Ricki Lewis | Aug 19, 1990 | 10+ min read
Are they students? No, but they're not quite "real" scientists, either. They're sure in demand--just look at all the ads for them in the classifieds of scientific journals and trade publications. Yet the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health don't really know how many of them there are. And many human resources pros don't even know who they are in their own companies. These mystery lab workers are postdoctoral research associates, or "postdocs," who cling to an ill-