Science career advice, age 5

Want to be a scientist?

Like to solve problems?

Good at maths?

Patience?

Like to experiment?

Want to be a doctor?

Like to help people?

Not afraid of blood?

Good listener?

Like to study?

Want to be a professor?

Like to read?

Like to teach?

Patience?

Good memory?

Position available: Flow Cytometry Specialist

Thinking of moving to Canada? Try Belgium. We are looking for an experienced flow cytometry specialist to support our immunology team. The candidate will work on converting current stain sets into high parameter (20+) stain sets, working in the fields of clinical and mouse immunology. Salary: commensurate with experience. Relocation support possible for international applicants.

Qualifications and Experience

The candidate should either hold a PhD based on flow cytometry, or hold a Master degree and have at least three years of research experience in flow cytometry. Experience in immunology is a plus, but is not required. Fluency in written and spoken English is required. 

Application

Please submit 1) a full CV, with an emphasis on flow cytometry experience and 2) names of two references by 31-Dec-2016 to:

Prof Adrian Liston

adrian.liston@vib-kuleuven.be 

Success and failure in science

Science is a very competitive field and demands a high level of success. Not only do you need to make an advance, but you need to make a major advance, get it published in a top-tier journal and repeat over and over again to have a career in the field.

But perhaps how science treats failure is the really remarkable part. Science is remarkably tolerant of failure, even repeated failure. I've probably had 500 rejections from scientific journals - I don't even bother counting. My grant rejection rate is over 50%. I've had projects that have been cut after years of investment, with no return. It happens, and you get used to it.

As scientists we are always inching our way forward into the unknown, making wrong turn after wrong turn until we finally stumble onto a new truth. Constant, gruelling failure is just built into the system. This is one of the toughest lessons for new PhD students to learn - yes, nothing is working, but that is normal! My first paper was one of the most important of my career, earning me my post-doc position and being critical for my faculty position. Yet if you were to look at all the experiments that are included in the paper, they probably only took an accumulated 10 days. The actual project took two years, but most of that time was design, breeding and genotyping, experimental troubleshooting, and generally being busy without producing results.

It is a funny thing to consider, but science completely ignores all of your failures and judges you on your absolutely best days. Those few days that get results are the ones that make your paper. Even if you have published a hundred papers, you are only judged on the best five. So to students that are stressed out about failure - don't worry, failure is normal and healthy in science, and will never be held against you. If you can follow up four years of failure with one good breakthrough, you will be widely congratulated and rewarded.

Inbreeding in Flemish academia?

A newly released study of Flemish PhD graduates has found that fully 20% of Flemish PhD graduates go on to get a professorship in a Flemish university. This compares to perhaps 2% of American PhD graduates, so great news for the Flemish system, right?

I would argue the (unpopular) position that this is too high a rate of PhD to professorship transition. This is not to say that good PhD students shouldn't be given good jobs - just that most should find their niche outside academia. In my experience in the Flemish system, I would say perhaps half of PhD students really shine during their PhD (the system does not formally differentiate, but there are "good PhDs" and "average PhDs"). Many of these stars have talents that are not especially well aligned with remaining in academia - perhaps they are more interested in industry, law, journalism or the myriad of other jobs that a PhD is great training for. So the 20% figure is, to me, far to high. A 5-10% figure would be a good success rate based on my experience.

The other pertinent question is whether this system, with such a high success rate, produces the best outcome for Flemish science. Currently, 97% of all professors obtained their PhD in Belgium, and 75% even obtained their PhD at the same university! These are astronomical figures, especially for a tiny country with close neighbours that are also producing amazing PhD students. These numbers are not based on ancient history either, they are from the 2010 professorship appointments. 

My point is not that Flemish universities are producing sub-par PhD students that should be replaced by foreigners. Far from it - we are producing some outstanding PhDs that should be snapped up for prime positions around the world! My point is instead that an institution that is based almost entirely on internal hiring is going to have severe intellectual inbreeding. One great unique thinker is worth a fortune - clone them a 100-fold and have them work together and you get diminishing returns. It also shuts out the brain circulation that you get when externally recruiting. I'd love to see a hundred Flemish PhDs go out into the world and spread their exciting ideas, and (simultaneously) a hundred foreign PhDs come in and bring their exciting ideas with them. It can happen for people who post-doc abroad instead, and truly creative people can be generated in any system, but the numbers are an indication of openness.

Another staggering statistic from this report: 40-50% of professors (appointed 2001-2013) obtained their professorship within 1-3 years of finishing their PhD! This is mind-blowing. A PhD is the entry point to the academic pathway, and in most countries there is a good 5-10 years of further training before you get a professorship. Also keep in mind that in most countries there is a tenure-track process, so you then have 5-7 years to prove your ability as a Professor before you get tenure. In Flanders for all intents and purposes there is immediate tenure. So we are taking new graduates, who would still be considered junior post-docs in the American system, and instantly granting them tenure before we know if they are good at the job, and before they know if they even enjoy it!

So that's the system Flemish universities are operating under. Lots of professorships, given out at a very early career stage. And who does it favour? The internal hire (especially those who did an FWO PhD at the same universities) over the external hire, and men (19%) over women (16%). Top candidates are plucked out at the undergraduate stage and ushered through the system. Almost the definition of a boy's club, wouldn't you say?

This is not to say that the whole university sector in Flanders operates under these conditions. There are segments that are as merit-based and international as the very best American university. There are also segments where external hire is impractical (most notably, clinical appointments). But this is a clear sign that Flemish universities have a long way to go.

A PhD in science is the gateway to a great career

From inside academia we often bemoan the horrible bottleneck that young scientists need to squeeze through in order to land a professorship. The number of post-doc places is far lower than the number of PhDs, and the number of professorships opening up is smaller again, leading to only 2% of PhDs ending up as a Professor. Does this make it a bad career decision to get a PhD in science? No!

The thing that we usually forget to mention, is that while 2% of science PhDs end up with a Professorship, 98% of science PhDs end up having a successful career. A PhD in science is such fantastic training that graduates are highly sought out for diverse jobs that go way beyond active research - including policy, communication, regulation, administration and business development. Only 2% of science PhDs stay unemployed*, far below the population average.

So yes, there is certainly a bottleneck in the academic career pathway. But I also want my PhD students to look at the bright side - as a PhD student you get to spend years doing fun science, contributing to knowledge of the world, and then at the end you are going to be highly sought out on the job market. Some of you will end up in academia, some in research and others in a diverse set of interesting jobs that you cannot predict today. But you will all be a success. 

---

* A recent newspaper article claims that the figure is 39%, but basically they misunderstood the data they were using, and counted as unemployed PhD graduates who filled out the form months before they graduated

How one lab challenged a grant rejection and won €5 million

A British scientist successfully appealed against an unfavourable grant review — but the road to victory can be paved with challenges.

Faced with a rejected grant application, scientists experience a range of emotions — shock, sadness, anger — before usually accepting the verdict and moving on. But when the European Commission rejected a €5-million (US$5.7-million) grant application from computational scientist Peter Coveney, he hired a lawyer and challenged the decision.

Read the full article

Personally, I wonder where the extra money came from to fund the appealed grant? Presumably they didn't cut someone else, so my guess is that the money probably comes from next-years budget, further reducing success rates.

Working moms have more successful daughters and more caring sons

Not necessarily restricted to women in science, but well worth a read. It is not a choice between career and family - being a successful career woman actually provides a wonderful role-model to your children. So don't feel guilty about hiring a baby-sitter or even (shock! horror!) asking the father to do some parenting.

School outreach

Many thanks to Annemarie, Dean and Evelyne for inspiring the next generation of scientists!

Women in science

This is one of the best articles I have read on the topic. Not enough women in top-level positions? The solution is simple - just hire more women. No more blathering on about childcare and maternity leave, just hire women. 

As the mother of two amazing women, I would say that family issues are the least of the problem ... It has been shown that women without children generally do not advance any faster or further than women with families. In their ground-breaking 2002 paper, 'Do Babies Matter', researchers Mary Ann Mason and Marc Goulden showed that women with children who remain in full-time academia are no worse off than women without children. Both groups lag well behind men — especially men with children, who lead everyone else.

...

When I give a colloquium at a university whose physics department lacks female faculty members, I often ask: “Have you thought about hiring women?” The answer is usually earnest: “Oh yes, we definitely want to do that, but we want to hire the best.” Do my hosts realize how insulting it is to imply those two goals are mutually exclusive? ... As I (and many others) have pointed out several times, the failure to hire women and minorities in science is a guarantee that the best are not being hired.

There’s an awful cost to getting a PhD that no one talks about

It’s common knowledge that getting a PhD is hard. It’s meant to be. Some even say that if you’re not up all night working or skipping meals, you’re doing it wrong. But while PhD students are not so naive as to enter the program expecting an easy ride, there is a cost to the endeavor that no one talks about: a psychological one.

Worth a read.