Scientific Self-abnegation

This story has recently been doing the rounds in my postdoc circle.

"Don't become a scientist," advises physics professor Jonathan Katz from Washington University, St. Louis, in a polemic op-ed piece for brash-young would-be scientists. It was written in 1999 but if anything, is even more relevant with the diminishing science budget of the United States. He's voicing a lot of things that we postdocs have been muttering amongst ourselves.

Essentially, "American universities train roughly twice as many Ph.D.s as there are jobs for them." And using elementary economics, Katz shows how the labor "glut of scientists" has completely changed the career path of scientists, from what it was 30 years ago when Katz started. Now the postdoc stage is greatly prolonged, frequently up to 10 years, as opposed to the 2 years that Katz did. And how did this happen? The glut was due to "funding policies (almost all graduate education is paid for by federal grants)... [where] ...for many years the NSF propagated a dishonest prediction of a coming shortage of scientists".

I recently brought up this article with a colleague of mine, a visiting professor. He was much annoyed by the article. "A scientist," he said, "A true scientist is not swayed by external factors. Science is a calling." Although I liked his idealism, I feel a human being cannot be shovelled into one definition, whether it be scientist, or doctor, or builder. It's important to keep the rest of your life in view.

Like family, for instance. Katz points out that it's normal for a would-be scientist to be a post-doc for up to 10 years. And as a post-doc in your thirties, Katz asks if you "can support a family on that [postdoc] income?" One postdoc in my lab is leaving science because he wants to start a family.

Regardless, the article should make any postdoc wake-up and smell the (probably instant) coffee.