Scientists, in vivo
Professors beget more PhD’s than can hope to succeed to tenured positions. Although science offers career alternatives in industry and government research that the arts and humanities lack, it is not immune to the problem. Science may be a worse offender, given the reliance of senior scientists on graduate students and junior associates to accomplish the bulk of the labor necessary for success. 55,962 persons earned doctorates in the U.S. in the 2007-2008 academic year, 6,749 of them in my field, the ‘biological and agricultural sciences’. How many senior research positions exist in academia, industry and government, and at what rates do they expand and turn over? The Bureau of Labor and Statistics forecast, rather vaguely, that jobs in the biological sciences may be expected to be “competitive“, and projected employment to grow at 9%: about the average for all occupations (as estimated in pre-banking-crisis 2007). Lacking comprehensive statistics, junior scientists discern a pyramid structure of uncertain grade, hear the struggles of their colleges on the job market, and see less than 15% of grants funded from the mother river of funding, the NIH. It is obvious to grad students that their mentors produce progeny at a rate far exceeding replacement.
Few students or post-doctoral associates assume automatic ascension to primary investigator, but most start their graduate education aspiring to it. As graduate programs are designed to produce research scientists, it is desirable and expected that students aim to reach the top of the research field. For some, personal ambitions change. Some substantial percentage, some percentage I have not been able to pin down, eventually leave research. Where do these people go? From the perspective of the research enclave, they simply vanish and leave no footprints behind. The narrow and difficult path to the head of a research laboratory is the only clearly marked path visible to graduate students living and breathing research in the seclusion of the laboratory. Paths to research careers in industry or government are faint, but visible alternatives to academia. Scientists in other careers rarely cross paths with students. Their existence is hypothetical.
The biosciences economy is a tournament, wrote Freedman and colleagues in a 2001 article in Science, which magnifies small differences in productivity into major differences in success and esteem. Because most players are capable of a major breakthrough, all are encouraged to compete strenuously, resulting in high productivity for the system- but tough conditions for individuals. A few more hours a day at the bench might make the experiment that makes the paper that carries a career, and therefore a third of researchers in the biosciences work more than sixty hours a week. Success is, to some unknown and unpredictable degree, a gamble. Unpredictable rewards only intensify the quest for results. Research is a gamble, furthermore, which cannot be hedged easily with forays into other creative interests.
Biological research requires thorough commitment of time and intellectual resources, as do most careers in academe, I would assume. There is a pervasive ethic of overwork in the field. If you’re not complaining boastfully of your late nights in the lab, you ain’t in it. As many senior scientists advise, “You have to love it”, and by “it” they mean not just science and discovery, but also the process and logistics of research. If you love it, you will not notice working sixty hours a week. You will lie awake in your bed, thinking of your experiments (and not in a nightmarish fever of worry). You will enjoy the gamble, because it is your personal quest. Most students profess to love it, even when they hate it. They love some portion of it: the theory and philosophy, the beauty of the details, the mechanics, the lifestyle, the excitement of the treasure hunt, the drive to master a field to expert precision. Partial love is not sufficient (partial love plus a great deal of ambition might be). But admitting falling out of love is very difficult. Pride is a factor, and ambition, and ignorance of appealing alternatives.
I have been surprised, however, by the diversity of young scientists who perceived their graduate school experience as not only requiring a soul-deep devotion, but as “devouring”, “rending” or “crushing” their souls in the process. Success in the field is not enough to escape rending. Writing to me about the dissertation defense of our friend Marnie Phillips, Matt Colonnese, a post-doc at the Institut de Neurobiologie de la Méditerranée, offered hope that “graduate school is not tearing into your soul as it did Marnie’s and mine”. Melissa Marks told me in the week after submitting her dissertation at Stanford that “Graduate school was soul-crushing. I just want a break for a while”. She was on her way to a one-year sabbatical replacement position our alma mater, Grinnell College, and is now post-doc at the University of Chicago. When I confessed my anxious feelings of failure and inadequacy after receiving my doctorate last year, and my embarrassment at the absurd self-centeredness of it all, Kim Comstock calmly commented that research would “devour your soul” if you let it. She took six months of travel to recover from her doctorate in Atmospheric Science and reassess her future, and now works as a Project Engineer at DNV Global Energy Concepts, a wind energy consultant group.
In spite of, or because of, the demanding commitment, scientists agonize over the decision to leave research. Anyone who has committed as far as a doctorate enjoys some elements of the job a great deal. Leaving is all but irrevocable; to return after a hiatus of a few years, a lapsed research scientist must compete with colleagues who are immersed in research, and have recent publications and recommendations. Grant eligibility may be lost after a few inactive years. It hurts to turn away from skills hard bought in time and energy. Amassed knowledge and expertise- how to prepare and analyze the total outer membrane protein complement of a cell, for example, or subclone a recalcitrant and mildly toxic gene- will not be used or respected outside. John Chevillet, post-doc at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, likened leaving research to leaving a priesthood. Leaving entails giving up a vocation, an ideal, and threatens loss of self-respect, and of loss of the respect of colleagues. Loss of membership in the community.
And there is the problem of “What now?”.
Ex Laboratorio aims to make visible the mysterious and hypothetical “other careers”. It is project to find, and interview, the lost children of research training programs, and a personal odyssey into the career unknown. It is a project to meet scientists doing different kinds of science, and researchers researching different kinds of research, than those I have met before. It is a quest. It is a stab at understanding scientific inquiry in broader context.
I welcome fellow travelers.
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References and Further Reading:
National Science Foundation Division of Science Resources Statistics (SRS)
United States Department of Labor Bureau of Labor and Statistics
Council of Graduate Schools report on Graduate Enrollment and Degrees: 1998-2008
AAAS/Science Career Basics Booklet 2009
AAAS/Science Career Trends: Careers Away from the Bench
Freeman R, Weinstein E, Marincola E, Rosenbaum J, Solomon F. Careers. Competition and careers in biosciences. Science. 2001 Dec 14;294(5550):2293-4. PubMed PMID: 11743184
Trends in the early careers of life scientists. Committee on Dimensions, Causes, and Implications of Recent Trends in the Careers of Life Scientists. Mol Biol Cell. 1998 Nov;9(11):3007-15. PubMed PMID: 9802892; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC25581.
Searls DB. Ten simple rules for choosing between industry and academia. PLoS Comput Biol. 2009 Jun;5(6):e1000388. Epub 2009 Jun 26. PubMed PMID: 19668326; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2674567.
Alberts B. Science for science. Science. 2009 Apr 3;324(5923):13. PubMed PMID: 19342554.
As a recruiter with files full of thousands of resumes of individuals from a variety of backgrounds, I have perhaps more visibility of the varied paths followed. I focus on Information Technology rather than research or sciences positions, but nevertheless, quite a number of individuals with PhD’s reside in my database.
The ‘leaving the priesthood’ feeling is probably not unique to the the research PhD’s. Individuals immersed in music, or sports, launching, growing and selling companies, or other careers experience some of the same feelings I know, although some of those arenas, sports for example, you’re not expected to be active in the arena into your 60′s or later, so it is probably more pronounced.
I would say the majority of people don’t end up in exactly the arena predicted by their academics. Many far from it. The IT pro’s in my files have degrees in music, cooking, business, writing, liberal arts. Maybe even a couple were research doc’s.
Follow your passions, and don’t let expectations and pride stand in the way of whatever you turn out to enjoy. Certainty is perhaps more a product of youth, like the intensity of your first love. Leaving research (if you do) will not turn out to be that painful, as long as you find the something else that makes you happy. You will find surprising ways to apply the skills you’ve learned, though not perhaps in the way you imagined.
John, I think you are right that there are many wayward PhDs out there happily working in a broad variety of jobs that reach beyond their academic training. I’d like to meet more of them, and see beyond the standard “alternative career paths” of science & technical writing, teaching, science policy, and patent work. I’ve noticed that many of my colleagues head into another degree program when they decide to leave the bench. There is a lot of pressure to define your goals, make a plan, and not appear flakey and confused. Programs and fellowships have clearly defined goals. It’s nice to be able to say, “I want to work in venture capital”, or “I want to advise legislators on science policy”. It’s more awkward to try to summarize ambitions that don’t have a job title: “I like to read and write about science, to discuss the opportunities and consequences of research, and to serve as a liaison between technical and management staff to solve real-world problems in a collaborative environment”. (Although, descriptions like this start to sound more normal as I get to know more consultants!) Scientists in non-traditional positions tend to get there through unique and idiosyncratic connections. Their routes to success can’t be replicated, but they can be instructive. The thing they all have in common is networking–so getting to know more people can never be bad.
I found that dealing with my pride was easier after I acknowledged that it was an issue. It’s more important to be successful at something I enjoy–and I was never going to be successful at a high-stress job I couldn’t commit my heart to. Thanks for your comments and encouragement.