>>13637837>Wouldn't the writing required to record and publicize your findings and research for others take away the same amount of personal time you would have doing your own researchIf I'm understanding your question correctly, you're asking whether or not it's worth it given how much time you have to devote towards """others'""" research instead of your own? The answer depends on the field. You'd be hard-pressed to do any kind of meaningful research completely on your own in STEM fields. Equipment for experiments and software for theory is incredibly expensive, for example.
Furthermore, worthwhile research and publications are more or less synonymous. If your research is worth publishing, it means it's novel or useful. Conversely, if your research is novel or useful, it's publishable (and why wouldn't you want to publish it? Writing up your findings its part of the scientific process, otherwise you're just learning something for your own benefit).
>do lab positions restrict the freedom it would take away from its workers if they were required to cover every process of a scientific breakthrough that a team allows?I'm not sure I understand your question. The process of writing up your findings is pretty mandatory for useful/interesting research. But only about <10% of the day-to-day for me (as an experimental physics graduate student) is actually spent working on something that's publishable. A lot of it is debugging, designing parts, etc. But that's how research goes.
>Does it just take a special kind of person?I personally don't it takes a special kind of person to do a Ph.D., but it's definitely more demanding intellectually and emotionally than most people are willing to give.
