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Benderley focuses tightly on the academic labor market and the influences within it, including the motivations and recruitment of foreign students and postdocs. But she opens with the complaints of industrialists, such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates, that the U.S. does not produce enough technically trained people to staff and maintain an innovative industrial sector. I would be interested in more depth on what “too many/few scientists” means in the context of the broader economy. How can innovation be measured? What opportunities exist for scientists in industry? How does the industrial labor market compare to the situation in academia? Is the problem that we are training too many or too few scientists, or not the right kind of scientists? Is it worthwhile, perhaps even useful, to train a large percentage of research scientists with the expectation that they will not find permanent careers in research? How well do technical and analytical skills transfer to other fields, and are these people satisfied with their work, in light of their extended period of training and “a culture that has long viewed—and, in many places, still views—positions outside the academy not as valid career options for serious scientists”? Some of my questions may be outside the scope of the article, but because Benderley is grabbing a pretty broad topic with her title (assuming she has creative control over the title), I think employment outside of academia, particularly in R&D, is central to her question.

The article is part of Scientific American’s experiment in combining the mob sourcing power of the blog and traditional journalism; a set of questions for readers prefaces the “draft”:

We’d like your views on this topic and suggestions on ways to further develop the article. Please use the Comments section at the bottom of the page. Here are a few questions to get you started:

After reading the article, do you disagree with the “almost universally accepted” idea that there is a national “technical talent dearth”?

What was your reaction to the assertion that the decline of white males in science indicates a drop in the desirability of science careers?

Do you think that U.S. education policy should work on improving the science-math performance of the children at the bottom, overwhelmingly from low-income families and racial and ethnic minorities, rather than the performance of all children?

How dismal do the science job prospects described here seem in the context of the broader economy?

Do you accept as solutions to the “scientist glut” problem that we need to create better-paying staff jobs in labs, reduce low-paying post-doctoral positions and generally restructure the way that the U.S. staffs and funds its academic laboratories?

What are the biggest challenges faced by the “American research enterprise–the indispensable engine of national prosperity”? What do you think should be done to make it better?

What will happen over the next decade or so as lab space (and grants) start freeing up as the baby boomers who occupy those posts hit retirement?

What other perspectives on science career opportunities would you like to see in this article?

In my partial audit of about half of the >200 comments, I read quite a few interesting opinions and anecdotes, although few commentators sited impartial sources, and many used the opportunity to regrind personal axes concerning scientists, the educated elite, lawyers, government, industry, dumb/ignorant Americans, foreign workers, xenophobia, and market competition. I am curious about what the author makes of this enterprise. Some of the suggested discussion points question topics that were barely glossed in the article. Are these topics that the author wishes to extend? Did the author pose the questions, or her editor? How does the “draft” experiment compare to previewing a topic on a blog? Many of the comments are rather negative, and some blog forums, which have a stable community of subscribers, have more interactive commentary. Benderley wrote a post for the blog Science Progress in August of 2008 that covers much of the same territory, although with stronger wording and less detail. Commentary on the post was quite similar, but, at only nine entries, not as diverse, suggesting the Scientific American experiment was a relatively successful data-gathering exercise. We await the results in print, at an unspecified future date.

Referenced, and Further Reading:

• Benderly, Beryl Lieff. Draft: “Does the U.S. Produce Too Many Scientists?” Scientific American 22 Feb 2010. Web.
• Benderly, Beryl Lieff. “It’s the Money, Stupid”. Science Progress blog. 7 Aug 2008.
• Bousquet, Marc. “Scientific American: Academic ‘Labor Market Gone Seriously Awry’”. How the University Works blog. 23 Feb 2010.
• Rohn , Jennifer. “In which I dream of revolution”. Mind the Gap: a Nature Network Blog. 24 Feb 2010.
• Waldrop, M. Mitchell.  Draft: “Science 2.0: Great New Tool, or Great Risk?” Scientific American 9 Jan 2008. Web.

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.