Joseph F. Clark, Ph.D.

I have the greatest respect and admiration for the NIH but they are missing something.

Greg Friese interview; My Ambulance Education. Recently I was interviewed by Greg Friese concerning My Ambulance Education and it was great fun. Greg had graciously supplied me with some sample questions he would start with and that helped break the ice. We talked about the general contents of the book and why I wrote it. [...]

Everyone has a personality, but what people outside of education may not fully realize is that when you put a group of people together they form their own personality. This personality is clearly seen in classes that meet regularly over the school year. It never takes long for the class’ personality to come through after [...]

I’m currently working on a fairly large grant application for a company. The company wants me to do research on a subject on which I am very comfortable and knowledgeable. The process of writing and securing a research agreement with a company is much different than with the NIH, NSF or most charitable foundations. I [...]

OK, so I went back and looked at some of the blogs I posted over the past few months. It became fairly obvious to me that I have focused on the difficulties and battles that dominate my life as a college professor and full time researcher. Unfortunately I have failed to highlight the numerous positive [...]

A well trained scientist with a Ph.D. or similar advanced degree and research experience has been trained to identify a problem, formulate a hypothesis, which is an interrogation of said problem, test the hypothesis and learn from the observations. This process requires open minded thought through and around complicated subjects and to understand cause and [...]

Patients who donate their bodies to science and/or agree to participate in clinical trials are my heroes. I say that with the conviction of a scientist who has directly benefited from their benevolence. To do the research that I do on stroke I have collected hundreds of litres of human Cerebral Spinal Fluid (CSF) from [...]

In science ideas are like a currency and often better than money. A scientist is only as valuable as their NEXT idea. Yes, I said next idea. Once the idea is made public it is no longer novel and loses value. If the idea is not patented it can be taken by anyone and changed [...]

We are in the midst of a lost generation of graduate students. Grad students take 4-7 years to get a degree, but with 4 years of flat funding and now challenge grants’ funding being 1 in 100 there is a perception of no future in science by those students. No one wants to spend their [...]

I was attending a scientific conference recently which consisted of a series of short talks given by renowned scientists. The session was organized by a leading scientist in the field who invited the speakers and directed them to cover the key scientific subjects of the field to form a theme in the session. According to [...]