realized that she wanted her work to be more immediately practical, and now studies the factors that help research to have a social or economic impact, at Oxford Brookes Business School in Oxford, UK.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00476-z

References

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