How Safe Are Science Careers For Scientists?

Although much has been written about the difficulties that a new Ph.D. will have in getting into a first job after doing a postdoc, this article is about a different and vastly underdiscussed problem. That problem deals with hazards to the career of a scientist after he or she has been in a career for some time. These hazards often force capable scientists out of science. A scientist who is either in academia or in a research institute that permits investigator-originated research must perpetually deal with the probability that he or she will have to write at least five to 10 proposals before one of them will get funded (H.G. Mandel, Science, 269:13-4, 1995). To deal with this situation, scientists have had to expend greater amounts of their time on fund-raising and less on science. If any existing funding is interrupted, it usually leads to termination for those in jobs where there is no salary contribution from their institution. Such funding disruptions can be grounds for denial of tenure, which also leads to termination. Loss of funding does not come about necessarily from the peer-review aspect of the funding mechanism; it's because the grant funding mechanism for the "bread and butter" R01 grants is capable of funding only a few out of a large number of submitted proposals. In a previous article, I explained how reviewers give out poor reasons for rejecting National Institutes of Health grant proposals (A.E. Sowers, The Scientist, Oct. 16, 1995, page 12). A few months later, serious complaints appeared from others over the results of NIH peer review of proposals for a major AIDS research program (J. Cohen, Science, 271:20-1, 1996). These complaints reinforce my belief that the way scientists must compete for funding is basically unhealthy to both science and scientists. At institutions where it is possible to get tenure, I have been told that the proportion of all scientists who actually get tenure can be as high as 90 percent or as low as 0 percent. This variation can be attributed to the tenure award process itself. A serious problem with the process is that sometimes the candidate becomes a political target for tenure denial that is unrelated to merit. In most tenure denial cases, a person essentially is fired and must initiate what is often a long-term, stressful, and possibly unsuccessful job search that commonly requires at least hundreds of applications to be sent out. Still another career hazard occurs when a research area "goes cold." We all get excited when some discovery leads to a new "hot topic." However, most of us forget that with effectively flat (in inflation-adjusted dollars) granting agency budgets, a new hot topic will have the effect of decreasing the priority of work already in progress. Thus, funds will be taken away from the old project and reallocated to the new hot topic. This has the effect of completely removing academic freedom from the domain of the scientist in academia and placing it in the hands of study section members or program managers who will decide what research will get a chance to take place. The National Academy of Sciences reported that at least half of all Ph.D.'s end up in nontraditional careers that often underutilize Ph.D. training and education (http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/grad). Another reference reported that, compared with people training to go into law, people training to go into science as a career are only half as likely to be successful (J. Kaiser, Science, 271:1795, 1996). Do scientists leave science by voluntary choice or involuntary circumstances? How happy are those scientists, after they spend about 10 years in both graduate school and postdoctoral study, who leave science so soon thereafter? Over the last three years the Internet newsgroup "sci.research.careers" has allowed me to meet a great number of people who have shared their career history and experiences with me. It became clear to me that not only are graduate students and postdocs not getting enough mentoring about their careers, but also there is little serious knowledge or understanding of how easily one can involuntarily lose a career in science through hazards that are built into the science culture. Why scientists cannot or do not devote more of their professional efforts toward changing the science culture in manners that benefit their own career stability is hard for me to understand, given that intense dedication and long preparation time (graduate school and postdoctoral period) are always needed. I feel that the science culture is doing a major disservice to too many highly trained scientists and, in the process, wasting enormous amounts of tax money. In an attempt to raise more awareness to the aforementioned issues, I established my own Internet Web site entitled "Contemporary Problems in Science Jobs" (http://www.access.digex.net/~arthures/homepage.htm). Other Web sites (for example, http://his.com/~graeme/pandp.html; http://physics.ucsc.edu/users/noc/Links/policy.html; and http://math.dartmouth.edu/~gdavis/policy/papers.html) are devoted to similar or related concerns involving science careers. This is a positive indication of a grass-roots movement. I have referenced those sites on my Web site and, in turn, many of those sites have referenced mine. Perhaps this will stimulate more efforts that will eventually lead to reform in the science culture to make it less hazardous to its own practitioners. I invite others to join me or to ask me to join them in their efforts. Arthur E. Sowers launched his own small business, Arthur E. Sowers Inc. of Dover, Del., in 1995 and in 1996 resigned from his nontenure-track faculty appointment as a cell biology research professor in the department of pathology at the University of Maryland at Baltimore School of Medicine. He can be reached by E-mail at arthures@access.digex.net.

How Safe Are Science Careers For Scientists?

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