Introduction.

A couple of months ago, an interesting article by Jennifer Rohn on Nature prompted an explosive discussion on the interweb about the career perspectives of  post doctoral researchers. Jennifer’s point in a nutshell was “we should give postdocs the chance to keep being postdocs forever and ever if they so wish” and was encountered by an overwhelming appraisal, at least judging by the comments in the original piece.

I, for one, would not really like to be a postdoc forever and after a, cough cough, probably excessive rant, I made my points clear on these pages. To say it all, my post was sparked by the surprise of seeing so many postdocs showing enthusiasm when facing the idea of being stuck in their limbo forever. Am I the only weird? Everyone claim their postdocs was the best time of their scientific experience, why didn’t I feel like that when it was my turn? Why do I enjoy so much more being completely independent instead? Part of the answer is, I am sure, that yes, I am weird indeed. The other part comes from the results obtained from the poll I then decided to put up in the successive weeks.

Methods.

The survey was conducted with great scientific rigour pretty much in random way. I put up a web page and asked for feedback on my blog post. Except for an initial round on facebook and so, I didn’t advertise it much on social sites myself, because I felt in that way I would have reached more easily people somehow close to my views and I would have somehow biased the sample. Instead I asked the participants to spread it around and gave them 4 weeks time to do so.

Results.

After about a month, I came back and found little more than 100 responses. The exact picture of the responses is available in the page here (I suggest you open the result page in a new window and scroll along as you ready my comments, figure by figure).

84% of respondents were either in life science or Physics. For some reason I think Physics is heavily represented and life science is probably under represented. This may be due to physicists being better at twitter.

For how long have you been a postdoc? Very nice skewed distribution. Apparently the median of a single postdoc experience in the USA is 2.2 years, which matches nicely what I got. I cannot help but cringe when looking at the first and last bar of the graph: those who don’t know what it’s going to happen to them and those who, also, don’t know what it’s going to happen to them but in a different way.

Most people are at their first postdoc. Some at second. Not much else to comment here.
67% of respondant want (or dream) to continue their career in academia. This matches exactly what found by the National Academy of Sciences in the USA. Dear God, I didn’t know I was so good at making survey!

First surprising result: only 6% has no clue of what to do with their life. I am sure if we were to ask PhD students a similar questions we would get a different picture. There are two possible explanations of why almost 70% of postdocs want to pursue a research in academia: the first one is that they really still love it, no matter what they go through; the second one is that they wasted invested so much time and effort and money and personal relationships in it, than they cannot admit to themselves that maybe it was the wrong choice. This latter, is exactly what the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance predicts. Namely,

inconsistency among beliefs and behaviors will cause an uncomfortable psychological tension. This will lead people to change their beliefs to fit their actual behavior, rather than the other way around, as popular wisdom may suggest.

So, we are all a bunch of stubborn delusional. Are we?

Where do you see your career progress? Here things get a bit more grey in colour. Suddenly 1/3 of respondents is not sure they’ll manage to land on an academic position and most seem to start growing doubts. This is particularly relevant if you think that most people are still in their <3 years of postdoc.

And now is where things get a bit more negative indeed.

Most people think they are not well informed about alternative career outside the academic path and only 10% of respondents seem not to have concerns. About 70% of folks are quite worried indeed.

Next two questions are about the environment in the lab: a shy majority thinks their PI doesn’t really care much about their career progression but it’s really not as bad as one may think.

Most postdocs, on the other hand, are experiencing a lot of freedom given that more than 60% seem to be experiencing complete or almost complete academic freedom.

Then, here comes the result that makes me think I am not so weird at all! 70% or so of respondents would be quite ready or ready to be an assistant professor starting next Monday! (OK let’s say Tuesday, given that Monday is bank holiday). This is astonishing considering, again, that most people have < 3 years of postdoctoral experience. I personally value experience in this job very very little and I keep saying that either you are ready from the start to be a scientist by yourself or you will never really be. From the start can be anything between 5 and 25 years of age.

Yet, I do realize that I may be a bit extreme in my view, given that in fact most people recognized their postdoc was in fact useful to prepare for the next step.

Now, next question is again an experiment in social psychology. Question is: do you feel more or less suited to being a researcher than your peers? Overwhelming majority thinks they are better than average, confirming yet again what scholars call Illusory Superiority. Those with Impostor Syndrome were probably all Darwin-ianly selected out during PhD.

Majority of respondents would not mind a job in research. Good to hear.

Then comes the question that started it all. Would you enjoy being a postdoc for life? Would you enjoy being an independent postdoc? Most people would rather be an Independent Postdoc (75%) than a Postdoc for life (42%). Ah! I knew it!

Finally, the last two question: people are quite divided on whether funding agencies should produce less postdoc but with higher salaries. In fact, only 42% thinks that would be right to do so. Awww, I am moved. What a socialistic altruistic bunch are postdocs! And, if that was not enough, an overwhelming majority think is a bad idea to be protectionist about the job and do not think that their country should make it difficult for foreign people to get a postdoc position. I am so proud of you guys!

Discussion.

First thing to notice is that I may have an alternative career in designing survey. Second thing, we confirmed at least two important theories of social psychology: too bad I am late to publish them. (Note: The Freudian title of this post is dedicated to my staggering successes in the field of psychology indeed).

Third: if you look into how to redistribute money, take into account what postdocs want. They are scientists and they want to be treated as such. In short: they think they are better than their peers, they want freedom and they don’t care that much about money after all. Their priority is to keep doing research whether in academia or industry whether independently  or as postdocs.

I gave my recipe of “what must change in Science and how” already, no need to repeat myself. Glad to see I wasn’t speaking only for myself!