What a bitch, she really should have given up when she wanted to back off and only put in the standard work-week hours. She should have been a single purpose slave, toiling away long into the night, never ever enjoying the compensation she was given, nor had any human qualities beyond scientist. It's doubly atrocious that she thought somehow meritocracy meant having some recognition and lifestyle security come from proving that she could contribute.
Oh wait no...
What the hell is your problem douche? Do you seriously believe everyone should just work and do nothing else? I hope 2 things for when you die alone and forgotten: 1. that you were told by someone that your existence was futile because you wanted to work less than every waking moment, and 2. that you had the realization that there is more to life than constant work but that it came too late for you to change and you are weeping bitter tears of regret as you painfully draw your last useless breath.
If we have a finite number of publically-supported research labs, I would prefer they be operated by people having scientific discovery as the foremost priority in their lives. I don't believe there are so few of them that we need to make do with people trying to fit it in as a day job around the mundane things they prefer. (Actually there's a surplus of people with this calling compared to positions we fund, judging by PhDs' horror stories about finding work.)
Science is not a 9-5 job. It can't be viewed in the same light as an ordinary career. You literally must drown yourself in your work in order to push the limits of human knowledge just a little further. Only certain kinds of people are cut out for this.
This woman characterized a TF that acts as an oncoprotein. That's not insignificant. It probably took her more mental, repititious, laborious effort than most people output in their entire lives. That said, when you burn out it is time to let someone else carry the flame. We can't waste precious, finite research funding on people who can't give 120%.
And now that she's done, we should throw her by the wayside and abandon her, leaving her to slowly fade away instead of putting people in the situation to properly guide her to a new useful place in the world. I mean so what that she provided something huge that could have a pretty important impact beyond her salary. There is not a better way to go about it at all right?
Further we should just go ahead and let douchenozzles like yummyfajitas talk as if she was a waste of air since she only provided useful research in the past and not currently.
She might want to go into teaching the next generation. (Undergrads, if she no longer has a lab.) I would do that if I were in a similar position.
There are plenty of useful, fulfilling things to do with the knowledge and experience one has accrued as a researcher. Why not travel to a different place and teach?
Oh wait no...
What the hell is your problem douche? Do you seriously believe everyone should just work and do nothing else? I hope 2 things for when you die alone and forgotten: 1. that you were told by someone that your existence was futile because you wanted to work less than every waking moment, and 2. that you had the realization that there is more to life than constant work but that it came too late for you to change and you are weeping bitter tears of regret as you painfully draw your last useless breath.