Say it ain't so.

Recently heard another story about a postdoc whose NIH fellowship application was triaged. No score, no rank, it really was that bad.

This person got a named fellowship.

The thing about named fellowships is, they are very prestigious.

Why? I don't really know. Because there are fewer of them, I guess, it is assumed that they are more competitive, and therefore reflective of more ability, more hard work, or more achievement.

But it seems like hard work and achievement have nothing to do with it. It seems like these awards are very political. From what I can tell, they are based entirely on pedigree.

It's almost like they're awarded more to the PI than to the postdoc.

Now, we can debate the wisdom of awarding "training" funds to the PI vs. the postdoc, but I like the way the NIH and some other agencies treat postdocs as almost-independent investigators.

The NIH fellowship application is about as close as you can get to writing a mini-R01 at the postdoc level (before the K-grants, which most people don't apply for initially anyway). The NIH application is pretty involved, and it's great practice for writing a K or an R01.

So here's my thinking: if you can't sit down and put in the time and effort and come up with a passable NIH fellowship, how are you going to do with writing R01s?

I'm guessing you'll do pretty badly.

Then again, with an expected 5+ years of postdoc experience, you should have plenty of time to take workshops on grantwriting, and practice by writing grants in your PIs name. Right? After all, you're there for the training (ha ha ha).

I'm not saying that government funding is necessarily better, or that we shouldn't also have private funding agencies.

I'm just wondering why we still revere these private fellowships as if they reflect more ability, hard work or achievement in science, when in reality they're really only reflective of pedigree and politics.

I was talking to MrPhD about how I was writing this post and he asked, "Does anybody even track whether the people who get those named fellowships are more likely to succeed in academia?"

Does anybody track that, indeed. (I don't think so?)

Most of the people I know who got named fellowships have since dropped out of academia to go to industry.

I'm wondering if this phenomenon of placing too much emphasis on named fellowships also contributes to the stories I've been hearing about junior faculty not being able to get grants.

Some departments have been taking extreme measures to try to protect themselves from making the mistake of hiring people who have no chance of succeeding at getting R01s.

Here's what I think has happened in the past. Let's say we have a person called Person A.

1. Gets pedigree - famous grad school, famous advisor, etc.
2. Gets named postdoc fellowship based on pedigree
3. Gets interviews for faculty positions based on prestige of named fellowship
4. Gets large startup package
5. Can't get grants funded
6. Doesn't get papers published
7. Doesn't get tenure/leaves academia

Here's a different scenario, one that seems to happen more often. Person B:

1. Gets an NIH fellowship
2. Fellowship runs out
3. Does not get interviews for faculty positions
4. Quits science.

Nowhere in here are we comparing scientific achievement. I'm assuming these people have equivalent publication records. Things have become so competitive now, and departments so wary, that it seems to be all about funding.

If anything, it seems like named fellowships are great in the short term for the people who get them, but dangerous for everyone in the long term. These funding mechanisms seem to encourage political games and contribute to the devaluation of grantwriting skills - supposedly one of the most important parts of being a PI and having your own lab. It's bad for the awardees, and it's bad for the departments who want to hire them. They haven't completed the training!

Nowadays, of course, we have to insert an additional step: applying for career transition/pseudo-independent funding.

Who do you think is more competitive for that? In theory, if the money is coming from an NIH K-grant, it should be a pretty level playing field, between the named fellowship person As who can't write grants, and the non-pedigreed person Bs who write grants really well.

Still, from what I can tell, career transition awards are a minefield with the worst of all worlds. They require recommendation letters and career development plans with all the right catchwords. And they require an entire grant in the format of an R01.

In that sense, a named fellowship is just one step on a long ladder, and I'm not sure if it provides the same kind of boost than it once did. But usually they pay more, and they still have more prestige, which still looks better on a CV at the job application stage.

Read my lips. Who's in charge.

A comment on my last post regarding whether or not postdocs should be presenting their own work brings up a topic I've written about before, but which I think is important enough to keep repeating.

I went to a talk the other day where an older (though maybe only 60-ish!) guy presented the work of two of his postdocs (out of how many in his lab, I don't know).

In the talk, he did something I've only rarely seen PIs do: pointing out that one of the postdocs was present and available to answer questions "since he knows the work better than I do". I wasn't sure whether to be happy or sad that he said that. Maybe a little of both.

And since then (and the comment on my last post about who would you rather see present the work, the PI or the postdoc) I've been thinking about this quite a bit.

In one way, yes the more experienced PIs can often be better speakers because they don't get stage fright, and they've given these talks hundreds of times. They have a certain amount of authority. You get a polished product, maybe a little more historical perspective (I'll come back to that), and maybe another benefit: 1 PI can talk about 2 or more projects in a single talk. And it's perfectly acceptable, maybe even expected, for them to do so.

On the other hand, you can't ask them anything technical, usually they don't know the answer. I actually saw a guy do this at a talk once, with what I think was deliberate aim: he asked several technically challenging questions in quick succession, and the PI speaker was basically stunned into silence. I was hysterical with silent laughter.

And there is this other aspect that most PIs don't want to admit: a senior postdoc is basically the same as a junior PI. Admittedly, junior PIs don't get to give talks as often as senior PIs, but they give talks more often than postdocs.

The point of this comparison is that in at least some (!) cases the senior postdoc proposed the project, did the project, and has lots of ideas for where her project will go next, since it is presumably the subject of her future grants and lab studies. Senior PI guy might not know those things, and might not, in some cases, really appreciate the importance and implications of the work that has already been done.

In general I was thinking about this because I was noticing once again how it seems like the postdocs and grad students are actually driving the research behind the scenes, and the PIs are really just figureheads. They're not exactly puppets, but in a way they could be. In some labs they are.

The historical perspective aspect is an important one, and I can't emphasize enough how much it annoys me when a grad student or postdoc is asked a question about the history of their own field and can't answer it.

The other day I asked a question like this and the speaker (a postdoc) looked at me and said very dismissively, "That's very philosophical" and continued on without even attempting to answer. Sheesh! I actually know a little more about her field than she might realize. I know she could have answered my question succinctly, in just 1 sentence that conveyed the traditional thinking as well as her personal take on it.

Instead, I am left to conclude that she hasn't read the classic papers in her field (even though I have!). Which made me wonder if she's not one of these glorified technician types that some PI commenters are always complaining about (?).

I'll agree, I don't want to see that kind of postdoc presenting talks. I'd take a senior PI over that sort of person any day. But I think most PIs know that, and that's why they don't generally give their talk slots away to their postdocs.

Having said that, sometimes I'd rather hear one, complete story from an articulate postdoc than a bunch of snippets from a breezy world-traveling PI who can't answer questions effectively. I always feel sorry for the postdocs who did the work, because I know the talk rarely gives them the credit they deserve.

Will I give talks away to my postdocs? Sure, when they're good speakers and have a good story to tell. They might not come into the lab that way, but I'll make sure they gain those skills quickly and practice them sufficiently before they leave.

I like to travel, but I already know that most PIs are invited to more meetings than they can possibly attend in a year, and their labs suffer when they're constantly out of town. A handful of meetings a year is enough! I'd much rather send my postdocs to some of them. To me, that's a win-win.

How, indeed.

kcsphil asked, [edited for typos by yours truly]

If the PI's don't keep current on lab techniques and then teach them to the grad students or post-docs, how do the PIs expect to get their science done? And what's the point in having them mentor the grad students or Post-docs if they have nothing to teach?

This question is really loaded with possibilities. I'm going to try to break it down in parts but I'm SURE the comments will pick up on anything I might miss.




1. If the PI's don't keep current on lab techniques

In general: they can't. They don't. "Current on lab techniques" to a PI is what they learn

a) at meetings, where they see data presented in a talk (that includes their own lab meetings)

b) from reading

c) in the ideal case, if they go on sabbatical.



"Current on lab techniques" to those of us in the trenches is

a) tried it
b) multiple ways
c) have seen all the things that can go wrong
d) know how to fix them.



2. how do the PIs expect to get their science done?

This makes me laugh.

The system right now is predicated on a hierarchy. All labs are different, but typically there are two types of lab members.

a) Senior members.

This includes the PI, lab managers who have been there more than a couple of years, grad students nearing the end of their PhD, and postdocs getting ready to leave.

The benefit of these people is that they serve as the 'institutional memory', if you will, of the lab.

The drawback is that they are usually very busy, often beyond the point of really learning the newest hottest techniques, and/or one foot out the door.



b) junior members.

That's you, new grad students and new postdocs. You don't know the history of the lab, and if you switched fields after your PhD, you might not know much about the history of the field (beyond what you've learned from your extensive reading!).

The old Apprenticeship model, upon which science is supposedly based, went something like this:

Master trains first Apprentice.
Apprentice becomes Journeyman.
Journeyman trains subsequent Apprentices.
Disputes and promotion decisions are resolved by the Master.
Only when the Master dies, or if a new position opens up in a faraway village, is the Journeyman promoted.

(sound familiar?)

The main problem with this system, you understand, is that it is at least in part a game of telephone. In each round, some of the original information gets lost or distorted.

The main advantage of this system is the division of labor. The Master supervises. Because the 'team', as it were, has grown, production can increase.




3. And what's the point in having them mentor the grad students or Post-docs if they have nothing to teach?

As many of us have written before, it's not that PIs have nothing to teach. It's just that they're not really taught how to be good mentors and/or don't want to, and there is nothing in the system now that really forces them to.

Mentoring and teaching are different things.

Once upon a time, in a different era, PIs spent more time with their grad students. Labs were not so big; publishing was very slow before the internet; there were no such thing as postdocs.

The main incentive to mentor AND teach was to create Journeymen.

The quickest way to get an Apprentice to the Journeyman level is to teach them how to design, execute, troubleshoot and interpret experiments.

PIs had to do this themselves if they wanted their lab to be productive.

As the postdoc position became more prevalent, PIs were able to stay farther and farther away from the Apprentices.

Good PIs take their senior Journey-people under their wing and help them learn how to write papers and grants, polish their talks, mediate collaborations and reagent requests, and help them figure out their next career step(s).

That's the kind of mentoring we're typically talking about. Career mentoring, which is really one step up from the actual day-to-day of getting experiments to work.

But essentially this means that Journeymen (postdocs) are the ones who are teaching the Apprentices (grad students) how to design, execute, troubleshoot, and interpret their experiments. It's not that the Master is not involved. In some labs, they are. But in most labs I've seen, the Master makes a 'suggestion' and the Apprentice makes a beeline for the Journeyman who has actually used that technique, to ask whether to do it and how. Some Masters know this, some do not.

Masters are often too busy to notice. There is plenty for PIs to do because the operations are much bigger now than they used to be. Grants are harder to get, and papers are harder to publish. Projects are bigger, longer, and way more expensive than they used to be. And it's all a lot more competitive than it once was.

Unfortunately, Journey-people are not rewarded for mentoring Apprentices. Many of us do it, generosity of spirit, mostly (or if we're lucky, for middle-authorship and brownie points with the Master). In the long run, we gain experience. So when we have our own labs (if), we will be able to mentor our first Apprentices until we can get some Journey-people of our own.




PIs are typically good mentors if

a) they like helping people or doing experiments (in which case they might suck at getting funding because they're not spending enough time writing grants or papers)

b) they don't want to be embarrassed at their students' committee meetings

c) they don't have postdocs to pick up the slack



But as you'll note,

(a) is dangerous and rare simply by natural selection;

(b) is not much of an incentive because grad students are cheap and plentiful, easily replaced, so the strategy is more of a screening than a cultivation;

(c) is rare in the current climate because postdocs are cheap, plentiful, productive, and terrified of demanding even the most basic maintenance level of mentoring.

There is the extremely rare case where the PIs is wildly successful AND a good mentor because they just like helping people.

But my strong impression is that in MOST of those cases, behind the scenes the postdocs are actually writing large parts of the grants and otherwise doing significantly more work to keep the lab afloat than they're getting credit for, out of sheer survival instinct.

You might think you're joining a lab to work with the (famous) Master. But it's not about the destination. It's about the Journey.

Comparisons of biologists vs. math, continued.

Anon 2:22,

Well yes and no. The paper might be only the tip of the iceberg in terms of the work.

The problem is that papers are still really the only currency we have, iceberg tip or not, we don't have much other proof that we did anything.

CC,

Although I consider myself at least as smart as most physicists and mathematicians I meet, I guess you are qualifying it by saying that physicists and mathematicians are 'smarter' than most biologists "on average"?

I would tend to disagree, but I've blogged at length in the past about the different kinds of intelligence/smarts, so I won't do it again here. Of course I'm too lazy to figure out which posts those were. One of these days I swear I'll go back through and tag them.

I guess I can see what you mean by physics requiring more raw brainpower.

If you're not good with your hands, if you have no aesthetic sense, you won't be good at biology.

Some people seem to think 'raw brainpower' measured in math is somehow more important, more valuable, or otherwise more useful in life.

It's not.

Raw brainpower isn't all that good at running pretty gels or observing differences in morphology. Raw brainpower is usually not such a great mentor or teacher, either.

If you want to be good at biology, you gotta have good hands, and you gotta have good eyes. So raw brainpower is part of the equation, but it's not the whole enchilada.

I think you can train most any muscle, including your brain, but only so much.

If you're totally uncoordinated and tend to knock over bunsen burners and set benches on fire (like a lab partner I had briefly in college), you'll tend to feel safer doing math. Only so much damage you can do with paper cuts and broken pencils!

I did not know that physics majors do better on the MCAT than biology majors. But honestly, it doesn't really surprise me. Most of the people I work with in biology now were not biology majors in college.

Modern biological research requires a very different background than the curriculum most college biology departments teach.

And by the way, to hell with the MCAT. Why do I care about anyone's scores on the MCAT? So far as I know, no one has done a study to show any correlation between MCAT scores and rate of obtaining faculty positions doing research.

?!

As for (3), that really was not how your original comment read.

Your general implication, that most biology postdocs are idiots who are easily mislead, is pretty condescending. Maybe that's not how you think about it, but that's how you sound.

On the other hand, I do think that if biology did what physics does by limiting the number of slots, it might be better for everyone. But I don't see it happening. Just the opposite.

Did you see that Congress will discuss the possibility of increasing the number and salary for NSF graduate fellowships? The theory is that better students will have more incentive to stay in science if they get one of these.

I definitely think grad students should be paid more.

But I don't think we need more of them. Far from it. I'd rather have three great students, paid well enough that they don't need to worry about it, and have plenty of time to mentor them in my (future imaginary) lab, than 9 mediocre grad students and not enough time to help them all.

But hey, that's more than just raw brainpower talking.

Are most postdocs and grad students just glorified technicians?

CC said:

Math is a completely different situation, where advisors do their own research and mentor the research of others. In experimental sciences, where the advisor's job is almost entirely driving the research of others, the vast majority of grad students and even postdocs are glorified technicians. They contribute a bunch of figures and some methods and results text to the PI, but do not "write papers" in what I would consider a reasonable sense of the phrase. Only in the top 10 or so programs in the US, and their counterparts internationally, do even a majority really manage publications.

REALLY??

I can't say I would know. But here's what I think.

I've worked at places that are maybe in the top 20, maybe top 30, and at least one or two in the top 10.

So far as I know, most senior grad students were doing a significant portion, if not most of the writing, of their papers. Most postdocs were putting together their own manuscripts... or at least I thought they were?

Ever since my very first paper in grad school, I've been doing everything myself. My advisors have contributed edits only. Which I think is perfectly reasonable.

Having said that, though, my most recent manuscripts have gotten more edits, and more useful comments, from people who are not authors.

In fact, come to think of it, on my last few papers, the second/middle authors contributed a reagent, technical help, and/or maybe up to a paragraph of text.

None of these people made even one figure for the paper. The senior authors did even less than that.

But you wouldn't know that from looking at the author list.

So I think it's hard to know how anyone would have such a broad sampling of that kind of inside information as to be able to comment on 'the vast majority' of grad students or postdocs with regards to manuscript writing.

So far as I know, detailed documentation of actual contributions of individual authors is spotty at best (?).

It has only been recently that journals have started including specifics of author contributions at all in my field. Even now, it's not in all journals, and it's often optional or inaccurate.

Here's the kind of thing we put when it's required of us:

Professor X contributed helpful discussions of the results, and contributed to the writing and editing of the manuscript.

Here it is with the subtext revealed:

Professor X contributed (un)helpful discussions, and contributed (very little) to the writing and editing of (an earlier version) of the manuscript (and hasn't read it since, despite being given multiple drafts, junk food bribes, and a deadline).

And here's what I would have written if I were being completely honest about my advisor's contributions to my last few papers:

Professor X rewrote some of my sentences to make them run-ons. X made me use a title I hate, but the paper got in so I don't care anymore because I'm tired of fighting about it.

Professor Y did not contribute more than a few word changes, but is nevertheless an author since Y's grants funded part of the work.

Professor Z read an early draft of the paper and said it looked fine. Z is an author since the work was done in Z's lab space and we can't afford to piss him off.

What do you think, readers? Is CC right? Are math students so much more independent than we are? Is the vast majority just glorified technicians?

Or is this yet another myth being used as justification for keeping us down?

Is this why NIH gives more grant money to people over 70 than to people under 30?

Maybe we should all just quit and come back in 40 years, and see how science has progressed without us?

The World Against Us

Was reading rather disturbing post at Alternet about girls bonding together to cope with the ultimate paradox: huge achievement coupled with very low self-confidence.

The article talks about girls in high school and college, and refers to a recent article in the NY Times by someone whose job it is to reject girls for college. Yes, that's right: there are too many qualified girls and not enough qualified boys applying. And they can only take so many students each year.

And here's where I want to vomit: having a female majority apparently makes a school undesirable, as colleges go.
So they're all struggling valiantly to make sure they don't have that!

I get it, teenagers (college-age) are hormone-driven, and everyone is shopping for Mr/Mrs. Future Spouse in college. And yes, diversity is good.

But. Something is seriously screwed up here. Isn't it our turn to be the majority???

I don't have a solution for the current problem, but my solution for the future is simple: USE BIRTH CONTROL. Clearly, these problems all stem from overpopulation, do they not?

In other news about overpopulation and where do we put all these talented people, someone brought this week's immigration uproar to my attention.

So here's the hypothesis:

The Bush administration wants a large nonvoting population. They always win elections when only 20% of the eligible voters actually go to the polls.

Having more illegal-but-guest immigrant workers is perfect for this, because they generate income, but aren't allowed to vote.

This has interesting implications, since most of middle America seems to believe that the majority of immigrant workers are uneducated avocado pickers in California. Au contraire, mes amis, what about all the immigrants who come here for the science? The last numbers I saw still showed the majority of postdocs in this country as non-American citizens.

Could it be working against the scientific community to have so many people here doing science but not caring or having the time to learn about our political system? Are we missing opportunities to educate and lobby Congress to fix all the problems with NIH and NASA because the majority of highly trained scientists are either

a) not from here, so don't know
b) not planning to stay, so don't care beyond what affects them immediately?

I've witnessed both the cluelessness and the unwillingness to plan ahead from postdocs in general, not just foreign postdocs. But if we're supposed to be the future of science in America, and the majority of us aren't Americans, why are we all doing it here?

Shorter Postdocs Would Be Better for Scientific Progress

I've been going to a lot of seminars lately. Since the trend of scientific training these days is:

grad school 5-7 years
postdoc 5-9 years

I've noticed this has a severe effect on the way we think.

We need new blood.

For a while, there was a lot of emphasis on making sure that graduate students switched fields for postdoc, to 'get exposure' and 'broaden their training.'

In reality, these people take longer to get jobs, because they either

a) have to spend the time to get a footing in the new field
or
b) have to spend time at the end of their postdoc going back to their original field.

So here's a thought. In the 'old days', postdoc 'training' was only 1-3 years long. This had some interesting consequences.

First, let's think about how labs are structured.

1.You have the lifers: lab managers, technicians, and PIs.
2. You have the long-termers: grad students.
3. You have the fast-moving component: postdocs.

Oops, except now the last two catgeories have kind of blended into one long, slogging pile of people who are in no hurry to go anywhere, and who get entrenched in thinking, more and more like the lifers.

I've noticed that many advisors thrive on having new people in the lab: it's like a new toy. Everyone I've worked for was excited about me at the beginning, but after a while they lose interest. And it's not just me, I've seen this happen to everyone.

So here's an idea. Maybe if we went back to shorter postdocs, it would help invigorate science more. Speed up the mixing process and encourage more cross-discipline collaboration.

Let's just leave the job thing out of it for a minute.

Okay, minute's over. I still have no solution for that.

Well-meaning bureaucrats

The theme of the day is stupid hoops that well-meaning bureaucrats dream up to try to make PIs take care of their postdocs, or to try to make NIH take care of their postdocs, and why those hoops fail to do anybody any good.

So I have mentioned that I am a postdoc and that I recently applied for a grant. The astute among you are probably aware that postdocs are generally not allowed to apply for grants as such, and most universities require special permission for postdocs to do so.

The thing that really got me in trouble on this grant process was the pile of paperwork that my advisor was supposed to do, but didn't. She is usually very forthcoming about what she will and won't do, but for some reason this time she didn't, and ultimately ended up saying I should just do it for her and she would sign off on it. This is also the way she handles recommendation letters. We draft everything and then she makes minor changes.

Many PIs are like this. I don't know the percentages of people at each level who are aware of just how common this is, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't include any of the bureaucrats who think it is a good idea to force the PI to write a page or two about how committed they or the university might be to having me, the postdoc, get a grant.

I'm sure they mean well. I've even sat on committees that recommended these kinds of things, and it's supposed to be an excuse to stimulate communication, these little things that are supposed to get written. Of course the most useful ones, e.g. the annual evaluations, never get done because there is no postdoc office to enforce it.

But all things attached to money are enforced.

So for this grant I not only had to write a letter for my advisor, but I also had to write 2 pages on why I should be given permission to apply for the grant, as well as 2 pages on the facilities and other resources available for me to do the research. All of these things are ostensibly my advisor's job. And she's not unusual in expecting me to do it.

Anyway I'm just laughing because I'm reading Bridges to Independence again, and it's a lot of the same thing. It's very clear where this mentality comes from. These people mean well, they really do. It's just the implementation that totally fails.

Get over your insecurity

Wow, well after the comments on my last post, I can't just let that go.

Here's the thing: if getting your PhD didn't convince you you're worthy, nothing will. If grad school wasn't hard enough for you, you must not have been trying. It's like college: you're going going to get out as much as you're willing to put in. And doing a postdoc is the same deal. It's not a holding pattern. It's not an end in itself. It's a means to an end. And if you don't know what that end is, you're in trouble, and yes, you're what's wrong with the current system. Of course you don't have to be 100% sure, but you should have some idea that you'd be reasonably satisfied doing one of the jobs for which a postdoc is a prerequisite.

Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like in the days when postdocs got paid even less than we make now. Granted, there's the whole classist thing I don't like, where you have to be independently wealthy to be able to afford a non-paying job or science as a hobby. But there was one benefit, as one psycho postdoc used to say: "Keepin' 'em poor and keepin' 'em hungry." If you knew you'd be poor, and always secretly wanted to be a starving artist, why not do that instead? The only people who wanted to do research for no money were the people who really wanted to do research.

Maybe we've made it too easy to not know. You don't see too many kids going to med school because they can't figure out what else to do. And those that do are not likely to graduate. But it seems like just about anybody can get a PhD these days, just because they've been in school for 6 years and most universities want to keep their average graduation time down for appearance purposes.

And as for social darwinism, whatever that is, I've never been a fan of the intro classes for weeding people out of the major. But I do think it's fair to say, you shouldn't go to grad school just because you don't know what else to do, and the same goes for a postdoc. And I certainly hope that, if you didn't know that going in, after the grad school experience, it's more than obvious!

Insecurity seems to be overtaking all of science. I don't know if it was always like this, but I'm tired of the backstabbing, passive-aggressive bullshit I see around me all the time. I've heard stories that some fields are so open about disagreements that they still frequently stand up and argue in front of an audience at meetings. I'd greatly prefer that kind of open debate to what we have now, at least in my field.

I'm not convinced we should coddle people who, by the time they reach the postdoc level, are so insecure they won't even apply for the jobs they actually want. Moreover, if you don't know yourself well enough to figure out what you want to be when you grow up, and you're in your late 20s or somewhere in your 30s, you're not just insecure, you're immature on top of it. Maybe we should force people to take a year off after grad school to find themselves and figure out what they really want to do with all that training we've wasted on them.

I mean, think about these insecure people. How are they ever going to cope with the grant review process? There's a lot of rejection in science. Our current system is very Darwinian, or as some people might say, very capitalist. Are we really doing anyone any favors by saying, '"Oh poor you, you think you're not good enough. Here, do an endless postdoc." ?

Postdocs without purpose

So this weekend I went to a going-away party for a friend who is going to be a consultant. Just by chance, I ended up sitting with a couple of postdocs who had gone to grad school where I had gone to college. They hated my favorite professor, so you can imagine I had to suspend judgment until they said they did postdocs in chemistry only because they didn't want to deal with getting a real job and didn't know what else to do.

These are the people who need to get fired, ASAP.

I'm sorry, but if you're a postdoc by default, because you're so lacking in creativity and motivation that you can't think of anything else to do with your PhD, you definitely don't deserve to get paid to work in a lab. And you probably didn't deserve a PhD in the first place.

Anyway we all drank a lot and changed the subject-!

In fact, I'm feeling the effects of too much Ethiopian beer, Sangria and Mike's Hard Lemonade this weekend. How to turn Tuesday into a Monday: have a hangover.

Meanwhile, my lab meeting went well, and I am starting to feel stressed about all the experiments I obviously have to do before I will be anywhere close to publishing another first-author paper. But I have plenty of ideas on what to do, it's just a matter of getting it done and avoiding too many stupid technical glitches along the way.

And user-error. Don't forget the human factor.

The good news: one of my collaborations finally got accepted for publication, at long last.

One down, one not yet submitted, and one not yet written. I guess this is a spread I should get used to.

I still think we need some kind of culling machine to separate the unmotivated losers from what a real postdoc should be. They're seriously dragging us down.

Why all the negativity?

So I haven't written much lately because I've been pretty busy in the lab. Something came up this week that I thought would be worth discussing, though.

A couple of the postdocs in my lab, their ages are something like 30-ish (+/- 2 years). One of them got up recently and gave a lab meeting where he used some new technology, and he doesn't trust it because it relies on statistics and computers to handle large amounts of data. You mostly don't see everything that goes on behind the scenes, and it makes him uncomfortable.

So he thinks it's all crap.

I was astounded that anyone my age, but especially a scientist, would be a) so ignorant of computers and b) so paranoid about them as to say some of the stuff this guy said.

I mean, if you're 30 and you already closed your mind for business...?

The idea that this guy is in academia terrifies me. How many of him are there? He seems nice enough, very thoughtful about a lot of things, but really unenthused about science. I mean, if you have qualms about something, and you can't figure out how to do experiments to allay your fears, what are you doing here? I hope for all our sakes that he leaves if it will make him happier. He just got a fellowship and doesn't seem to care. Can I just say, we should have some kind of enthusiasm test you have to pass before you even apply for a fellowship? I mean, there are plenty of gung-ho people out there, why give one to someone who's just looking for a chance to jump ship?

I'm used to these kinds of paranoid attitudes from the older generations, although I have to admit it's somewhat foreign to me since my family is very pro-computer, and always has been. Even if they don't always understand what the computers are doing, my family thinks they are a good thing, a big technological advance that changed our way of life for the better.

There's another guy who is similar, but worse. He doesn't trust anything unless it's all or nothing. Alive or dead is about his level of comfort. I'm very relieved to hear he'll be going to industry, because the idea of someone like that having students makes my blood crawl. It's one thing to be that paranoid about your own data. But in biology, where most things are gray areas, it means that the vast majority of stuff your students bring you, you won't believe.

What really gets me is people of my generation - what would you call it, W? we weren't quite generation X? not that I want to be associated with the letter W in any way- who go into science and proceed to be so negative, I don't know how they get up in the morning, much less come to lab or do experiments. I mean, I am far from Mary Sunshine myself, but the stuff that makes me negative usually has to do with people, not technology. In general, I like technology. I admire people who can invent things to do stuff more easily, and stuff we couldn't do before. Although it might not be perfect, I think it's worth my time to understand how these programs work, so I can get the most out of my data. And why not? I like data. I like analyzing data (or rather, I like analyzing the results...).

I feel sorry for postdocs who don't.

Oversupply of PhDs: consequence, not conspiracy

So, an alert reader sent me this link economics of science? and asked what do I think.

I think the first 3/4 of it are right on, I agree with everything.

Then in the last 2 paragraphs, it seems that this person has a hypothesis but they don't support it very well, they are asking a question, I guess, but it is kind of strange.

This oversupply created by academia and the immigration of foreign scientist creates a high supply and low demand in the U.S., which allows industry to be highly selective of employees. They demand highly qualified and trained personnel, yet providing less on the job training. Also, their salaries are lower than other jobs requiring personnel with less academic training due to oversupply of Ph.Ds and a cheap but highly-skilled foreign workforce.

This makes no sense to me. Keep in mind, I don't work in industry, so I can't say from firsthand experience, but here goes:

First, I wouldn't say that industry is any more selective of employees than academia, they just use different criteria. For example, experience with teamwork, success with teamwork, and a personal preference for teamwork is usually much more important for industry. Academia still values independence and self-sufficiency more highly than social skills (although not much more highly).

I wouldn't say that there is less on-the-job training in industry. There is essentially no training involved in a postdoc or a PI position, beyond what you can glean from your own efforts (asking questions, mostly). If anything, industry seems to provide more training, from my perspective.

The last sentence of this paragraph makes the least sense of all. Industry salaries are not lower, but this sentence is grammatically strange so I'm not sure what they're trying to say. I wouldn't say that foreign workers are more highly trained than American scientists. If anything with the language barrier and differences in the educational systems, foreign workers are usually at a disadvantage, at least during an initial adjustment period. And most companies don't want to pay for visa/Greencard lawyer fees if they don't have to. There are distinct advantages to hiring American in industry. In contrast, in Academia, for a long time no one was paying any attention to how much postdocs were getting paid, so foreign postdocs frequently got the short end of the stick, and didn't even know they should be asking for more. Fortunately, this is starting to change.

As for obtaining a government job (e.g. NIH), I have very little information, but I'm assuming it is similar to the structure of academia. Except the positions are far more stable and the pay is a bit better. I'm assuming these positions are few and very coveted?

I wouldn't say that government positions are more coveted than academic ones. Working for the government involves a lot more paperwork, many more regulations and restrictions on personal freedom - as well as creative, intellectual freedom- than working in academia. I think it appeals to a different sort of person than the ones who are really gung-ho for being professors.

The whole oversupply or Ph.Ds through academia providing a limitless supply of workers for industry sounds very much like a conspiracy theory to me. In a way it sounds unbelievable.

I have no idea whose conspiracy theory this is, but it's just wrong. Industry doesn't directly fuel the oversupply, Universities do. Universities have an immediate need to expand their graduate programs: teaching assistants. They don't care what happens to these graduate students once they are done with their teaching obligation. Despite many studies and very vocal complaints from the scientific community, Universities keep expanding their graduate programs. I would blame them long before I would blame industry. Industry just profits from the spoils.

the generation gap

Grrlscientist reminded me that I might as well use this as an opportunity the plug the National Postdoc Association.

Perhaps in the past there was no need for such an organization, but it fills a void: the generation gap.

There is a gigantic void between the generation that is now tentured professor-dom and the generation that is now looking for jobs is a tremendous one.

It's worth reassessing your goals and your plan to reach them in the context of: things have changed since your advisor got a job. The old formulas don't apply anymore.

Lies the faculty told me:

1. It doesn't matter who you know.

correction: Who you know is the only thing that will get you an interview.

2. The same number of people get faculty positions now, so it doesn't matter as long as you're in the top 10%.

correction: the competition is so much steeper now, it's a nonlinear situation. the dropoff from the top 9% to the top 10% could make all the difference in your success. It's true for grants, and everybody knows it. Why do they pretend it's not true for jobs?

No one is safe anywhere

Went to dinner last night with some acquaintances, one of whom is now looking for a postdoc position. He's basically made up his mind, but ostensibly wanted to discuss the decision with me.

Let's just say, like most scientists, he had already made up his mind and the matter wasn't really open for discussion anymore.

Mostly I was frustrated because he's making a lot of the same mistakes I made, but he seems to want to ignore the possibility of actual advice, which I had none of when I went through this.

You can lead a horse to water, or whatever.

Then today, I talked to a friend who is a medical writer at a company. She makes more money, has tons of great benefits, but after a year she is finally admitting that the job is not giving her everything she hoped it would. Science seems infinite, it's about slow progress toward extremely long-term goals, and lots of people find that frustrating. She went to writing thinking that having deadlines was kind of soothing, having things to check off on a list of To-Dos can be very satisfying. Employee evaluations, the possibility of advancement, all that good stuff. But it makes me sad that it's not what she expected.

One of my professors in college gave me some advice. He said that it doesn't really matter what you do, there will still be frustration and mean people and all that yucky stuff. Basically he said there's no point in wondering whether you'd be happier doing something else, because you won't be happy no matter what.

Or maybe he just meant me.

Anyway I think most career counselors- especially that nut job yesterday- would scream bloody murder at advice like that. But it makes sense in a way- unless you're really miserable, all the time, there's no guarantee that a change will fix much. A lot of the things that suck about work are simply endemic to all jobs.

Ah, the working life...