Ideas (About Science Careers) That Should be Retired

I love podcasts! The other day I was listening to Freakonomics, one of my go-to podcasts, and they started talking about “ideas that must die.” The hosts ask scientists what popular scientific ideas should be gotten rid of because they are impeding progress. The first example is from Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a professor of cognitive science at University College London who wanted to debunk the idea of people being either left or right brained. Other ideas offered up to the chopping block included the power of statistics, the relevance of mouse models and that life is sacred. While I didn’t agree with all – actually most – of the suggestions it seemed like an interesting topic to explore for the blog. So I’ve come up with a list of misconceptions about careers in biology that I think should be retired.

1. Research Professors have better/more flexible schedules than other career options. This is crap. All of the tenured and tenure-track faculty I know work their butts off non-stop and many non-academic jobs allow you to work around scheduling conflicts… it’s all about getting work done.

2. Leaving academia is shameful and people who leave are not as smart/motivated/are only interested in the money (I’m still working on this feeling for myself but I love what Perima, StrongerThanFiction and Torschlusspanik have to say about careers outside of academia)

3. PhD’s always make more money than researchers who have bachelors or masters degrees. There are a ton of online debates about whether PhD’s earn more than researchers with bachelors or masters. The bottom line is, it’s not clear – so don’t go to gradschool for the money!

4. Grad school is super hard and a terrible, horrible, torture fest. Yes, I had crappy days and at times it was hard to juggle everything, but it was a fantastic experience. I have way more good memories about my time in grad school than bad ones.

5. Academia produces the highest quality work. I was surprised when I got to industry and found out how often we try and fail to replicate published results, even when consulting with the original authors. I heard a lot of talk about how the pressure in academia to publish diminishes the quality of papers. On the other hand, scientists in Biotech have their own pressures that can also be reflected in publications.

6. Researchers in Biotech have no scientific independence. It is true that you are usually hired to work on specific research topics. But I have found that I am able/encouraged to bring up new ideas and follow up on diverse research questions. I don’t know if this is the norm, but I have been very pleasantly surprised at how much interesting research I get to do.

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