
The future of the postdoc - DrScump
http://www.nature.com/news/the-future-of-the-postdoc-1.17253
======
omginternets
Full disclosure: I'm a last year Ph.D student in cognitive neuroscience, and
I'm neck-deep in post-doc applications...

I think a large part of the issue has to do with government policy as it
relates to science. I notice that many politicians reason in terms of
"producing more science" as if it were a commodity good that should be
produced and exported _en masse_.

The problem, then, is that the current academic system actively encourages
people to pursue academic careers without disclosing the reality of the
situation. They push masses of people through undergrad, then grad school,
then post-docs, until the end of the line whereupon most people hit a huge
brick wall.

I'm all for promoting research in STEM fields, but simply upping the quota of
Ph.Ds won't cut it. As far as the U.S. is concerned, I think this has more to
do with turning a blind eye to the dismal state of public education than
anything else. It enables politicians to say "we trained 200% more
scientists", while conveniently omitting the following truths:

1\. Virtually none of them will be employed in the sciences at a level that
warrants a doctorate.

2\. For all the chest-puffing we do, we still get humiliated by the rest of
the civilized world in terms of education.

3\. Those people actually employed in research positions in American
universities are majority foreign.

~~~
hudibras
"3\. Those people actually employed in research positions in American
universities are majority foreign."

Even if this was true (which I doubt), that just reinforces the article's
contention that postdocs aren't paid enough: the jobs are only attractive to
foreigners, while Americans have other options.

~~~
bsilvereagle
Anecdotally, ~50% of the faculty in my department at a large American public
university are foreigners. I've been told, but not verified, that if you count
dual-citizens, that number gets closer to 65%.

~~~
parennoob
> I've been told, but not verified, that if you count dual-citizens, that
> number gets closer to 65%.

Why on earth would you group dual citizens in the same category as foreigners?

Even if 100% of the faculty are dual citizens (Americans + something else), it
would still be 100% American.

~~~
T-A
Because realistically, most of those dual citizens started out as foreigners
and were eventually naturalized as a consequence of pursuing an academic
career in the US.

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nonbel
I found a major problem is that many people graduating with PhDs in biomed
suffer from the misconception that rejecting the null hypothesis somehow
allows them to conclude their favored explanation is the correct one.

This is a widespread, top-to-bottom, worldwide error. I was trained to think
this in grad school, surrounded by people who thought it, and have read
innumerable papers by those who pretty much explicitly write that down and
publish it.

Since rejecting the null hypothesis is much easier than coming up with and
deciding between multiple research hypotheses, these people appear to be much
more productive (when measured in publication output) than those who try to do
it right. I tried, and no longer believe it is possible to do a good job in
the current academic environment.

It is just not possible to compete with people who only reject a null
hypotheses and skip everything else, not according to the metrics being used
to assess performance. It's a race to the bottom.

~~~
nonbel
There is another problem with this null hypothesis focus as well. The
literature simply does not include the information required to really develop
and test quantitative models (do a good job). Instead, nearly every claim is
of the form "A makes B higher/lower". But this is not the type of information
we need, it is near useless!

Here is an example of someone trying to figure out whats going on, but being
unable to really check. The information required to constrain the parameter
values is not being reported in the literature:

>"Although the signals that transduce the external cues to the GTPase network
are becoming clear (21), most of the chemical parameters remain unknown.
Because many of the reaction coefficients in Fig. 1 B are also unknown, we
allocated a number of possible parameter sets to qualitatively analyze the
kinetics of these reactions."
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1366631/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1366631/)

Here is another, we don't even know how many cells are in the human body to
within 8 orders of magnitude, let alone how quickly they are supposed to be
dividing (which is related to mutation rates), etc. How can you expect a cure
for cancer in the absence fundamental quantitative data like this:

>"First, we noticed that these data were typically mentioned in the literature
without citing a reference; second, we observed wide ranges among data
reported by different sources, ranging from 10^12–10^20."
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23829164](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23829164)

------
p4bl0
There is one thing that is not mentioned in the article: very-short term post-
docs.

For instance, I just started my first post-doc after having defended my PhD,
but my contract only lasts for one year. This is not atypical, at least in
France and in computer science, to have one-year post-doc. And since you can't
do a post-doc at the same lab where you did your PhD, it means that in the
course of one year you have to:

1- get to know a new domain or at least a new subject,

2- become proficient in this new domain or subject to the point you can
publish something in a good peer-reviewed journal or conference,

3- apply for competitive faculty positions and/or another post-doc position
(in which case, rinse and repeat, unless you get to extend your current post-
doc for one more year, but that depends on external fundings that you have no
control or effect on).

Of course 3 requires 2 which requires 1, which means that you only have
something like a bit more than half a year to complete 1 and 2, otherwise your
applications for your next position will seem weak ("you didn't do anything
this year?").

It is really a horrible feeling to be urged to do science. Especially when you
just finished your PhD, you have lots of ideas that you want to explore and
being so short-sighted (one year term is really peanuts in science) is an
atrocious feeling.

~~~
chrisseaton
Surely you'd be hired for a post-doc because your doctoral work was relevant
to the project they were hiring for?

~~~
p4bl0
In general yes (not so much in my particular case though), but even then
entering a new research project, even if it is close to the one you were
working on before still take some non negligible time.

But you are right, the time to complete step 1 from my comment may vary a lot
and might be short in some cases I guess.

In my particular case, I did my PhD on "cryptographic implementation security
against physical (side-channel and fault injection) attacks", and my post-doc
is on "privacy as control". I chose to apply for this post-doc rather than
take one of the few that were offered to me on my PhD topic, because it also
interests me scientifically a lot, plus it interests me politically. On the
one hand it may have been a bold (or stupid? we'll see that later :)) move
career-wise, but on the other hand it was a good time to change topic, as it
may be harder to do later when you are even more specialized. And that is not
specific to me.

------
DrScump
First posted back in April... original thread comments are here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9334316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9334316)

------
cperciva
_In December 2014, a committee convened by the US National Academies released
a report aimed at highlighting and improving the postdoc’s plight. The
committee called for a hike in salaries, from the current recommended starting
salary of US$42,840 to $50,000..._

Hands up, everybody who would love to hire a scientist with a PhD for less
than $50k/year.

~~~
danieltillett
Depends on the scientist. My personal experience is the best postdocs are more
than 10x more productive than the average. Some post docs are worth $300,000
per year, while the bottom 20% are worth -$100,000 per year. The real problem
is that everyone gets basically the same salary and as an employer you have no
ability to pay more to the great postdocs.

~~~
cperciva
My point was that outside of academia we would laugh at any company which
expected to hire a PhD and pay them under $50k/year.

~~~
danieltillett
Yes I agree, but the PIs don't actually have any control over the pay of their
postdocs. When I was a PI I wished I could pay more, but I couldn't.

~~~
p4bl0
As a post-doc, I'm not sure people willing to stay in academia care that much
about salary. I don't want to be paid a lot, if that was my priority, I would
get a job in the industry. What I would like is a stable position where I
could engage in mid- to long-term research projects, where I have less
pressure and can focus on doing great things even if it means working hard
without tangible results for a few years, etc. Salary-wise, I only want to
have enough money to not have to worry about it and be able to focus on my
research and my life. In many places in the world, $50k/year is largely enough
for that.

~~~
danieltillett
I also agree with this, but once you get to a certain age and start having a
family (or start thinking about having one) then just saying money doesn't
matter does not cut it anymore.

In my opinion good postdocs are massively underpaid. This has an big effect as
You could live without having a long term project if you had the savings to
survive between positions.

~~~
p4bl0
I totally agree with your first point. But I stand by my case. I didn't say
"money doesn't matter", I said "I want to have enough, rather than as much as
possible". $50k/year means that you get something like 3000€/month. Early
career researcher with faculty position are paid less than that in France, and
it lasts years and years before you get to this salary level. And is you don't
get a full professor or senior researcher position, you won't ever go much
higher. A lot of people, if not most people, have children while earning less
than 3000€/month and have no money problems.

On your second point, the problem is that even if you have enough money to
live between temporary positions, not being able to get a position at some
point is a huge red flag in your application file, and this kind of gap are
often fatals in competitive recruitment process, as the people in charge of
the recruitment are looking for ways to discard applicants.

I'm really not saying you are wrong as I don't think so, my point is to say
that the problem you highlight (salary level) is not the one that needs to be
addressed to "repair the system".

------
dnautics
12th year as a postdoc? While I don't think the postdoc system is working very
well, this example is not the face of failure of the postdoc system. This
example is a failure of market signals to overcome an individual's sense of
entitlement.

~~~
Estragon
Sense of altruism, more like it. I don't see the sense of entitlement in
spending years in low-status, low-paying positions to research Alzheimer's.

~~~
dnautics
you stay in a postdoc because you think you're entitled to a professorial
position. You could advance to a staff scientist position or move on to
industry, or just do something else. If you've spent 12 years doing something,
it means you were probably a bad experimentalist, really unlucky, or just bad
at 'playing the game'. If you're in science and any one of the three above
applies, you should quit. The market was trying to tell her that, she didn't
get the message, even when her institution forced her out.

~~~
danieltillett
There are no real "staff scientist" positions less competitive that an
academic position. In regards industry have a look at how many Ph.D.s have
been laid off by the pharmaceutical industry in the last 10 years. Not every
field has had the run comp sci has had in the last few years.

~~~
dnautics
I'm a biochemist so I'm aware. After four years of postdoc, I quit my job and
drove for Lyft for a year. Now I contract code. So, I read the writing on the
wall.

And by the way, staff scientist positions are most definitely not as
competitive as professor positions.

~~~
giaour
Maybe every year she received several rejection letters telling her just how
close she came to making it. I remember getting a few "you were one of X
finalists so please try again next year" letters; they made it really
difficult to move to industry and really easy to think that all would work out
in my favor if I just stuck around for another year.

~~~
dnautics
I have gotten that letter for startup accelerators, but never for an academic
professor slot position.

~~~
giaour
I was in the humanities, and maybe the process is different in the sciences,
but 3-5 finalists for each position would always be invited for an on-site
interview.

Your rejection letter might not spell out that you were a finalist, but it was
clear from the interview process.

