Letters

Are we training too many scientists? It's not that we're training too many scientists,1,2 but that we are not training too many scientists well. My institution receives hundreds of applications for faculty position openings, but most of them do not even make the first cut. I believe that this is because many principal investigators (PIs) are irresponsibly allowing people to earn PhDs without really deserving them. In the lab where I got my PhD, of every four students who started a

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It's not that we're training too many scientists,1,2 but that we are not training too many scientists well. My institution receives hundreds of applications for faculty position openings, but most of them do not even make the first cut. I believe that this is because many principal investigators (PIs) are irresponsibly allowing people to earn PhDs without really deserving them. In the lab where I got my PhD, of every four students who started a PhD thesis, only one would actually earn a PhD. But those of us who made it were able to get very good postdocs in no time, and I am confident that we'll succeed because we have a strong scientific foundation.

J. Marcela Hernandez
Ohio State University
Columbus, OHhernandez.16@osu.edu

As someone who recently started in a tenure track position, I understand how painful, demoralizing, and insidious the process of the job search is. Before I got my job ...

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