Back to paperwork!

One of the things people may not realise about what scientists do is the hours of paperwork! Having just spent lots of time in the lab working on COVID19, I am keen to get back to my cancer research. But the past few weeks have been an unrelenting paperchase. Papers and grants to review, graduate student reports to review and correct, and on top of that I am supposed to be writing a grant application and writing up 3 papers to publish (these are long overdue!). I have spent a long time learning to be good lab scientist. So has (almost) everyone else who have made it to "group leader" level. Something seems wrong to me. We train people to be proficient in the lab, and then at a certain point in your career, the only way to progress is to spend your time sitting in front of your PC writing. Do we need to rethink the structure of scientific careers, I wonder? This could very easily turn into a rant about the transient nature of employment in science. I know several scientists who move from temporary contract to temporary contract into the 40s. Its true that temporary contracts allow you to move to different labs and get different experience, but something is wrong when you have so little security. But I am not going to turn this into rant. I am getting back to the paperwork, so I can clear it off my desk and eventually get back to the lab.