One issue I ran into personally is incremental vs fundamental research. In the drive to get publications, which provides evidence of production so you can get grants, better jobs, more money, better publications in higher journals-- the quest for all that leads to very small steps in research. There are proportionally far fewer biologists than there used to be working on fundamental, big picture type work. One counterpoint may be that the low hanging fruit has been picked. However, I feel it's also a cultural problem. To do well, so many of us biologists get caught in the incrementalism loop rather than thinking bigger.
