Re: "Losing your lab," 1 which chronicles Alan Schneyer's experience when he lost his NIH grants and had to close his laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital, much the same thing happened to me in the UK. I've never for a moment regretted taking on a mainly teaching job with a proper salary. Trying to be a postdoc and mixing for your own salary at the same time can get to be soul-destroying.
I think the most indefensible part of the whole process is that patronage can play such a part in the allocation of posts. When you put that with the last point made in the original article, namely that the failure to get a grant can result in being considered incompetent, it's no wonder that people give up on a full-time science career.
John Morton
University of Glamorgan
Rhondda-Canon-Taf, Wales
jmorton@glam.ac.uk
The frustration of grantsmanship was a major reason ...
