The Black Hole

It’s already clear that the BSc is the new high school diploma (soon to be overtaken by a Masters), and undergraduate students are being told that they can do whatever they want and should leave as many doors open as possible . So, it seems a reasonable course of action to stay in school and get that extra degree that will allow you to not close doors. This line of thinking, however, also leads to a problem of too many degrees being sought and obtained for the wrong reasons. There is a lot to be said for the value of getting out there and gaining work experience and Beth continues to probe the different types of careers available… but that’s not what concerns me in this entry… (and I’m definitely not playing the “over-qualified card” because that is a load of nonsense… you can never be over-qualified)… What concerns me here is “Why do we sign up for the next degree?”

The PDF pool is growing because more are entering, fewer are exiting and the average length of stay is longer… is this a bad thing? In our current system I don’t think it is so bad, because there is demand for the research to get done and PDFs can do it… but, the way we handle/define/support this class of workers needs to change.

Shortly after I got my new job, I was out for dinner with some friends of mine with whom I had gone to grad school.  I was telling them about my new position and one of them said, “How did you convince them that you are an ‘Evaluation Specialist’?  You didn’t do your education in […]

The intention behind this particular blog entry is to focus on how our elected representatives and the bureaucratic machinery that operates alongside them filter through the thousands of scientific papers and reports to make policy and political decisions. First of all, our original group tried to figure out how government gets scientific information, then asked was the science and the delivery process rigorous, and finally we proposed (or borrowed) some possible solution

So what does a PhD do when they decide to leave academics? The prospect of figuring out what to do for a living when you decide that you don’t want to be a “principal investigator” (PI) is daunting.  As Basalla & Debelius put it in their book “So What Are You Going To Do With […]

In medical science, many of the protocols we use for bench work feel like recipes. To nobody’s surprise, it is often compared to baking – add component X, spin, add component Y, mix, “cook” in a gel, etc, etc – and I say fair enough. Many will argue, however, that such protocols are not the bread and butter of an academic scientist’s career which certainly relies on designing the experiments to answer novel questions about the particular system or situation being studied and interpreting an often confused picture to help make sense of that system.
This blog entry contends that we are putting less emphasis on the latter and more on the former and our nation is going to pay a hefty price if we don’t turn the boat around – the PhD is becoming less focused on learning how to think, and more focused on learning how to do. This is a trend that I am labelling the rise of the cookie cutter PhD.

After an undergraduate and doctorate, medical science trainees need to undertake post doctoral training before being granted a faculty position. After this round of training, however, many are going on to a second and even a third round of “post-doc’ing” … this blog entry asks why we do this and encourages science trainees to stop after the first PDF and do a major evaluation…

Peer Review and Publishing – the best of the worst?
A look at the peer review system and the idea that anonymity of reviewers is an idea of the past.

As I mentioned in my first blog posting on this site, after finishing my PhD, I left academics.  And I know I’m not the only one – I can think of a few recent PhDs grads that I know that left academics, either voluntarily or because they couldn’t find postdoc or faculty positions. At first […]

As Dave mentioned in his previous post, part of the job of a scientist is to create interest in, and awareness of, the sciences, as well as to promote “science literacy” (i.e., the ability to understand and use scientific information). This is beneficial for a number of reasons, including: People use science in their everyday […]

*** First two quick hits… The Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars just released a position paper that covers many issues that will be brought up on this blog in one form or another. Please read it, use it, and offer feedback to the CAPS folks (heck, maybe even join there committees!) The first annual Canadian […]

Canary in the Coal Mine #1 This past year, I came across a set of statistics that made me cringe. They underscore a dramatic shift in the human resources in academia, specifically in the medical sciences. 2006 median length of PhD = 7.9 years Average age at which a PhD is obtained = 32.7 (31.3 […]

Science is integral to many, many of the decisions we make every day.  But where do people get the scientific information on which they base their decisions? The current H1N1 vaccine campaign is a good illustration of this.  It seems you can’t turn on the television or read a news website (or even a Facebook […]

Scholarships, Fellowships and Taxes – what are the rules?

Like Dave, I spent 5+ years completing a PhD at UBC. In fact, I’m one of the “very bright and motivated people who first sat down [with Dave] at a bar about 4 years ago and posed the question “What’s wrong with the science enterprise?”“, who he mentioned in his intro posting. (So modest of […]

I have entered the Post Doctoral Fellow Black Hole… I’ve witnessed a lot and heard about much more and, while this is the time in academic life when you’re meant to be the busiest, I have begun this blog. Just as a black hole is difficult to define, the label Post Doc is bandied about […]