The Black Hole

Last week, the Council of Canadian Academies released their The State of Science and Technology in Canada 2012 report and trumpeted the success of Canadian science and technology over the last six years (University Affairs has a news story on the report here). Overall, it seems we are performing well when research output, citation rate […]

While I’ve published these sentiments before, the growing inefficiency in academic research makes this particular point worth repeating. Postdoctoral fellows drive research in academic labs (see Statistics Canada’s Expectations and Labour Market Outcomes of Doctoral Graduates from Canadian Universities) and their salaries, including indirect costs, constitute a major portion of a research budget. Nevertheless, only […]

A few weeks back, the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars circulated a newly released online tool from the AAAS called my Individual Development Plan (or myIDP). I’ve finally had a chance to sit down and browse through it (and do the self-assessments) and I would highly recommend PhDs and postdocs to take a look as […]

Satisfaction levels increase in academic science as careers progress and are highest at the full-professor level (“For Love and Money,” PDF). While this is usually preceded by a doubling in salary from the postdoctoral fellow to the assistant professor stage, there are more pressing elements to career advancement. Lifestyle is one: lack of job security, […]

A report was released last week by Toronto-based Higher Education Strategy Associates that came as a surprise. Using their self-stated “alternative metrics” for measuring the research strength at Canadian universities, the Measuring Academic Research in Canada: Field-Normalized Academic Rankings 2012, report uses a combination of different metrics (h-index, research funding, etc) in combination with what they’ve termed field normalization in […]

It should come as no surprise that by increasing the supply of graduate students (and in turn post-doctoral fellows), we have arranged to produce more knowledge workers than we can employ, creating a labor-excess economy that keeps labor costs down and productivity high (How much is a scientist worth?) – but is this what we […]

I always knew that bad news was released on Fridays in the summer… but last Friday was pretty ridiculous.  NSERC has just announced that in order to improve its success rate (just clocked at 7.8% in the most recent competition) it will now reduce the number of times an individual can apply for a postdoctoral […]

For those who have not yet heard, the CIHR plans to make major changes to their funding mechanism for health scientists. Last week, at the height of summer vacation, the CIHR released a “What CIHR heard” document that summarizes the feedback they received on the proposed changes. At first, I was simply going to pick […]

The following is my response to a letter from Canada’s federal minister of health, Leona Aglukkaq, who was in turn responding to an earlier letter from me: Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, Thank you first and foremost for taking the time to respond to my letter on February 7, 2012, regarding the lack of opportunity for early-career […]

Earlier this summer, two major reports were released from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the National Academy of Sciences. Beryl Lieff Benderly offers an excellent, though slightly pessimistic, summary of the reports and their potential implications on the Science Careers site and this is well worth a read if you’re not willing to […]

In a concerted effort to practice what I preach, I write often to the Office of the Prime Minister to highlight issues facing early-career scientists in Canada. To their credit, I always receive a response. Below is a transcript of the most recent letter I received from the Minister of Health, Leona Aglukkaq. Please see […]

Quick hit: Beth forwarded something interesting to me in a follow up to my slightly controversial critique of the Three Minute Thesis article – Jorge Cham of PhD Comics fame has just launched a two minute thesis video competition to have your thesis illustrated. An interesting idea for sure and something that should aid in […]

In my last post, I urged non-traditional sectors to engage motivated PhD students early in their careers as direction into non-academic careers is sorely lacking. Until coming to the U.K., I had never met a third-year PhD scientist who already had his sights set on working in the financial consulting sector. At the time, this […]

The Bridges to Independence report (NRC, 2005) reveals that the number of PhD-trained life scientists in the United States ages 35 and younger increased by 59 percent between 1993 and 2001 while the number of these scientists in tenure-track positions increased by only 7 percent. At research institutions this number decreased by 12 percent over […]

After Jonathan’s last post on introducing career streams into academia, I was reminded of a question that a colleague of mine once asked: “If so many non-academic fields need highly trained PhDs, why don’t we ever see them pay for their training?” I replied with several examples of how biotechnology companies are starting to invest in […]

In the 1990s the typical PhD in biological sciences entered the job market in their mid 30s, after spending approximately 3.8 years as a postdoctoral fellow (National Academy of Science, Enhancing the Postdoctoral Experience for Scientists and Engineers). This is 3.6 years longer than it was in 1970 (National Research Council, Trends in the Early […]

Hello readers! If you didn’t catch it already, we have relocated the blog and this month and have posted our first set of articles: Reality TV invading university – Thumbs down to the three minute thesis A call to arms Networks – the big kind – and how they drive Canadian science Show me the […]

Maybe I’m getting old, but after reflecting on the recent uprising of Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competitions across the world and the accompanying bravado, I feel that we are drifting far away from the core components of academic training. Started in 2006 at the University of Queensland, the 3MT idea is very simple.  You get […]

Scientific research is a marathon, and if we fall behind now, while we are leaders in health innovation, the cost of recovering our position, in light of emerging economies with which we compete, will become progressively more expensive. Sustained increases in National Institutes of Health and Canadian Institutes of Health Research funding are critical to […]

We’ve all been told about the value of networks with adages like “It’s not what you know, but who you know”, but I’d never stopped to think about this outside of meeting individual people. While I’m certainly not denying the value of knowing the right person in the right place at the right time, I want […]