Essay: How to succeed in science: a concise guide for young biomedical scientists. Part I: taking the plunge
Jonathan W. Yewdell1 Abstract
Biomedical
research has never been more intellectually exciting or practically
important to society. Ironically, pursuing a career as a biomedical
scientist has never been more difficult. Here I provide unvarnished
advice for young biomedical scientists on the difficulties that lie
ahead and on how to find the right laboratories for training in the
skills that you will need to succeed. Although my advice is geared
towards succeeding in the If
you are contemplating pursuing a career in the life sciences, or have
already embarked on one, you need to give some thought to your career
prospects. So, take a study break, grab a cup of coffee and read on. Unfortunately,
I need to begin with some depressing facts. First, only a small
minority of Ph.D. students will ever have opportunities to become
principal investigators (PI) in academic settings and direct their own
independent research programmes. Second, even if you are among this
elite group, the odds are that you will be well down the path towards
retirement by the time you receive your first research project grant
(R01) (the average age is 43) from the National Institutes of Health
(NIH), the principal source of funding for biomedical research in the
United States. Third, for your entire career as a PI, you will put
inordinate efforts into writing grants. If you should ever lose
funding, you will be at the mercy of your institution for your
continued employment. Fourth, if you do achieve the ‘Holy Grail‘ of
full professorship then you will not be poor, but you will be far worse
off financially than nearly all of your peers who have similar levels
of talent, energy and dedication, but who chose other careers. The number of doctorate degrees awarded per year in the Your
professors might tell you that this is the way it has always been, but
this simply isn‘t true. Twenty-five years ago the situation was much
rosier. Scientists gained independence a decade earlier and funding,
although never easy, was more reliable and accessible. Universities
were more humane institutions where accountants had less influence over
institutional priorities and decisions. Our current lamentable
situation is fixable, and will have to improve significantly if the Science rocks
But there is good news too. Society desperately needs your talents. The future health, wealth and even survival of Homo sapiens
depend on a deeper understanding of the laws and mechanisms of nature
and on using this information to develop new technologies and
therapies. For rationally thinking people with an altruistic bent, life
can be no more rewarding than when practising the scientific method for
the benefit of all of the denizens of this fragile planet. As a budding
scientist, you are trained to expertly use the scientific method. That
is, you learn how to wield the body of techniques that are used to
identify and investigate natural phenomena by formulating and
rigorously testing hypotheses. The origins of the scientific method
date back at least 1,000 years, and it is arguably the most important
invention of civilized man. Armed with the scientific method, we can
explore and understand nature to the limits of our intelligence. As a
high priest of ‘Scientific Methodism‘, you will be equipped for success
not only in science and its allied occupations, but in virtually any
career that requires rational decision making (and in some, such as
politics, that ought to). More
good news: for individuals with a hunger for knowledge and an
insatiable curiosity about how things work, science offers a constant
challenge and, best of all, the intense thrill of discovery. What can
match being the first person who has ever lived to know something new
about nature? And not just the big, infrequent, paradigm-making (or
breaking) discoveries, but the small, incremental discoveries that
occur on a daily or weekly basis too. If this doesn‘t give you
goosebumps and if you are not in a rush to get to the laboratory in the
morning to find the results of yesterday‘s experiment, then you should
seriously consider a non-laboratory career. Making discoveries is the
core reward for the myriad of difficulties you will face in your
scientific career (see Part II, in which I discuss making discoveries1).
Although it is possible to succeed in science even if you lack this
passion for discovery, you will almost certainly be miserable and make
your colleagues, friends and family wretched too. Science
has other perks. Contemporary science is one of the most communal
activities ever pursued by humanity, and is among the most
international careers possible. You will probably be interacting on a
daily basis with scientists from all over the world, both in your
laboratory and over the internet. Once established in your career, you
can fly to dozens of cities across the globe and be greeted by a
colleague that you either know personally or through reading each
other‘s publications. You might even train a generation of researchers
in your laboratory who will disperse around the globe to pass the torch
of the scientific method to the next generation of their nation. This
generational transfer of Scientific Methodism is, in fact, the most
important and tangible achievement of a scientist. Discoveries are the
joy and stock of our trade, but when your career is over (and probably
well before this moment), few people will remember your brilliant
papers. If you are successful (and lucky), you will have contributed a
few lines to text books that future students will resent having to
memorize. Through no fault of your own, and for reasons that you could
not have anticipated, your discoveries might prove to be the artefacts
that led your field in the completely wrong direction. You will be
happiest in science if you are content with pursuing the truth to the
best of your abilities and in passing the skills and insights you have
developed to the next generation. Scientists who pursue fame are
destined to be forgotten and forever dissatisfied with their
achievements. In practical terms, peer recognition is needed only to
maintain funding and to attract talented individuals to your laboratory
who will make your daily laboratory life more productive and enjoyable.
Beyond this, chasing fame is a waste of time that could be better spent
on science itself, or on enjoying life outside the laboratory. Getting started: graduate school
Choosing a graduate programme.
Choosing a graduate school in which to pursue your Ph.D. should be
largely based on the field that you would like to enter. Obviously, you
should choose a programme that has a well-respected faculty. Size
provides a large number of advantages, including a larger number of
potential mentors to choose from, more students and postdoctoral
fellows who can become lifelong friends and colleagues, better chances
for collaboration, greater access to reagents, techniques and
specialist equipment, and a more exciting intellectual environment. To
minimize the insanely long ‘training‘ period of your career, you should
find a programme that takes pride in expeditiously awarding Ph.D.
degrees. It should take 4 or 5 years for a decent student to finish a
Ph.D., with an absolute upper limit of 6 years. Any longer than this
and the student is either not suited for science or is being exploited
by the mentor. Also, choose a department where the current Ph.D.
students are treated as junior colleagues, with an eye towards their
career development, and are not just exploited as inexpensive labour
(small departments can be better in this respect).
Frequently,
you will have to choose between a small laboratory with a new
investigator versus a large laboratory with a well-established
scientist. Newly minted assistant professors will not have much of a
track record as mentors; you might even be the first student they
train. Still, you should seriously consider joining such a laboratory
if the chemistry seems right. Although this has its obvious risks, you
are a much more valuable commodity to a small laboratory, the survival
of which could well depend on your personal success. Consequently, you
will get more intense mentoring and will probably be working
side-by-side with the PI. The best situation is to be the first Ph.D.
student of a rising star, for you will be maximally productive, will
generate well-developed ties to your field and will have an influential
champion for years to come (although because academic ‘star‘ formation
is an inexact science, this often takes some luck). Skills, not papers.
Contrary to what you might have heard, it is not critical to have a
spectacular publication record from your Ph.D. When the time comes to
apply for a tenure-track job, the selection committee will focus on the
productivity and promise you displayed during your postdoctoral
fellowship. Furthermore, a solid Ph.D. with one good first-author paper
that is based largely on your own work is all that is usually required
to obtain the postdoctoral position of your dreams, particularly for
citizens of the At
some point as a graduate student you will need to take responsibility
for all aspects of your career and develop the skills of an independent
scientist. You need to develop confidence in your ability to make
discoveries and learn new techniques, so that you will not be limited
later in your career when your findings lead you to new and unexpected
areas (see Part II (Ref 1)).
You need to do the background reading to place your results in their
proper context and determine the next step in the project. You need to
learn how to present a seminar in which you convey not only the data
and conclusions, but also your depth of knowledge and enthusiasm for
your field of research. Such public-speaking skills are critical for
peer recognition of the impact of your research, for recruiting
students and fellows to your laboratory, and for effective teaching.
Most importantly, you need to learn how to write concisely and lucidly2, for without this skill, you will not be able to raise grant money or place your papers in high-impact journals. Step two: postdoctoral fellowship
In
many ways the most important decision on the PI career path is where
you do your postdoctoral fellowship. It should be in a field in which
you envisage starting your independent career, the success of which
will be almost entirely dependent on your ability to attract funding.
As a newly independent scientist, study sections will be loath to fund
you to embark on a project that is not a direct continuation of your
postdoctoral studies. This also means that you will need access to the
reagents you developed as a postdoctoral fellow. You will also need the
blessings of your mentor and, optimally, your mentor should actively
support your nascent career. So, in choosing your postdoctoral mentor,
it is critical to determine whether a mentor enthusiastically supports,
both materially and psychologically, the careers of their fledglings.
This is easier to determine if the mentor is an established scientist
with a pedigree. Established scientists will also be able to offer
laboratories with a greater variety of expertise, reagents and greater
financial resources, all of which will help you establish an
independent line of research for you to parlay into an independent
career. It
is essential to visit the laboratories that interest you to gauge the
productivity, independence and happiness of the students and
postdoctoral fellows. It is a good idea to contact scientists who have
left the laboratory to obtain their honest opinion of their experience
(in laboratories headed by evil mentors, this might be the only way to
ascertain their pathology, as the current laboratory members may be too
intimidated to express negative opinions). If the laboratory won‘t pay
your travel expenses, then this does not augur well, as it indicates
either limited financial resources or stinginess. All things being
equal, it is advantageous to work at larger, wealthier institutions
where there will be better access to expensive, state-of-the-art
instruments and core facilities, greater overall intellectual ferment,
more laboratories for collaboration and a better chance to impress
other established scientists, who can write the crucial recommendation
letters for getting your tenure-track application into the interview
round. Sometimes, however, all things are not equal, and if the best
mentor is at a smaller institution, this will do just fine. What is it going to take?
Perspiration.
Success in science will require a major commitment of your body and
soul. As a graduate student, you should be spending a minimum of 40
hours per week actually designing, performing or interpreting
experiments. As there are many other necessary things to do during the
day (for example, reading the literature, attending seminars and
journal club, talking to colleagues both formally and informally, and
common laboratory jobs), this means you will be spending 60 or more
hours per week in science-associated activities. The key to success and
happiness is that most of this should not seem like work. If the
laboratory is not the place you‘d most like to be, then a career as a
PI is probably not for you. At the postdoctoral level you will have to
work at least as hard, but your most intense effort will actually begin
as a tenure-track faculty member, when you are expected to fund your
research (and at least some of your salary too), teach undergraduates
as well as graduate and professional students, serve on committees and
run your laboratory, which itself entails learning an entirely new set
of skills (such as accounting, diplomacy and psychology). Ironically,
you will have more to learn as a fledgling professor than as a
postdoctoral fellow. Until you are well into your career, there will be
time in your life for just one additional significant activity (family,
active social life with friends, a sport or a hobby), but probably not
for much more than that. Talent.
Enthusiasm and effort are necessary but not sufficient for a successful
scientific career. Talent is a key part of the equation, and at some
point in your career (not necessarily as a graduate student), you will
need to objectively assess your skills and potential relative to your
peers. The inexorable weight of the scientific career pyramid squeezes
out all but the most talented from getting the tenure-track job that
will offer you the chance of establishing your own laboratory.
Furthermore, the insanely competitive funding situation is making the
previously safe transition between tenure-track and tenured professor a
far dicier proposition. Scientific talent is not a single parameter,
but a complex mix of innate and learned skills and abilities.
Deficiencies in one area can be offset by strengths in another. Some
scientists achieve success by their experimental skills or insights,
others by their management or political skills. There is no one path to
success and each successful scientist has unique combinations of
strengths (and weaknesses). If,
for whatever reason, you decide that you are better suited for life
outside the laboratory, there are numerous career alternatives. Neither
you nor your mentor should consider this outcome a failure. It is
unfair, and even irresponsible for mentors to expect trainees to
emulate their own career paths. Each mentor has only to train a single
replacement to maintain the PI population at equilibrium. Even with
robust growth in NIH-funded biomedical research (which is unlikely in
the foreseeable future), the current investigator-to-trainee ratio
dictates that most trainees will pursue careers that differ
fundamentally from those of their mentors. Networking
plays a key part in providing information about potential alternative
careers and in landing such jobs. Alumni of the laboratories and
departments you have worked in are the most proximal source of
networking partners. E-mail has opened a great portal into the academic
community for initiating contacts that can be deepened by follow-up
telephone conversations. It can be difficult to penetrate the corporate
world by this path, but conferences provide ideal circumstances for
meeting scientists out of the academic mainstream who can provide
insight, advice and even job opportunities. It might be possible during
your postdoctoral fellowship to develop your skills and attractiveness
to potential employers by moonlighting or volunteering in the career
path you are contemplating. Final thoughts
So,
your cup of coffee should be finished by now. Please don‘t be
discouraged, but give some thought to your career path. If you are
talented and passionate, you will have a good chance of becoming a PI;
particularly in the |
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