I have written before about how scientific information gets (poorly) communicated to the Government in entries about the routes of information acquisition and about getting scientists to understand how policy works.  In my mind, one of the best ways of improving things is to have members of the public service who have a good baseline understanding of, and appreciation for, scientific research.

Typically, when one thinks about the public service, they think of people who “work for the government” and they often think that Canada has too many people in such positions.  In researching for this article I was actually quite surprised to find that the federal civil service of Canada only comprised 0.8% of the total Canadian population standing at just over 260,000 public servants in 2008.  As each province also has a public service this is clearly an underestimate, but even in the provinces, the numbers are lower than what I expected (e.g.: 0.67% of British Columbians).  This aside, the fact remains that there are  hundreds of thousands of jobs in the public sector – but very few scientists that I have encountered consider it a reasonable place to look for employment and I would love to see this change.

First of all, get it out of your mind that the public service is simply the Canada Revenue Agency, Royal Canadian Mint, RCMP, and Canadian Armed Forces.  Start by looking at the career explorer page on the Public Service Commission of Canada site – you’ll be met with a whole host of organizations, many of whom need highly trained scientists to do research (e.g.: Fisheries and Oceans, Environment Canada, etc) and many others who would benefit from senior and junior employees with strong scientific backgrounds (e.g.: Health Canada, Atomic Energy of Canada, National Research Council, etc).

Imagining possibilities, however, appears to be the easy part and asking the question of how to get such a job to someone in the middle of a science based graduate program  would be met with many blank faces and shrugging shoulders.

Those who would consider this path should be on the lookout this autumn for the Post Secondary Recruitment and the Recruitment of Policy Leaders programs that the federal Government will be running in September and October respectively.  Importantly, you’ll want to consider which type of position to apply for with self-assessment questions like: do you want to research in a lab or the field?  do you want to study and design policy? do you want to leave science completely?

Also, each province has their own series of listings and it would be important to check back regularly to see new postings in provinces that you would be willing to live and work in:

Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

An example of an interesting job that might appeal to readers of this site is that of senior scientist at the Ontario Science Centre.

Critical to those who do choose this type of career though, is the understanding of the need to go backwards in order to go forward.  What I mean by this is something that Carolyn Steele at University Affairs wrote about earlier this year in her (sadly!) now-retired blog Career Sense and this is the recognition that changing fields and career by taking a non-academic job will often result in a dark period for graduate students where it may “feel more like a demotion than an opportunity” and perhaps even something you could have gotten straight out of undergrad.  While it might hurt in the short term, this is a reality for anyone that will make a dramatic shift in career path – do not let this get in the way.

My next entry to the “So you want to be a ____” series will be the final one – do let us know if this has been a useful series and we’ll try to do something similar in the future as the site continues to evolve.

QUICK HITS:

1.  If you were interested in previous posts of mine about how well science information is distributed and received in the UK, then you might also want to have a gander at a recent post that I made on the Stem Cell Network Blog entitled Science, Science, everywhere…

2.  The Council of Canadian Academies has released their annual report.  A good read if you have not yet heard of them and what they do, but it still leaves large question marks regarding its future which I’ve written about before.

So, you want to be a Researcher in Industry…

I think it’s a real shame that a research career in industry is black-listed as “selling your soul” or “giving up” at almost every juncture in academic training.  Yes, there are compromises that you will make with respect to research independence, daily schedule, and potential removal from the sharpest part of the cutting edge of research¹, but the enormous benefits that derive from industry involvement in the research enterprise are not to be scoffed at – not to mention its benefit to the Canadian economy.

Make no mistake, I am a huge fan of academic research, blue sky thinking, and avoiding cookie-cutter PhDs and I am not a fan of tying economic outcomes or “deliverables” to all academic research.  I am also, however, not impressed by the villainization of working for money while doing research – in fact I see it as one of the very real faces of future scientific research, especially in medical science.  Underpinning this transition is the human resources shift that is resulting in far more graduates with highly specialised knowledge and the presumption from many trainees that this leads to an academic career.  While the percentages of successful bids for professorship have not shifted so pointedly over time, the absolute number of PhD graduates has dramatically increased and they are flooding into the workforce.

So, if you find yourself even moderately inclined to consider a career in industry, I offer some advice for places to look and strategies to take on your journey.  Again, if there is some specific help out there from Engineers, Physicists, Chemists, etc, please do leave a comment as most of my meagre help will be biotech/medical science related.

Know and Expand your Current Networks

First thing is first, look around you at people who are similarly inclined.  Perhaps a professor in your department owns a company on the side or a fellow trainee has a background in business or economics.  These are great places to start for grabbing some quick advice from someone who probably understands your particular perspective.  In British Columbia, there is a great resource called the Student Biotechnology Network which hosts numerous events in Vancouver that are directly aimed at giving trainees a glimpse into the sector.  It has strong support from long term and emerging companies in the region and offers the vast majority of its events free of charge. It was started by a former UBC student and has grown continuosly over the last decade.

Hands On?

I think one of the most critical questions that people have to ask themselves before embarking on a career search in industry is whether or not they want to physically do the research, direct the research, or simply understand the research.  Inevitably there are careers that will allow you to drift across these loose categories, but going in with your head up about your likes and dislikes for a career path is never a bad idea.  Physically doing the research should inspire job searches like “research or bench scientist”, “product development”, or “staff scientist” while directing the research would be more along the lines of “team leader” and “head or director of R/D” – though the latter would not necessarily be available without industry and research experience in the bigger companies.  The understanding of research is perhaps the most diverse and simply means putting your knowledge to use in a particular companies “other departments” like sales, marketing, technical writing, etc.

Stuck in the Middle with You (or not…)

Something that Canada has been rumoured to lack and I’ve not had reason to disagree yet is “mid level” biotech careers.  Essentially, what this means is that you either start/own a company or you are very junior in that company and there appears to be an extremely tiny middle ground of very good pay for very good work with moderate to low chances of moving higher unless your boss retires.  This stress is compounded by the situation to the south where a plethora of such positions exist in places like San Francisco and Boston, resulting in speedy depletion of talented middle managers and researchers if the wait for upward mobility begins to look lenghty.

Standardization of Tools and Reagents

One thing that industry can provide at a much higher level than the transient trainee body of graduate students and post doctoral fellows is standardization.  If a biological reagent is developed (i.e.: something that particular cell types like to grow in) in an academic lab, it often resides within that lab and its small networks.  If that reagent is of substantial interest to a wider community, a company can standardize the reagent and bring it to those markets (both academic and industrial).  The same goes for particular tools and technologies that are developed within academic settings, especially from engineering, chemistry, and medical science.

Money Matters

Quite literally… and this can be a huge problem in some companies where scruples are sacrificed for the sake of this quarter’s profits or for the survival of the company.  The consequences of such unscrupulous behaviour, particularly in medical sciences and the production + prescription of the wrong pharmaceutical, can be dire, and proper regulatory checks and balances need to be in place.  One of the best examples of such an initiative is the UBC Therapeutics Initiative where academics work with physicians and pharmacists to provide up-to-date, evidence-based, practical information on prescription drug therapy.

In medical science I believe these lines are blurring more and more, especially with the need for academic labs to generate heaps of data and the subsequent rise of cookie cutter PhDs.  No doubt, we need well trained researchers to do this kind of work, but in the end, if your research project is along the lines of optimizing a biological system/reagent, sequencing a genome (or several), or screening small molecule libraries for potential drug interactions – why not get paid well for it?

Resources to check out

BIOTECanada – A national non-profit association dedicated to building the bio-based economy in Canada.

NSERC Industrial Post Doc Fellowships – Funding opportunities that will make you substantially more attractive as an entry level candidate.

The 1998 Canadian Biotechnology Strategy – The Government of Canada’s last major policy paper outlining their strategy on Biotechnology.

1. Thanks Trev for directing this my way!

If you’re in graduate school or beyond, you have a wealth of experience to draw upon when it comes to assessing quality of educators.  Some were engaging, inspiring, and really understood how to teach, others were boring, incomprehensible or simply not qualified, while still others were clearly unimpressed that they had not yet retired.

Along the way, you’ve almost certainly been involved in educating as well as learning.  Whether this was formal (e.g.: university teaching assistant, MCAT preparation courses, etc) or informal (e.g.: training the new person in the lab, tutoring a friend in mathematics) you can probably answer the following set of questions based on experience:

1)  Do others understand you?  (i.e.: do you have to explain yourself multiple times or do people just “get it” when you are the teacher)

2)  Are you satisfied when someone learns from you?

3)  Do you take pride in the success of others?

4)  Have others commented on how well they learned from you?

If you have answered yes to all four, then maybe a career as an educator is something you could consider.  Importantly though, this process of consideration should not just be primary and secondary school teaching (great career choices in themselves, but not the only option for those with a passion for educating).  Below I’ve tried to catalogue some of these options, not meant as a comprehensive list, but merely to stimulate some ideas for people that may not have explored all of these options to satisfy their desire to educate.

Primary/Secondary School Teacher

The highest proportion of formal educators would still find themselves employed as schoolteachers.  If you’ve finished your Masters or PhD, you certainly would not be the only one who has tried.  It is becoming more and more common to have M.Sc. and PhD grads teaching at both the secondary and primary levels.  Additional training before you can apply is almost a given and education degrees at various levels (Bachelors, Masters, PhD) are plentiful across Canada.

Education Research

As I mentioned above, alongside the acquisition of your highly specialised training, you have been exposed to a number of educators and teaching methods.  Were they all useful to you?  Probably not.  Did you ever ask why they didn’t just teach it “this way” or “that way”?  Perhaps…  if so, then education research is worth a shot.  At its core, it tries to understand and then improve upon methods in education a task for which you certainly need to have a good understanding of the material being taught.  Physics departments appear to be at the leading edge in this type of research and much effort has gone into figuring out how to better assist high school and undergraduate learners in their understanding of basic physics principles.  A great example of innovative teaching ideas in Canada is through the work of Nobel laureate Carl Weiman  who has spearheaded projects such as PhET (which are online “interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena”) and more recently at UBC Carl Weiman Science Education Initiative.

If you like such projects, then you should read this great article from Science Careers on Education Research.  I think anybody exploring a science-based career outside of bench research would be foolish not to visit the Science Careers site.

Organization/Program Development

Many organizations require top level scientists to help develop their programs.  In this category I am talking about either doing science education or helping to transmit complicated scientific information to others for organizations like the AAAS, the Society for Science and the Public, Let’s Talk Science, or Youth Science Canada

There are also a huge number of non-governmental organizations that require scientists to do a lot of heavy lifting in building up background research and then finding effective ways of transmitting that information to the public.  Think about careers with the Pembina Institute, the Fraser Institute, the Manning Centre, or the Suzuki Foundation depending on your political leanings.

Museum Scientist / Educator

We often only think of museums as those places you go when you have no idea about the city you’re visiting or a place to kill a few hours on a rainy day.  While I could go on for days about how fascinating and inspiring museums can be, this article is about educators and make no mistake that museum staff members from across the globe are often gifted at educating.  Clearly a science background helps out at science-based museums like the Science Museum and Science World, but you might be happy to know that many “regular” museums also have scientists and educators on permanent staff.  For example, the British Museum has many scientists and educators who run excellent programs like Young Explorers.  If you think you’d like a research/education combination, read this article on the position of museum scientist.

College Instructor

Yet another excellent article on the Science Careers site that  chronicles the life of a community college instructor and his passion for teaching – a necessity for career satisfaction in the Instructor position.  When I was in Ontario between 1999 and 2003, it seemed that colleges were given a bit of a hard time (this may or may not still be true), whereas in Vancouver it seemed like a much more vibrant and engaging option for recent high school graduates – a place that a few of my graduate school colleagues decided was the type of place for them to build a career.  Some examples “out west” where instructor positions are to be had are the British Columbia Institute of Technology, Langara College, and the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology.  Permanent instructor positions are also available at some Canadian universities, though the numbers are not high and the arguments are plentiful about the impact and reasons behind such positions.  We’ll have a blog entry on the “university instructor” position in the coming months that will directly discuss these issues.

Popular Media

Educating people that you cannot see and don’t often hear back from.  This is perhaps one of the most difficult forms of educating in my mind and it’s done extremely well by television and radio shows like the Daily Planet and Quirks and Quarks.  You could try and work with one of these excellent teams of people or become a science writer with a specific slant on getting high quality scientific information into mainstream media.  I think the limit is your own creativity when it comes to finding a role in society that allows you to embrace your passion for educating – don’t restrict your thinking!

QUICK HIT:

Exciting news from the fight for global access to medicines and health technology development – a new organization called Mind the Health Gap is working to bring researchers, developers, and advocates together to tackle the problems of technology development, effective delivery, and funding.  No small goal for sure, but an exciting workshop is taking place this September and more information on the group can be found here.

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In chatting with Beth over the last few months about future topics for the Black Hole site, we identified a need to push out some information that might begin to alleviate some of the stresses on the science trainee environment in Canada.  The low hanging fruit in this category seems to be one that affects most current and prospective PhD holders and is underscored in past entries here and here.

We thought we could help fill the career guidance gap left by many trainee programs by launching a series of entries entitled “So you want to be a blank when you grow up”, the first of which is below…

So, you want to be a Science Writer when you grow up…

Throughout the course of my own training, I have encountered a number of fellow trainees that have a passion for science writing and they live amongst a sea of those that do not.  For those considering a career shift toward this passion, I think the first critical step is to figure out what kind of science writing you are interested in…  loosely I’ve broken it up into three categories:

Popular
Feeding the brains of the public

Technical
Accurately explaining scientific protocols and/or information

Editorial
Consolidating or shifting a scientific field, making policy, designing programs, lobbying for change

I would guess that all forms of writing are not equally appealing to everyone, but also that the wonderful heterogeneity in our population produces people that have a passion for all three types.  Trying your hand at these styles of writing should not wait until you’re two months before graduation and in panic mode about “what do I do next?” and it really is up to you to figure out what type of career you might want to pursue.  Some advice on how to test out these different styles while still in your degree program is below:

Popular:

• Submit to the Science Creative Quarterly or McSweeney’s
• Submit to your university’s magazine(s) or newspaper(s)

Technical:

• Write up a protocol for a book chapter (i.e.: current protocols)
• Write up protocols for internal lab databases and get feedback from lab members
• Read and improve Wikipedia entries around techniques or machines that you utilise every day

Editorial:

• Write a review on a topic in your field (this doubles as a great start on your thesis introduction)
• Write a letter to the editor or freelance article on a science based issue of public concern
• Start a journal club in your institute to identify key experiments that are missing from research papers and how the papers do or do not move the field forward (i.e.: start thinking like a journal editor)

Once you have figured out the type of writing you like, it’s time to consider the types of jobs that are out there for such styles of writing.  I’ve listed a few examples below, but they are here as a guide so you can get a sense of the type of thing to look for:

Popular

1. Science Journalism (Newspapers, Magazines, Television, Radio, etc)
   1. Print based, online, or backroom script writing/research for radio/tv
   2. Extra training (i.e.: journalism programs) might be considered and a great resource is J-Source.ca which appears to have a pretty comprehensive list of options
2. Non-Profits/Charities/Societies
   1. Making science exciting for particular groups (kids, patient groups, etc)
   2. Examples: Let’s Talk Science and Hospital for Sick Children

Technical

1. Industry brochures, manuals, etc (Job Example 1, 2, and 3)

Editorial

1. Science Journal Editor – remember that all editors are not specifically for reading/reviewing research articles.  Examples include here, here, and here.
2. Policy Analyst for organizations like the Suzuki Foundation or Fraser Institute
3. Report writing for organizations like the Council of Canadian Academies or Health Canada

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If you’re really serious about science writing, I would suggest a look at the following resources as well:

The Canadian Science Writers’ Association
Get in while you’re still a student – $35/yr vs. $75!

The Science Media Centre of Canada
Keep apprised of the latest with what promises to be a critical tool for science journalists in Canada

Association of British Science Writers
A little more transparent than the CSWA with its job listings and quite a lot of great ideas and information

Final Words

The last piece of advice that I can think of is for you to start as soon as possible with building a portfolio.  Nobody will ever hire you on the basis of “everyone has always said I can write well” or “I had the best grades in my English class”.  Many of these portfolio items need not be completely unrelated to your field (e.g.: book chapters, reviews, press releases, protocols, etc) so be creative with how you get your writing experience.  Also, many universities have very active and engaging extra-curricular programs that might be worth exploring so don’t be afraid to start writing articles for these groups or to develop your writing skills at professional development workshops.

And last but certainly not least – I’m not a proper science writer and don’t have the wealth of experience that many proper science writers do, so don’t be afraid to ask questions to such people or even request information interviews if you’re very interested in what they do.  If any such writers are reading this, please offer up more suggestions as well in the comment box below!

A friend of mine just sent me a link to this news story and it’s gotten me quite livid:

Tories scrap mandatory long-form census
StatsCan says quality of data will suffer

Every five years, Canada conducts a census, with the next one scheduled for 2011.  In the past, every household received the short census form, which contains just a few questions (like number of people in the home and their age and sex) and 1 in every 5 households received a mandatory long form.  The long form contained questions about a variety of things, like income, education, and ethnicity, and provided a lot of really important information about the population of Canada.  For example, I work in health care and we use census data all the time.  Knowing the makeup of our population allows us to make informed decisions about providing health care to meet the needs of the people living in our region. All levels of governments (municipal, provincial and federal), community agencies, and other organizations use the data from the census long form to develop evidence-informed policy.

But the ability to do that now at risk, as the federal government has, apparently without consulting anyone, decided to scrap the mandatory long form, citing that the long form represented “what most Canadians felt was an intrusion into their personal privacy in terms of answering the longer form” (Source) – though I haven’t seen from anything I’ve read thus far how they determined that this is how “most” Canadians feel.  Instead, they are replacing it with a “voluntary household survey” that will be sent to 1 in 3 households, the members of which can choose to complete – or not to complete – the survey.  This raises very serious concerns about the quality of the data – the people who choose not to respond to the long survey may be different from those who choose to respond to it, which will result in skewed information.  Which means we won’t have the data we need to make policies and provide appropriate services.

“Senior statisticians at Statistics Canada have conceded the change will make it more difficult to obtain reliable, detailed information.” (Source)

All of this brings up questions about politicians’ understanding of the importance of data and evidence-informed practice, not to mention their ignoring the scientific experts on the matter – in this case, the statisticians at Stats Canada. As David Eaves noted in his article, “Why you should care about the sudden demise of the mandatory long census form”:

“This is a direct attack on the ability of government to make smart decisions. It is an attack on evidence-based public policy. Moreover, it was a political decision – it came from the minister’s office and does not appear to reflect what Statistics Canada either wants or recommends. Of course, some governments prefer not to have information; all that data and evidence gets in the way of legislation and policies that are ineffective, costly and that reward vested interests (I’m looking at you, tough-on-crime agenda). ” [emphasis mine; Source]

In another news article on the topic I read:

Liberal MP Marlene Jennings “argued that Clement has shown in postings to the social media site Twitter that he does not understand how the mandatory nature of the long-form census allows Statistics Canada to properly weight the short form data. Clement debated sample size and data weighting with other posters, including an economist.

“(That’s) something Mr. Clement seemed not to understand when he was tweeting yesterday, so maybe he should take a stats course,” she said” (Source)

This lead me to check out Clement’s Twitter stream, where he referred to having a mandatory (as opposed to voluntary) long form as “state coercion” – I guess it’s fine to have the state “coerce” you to complete the short form – or, you know, obey any of our other laws – but they draw the line at the long form?

Now, as Dave mentioned in his most recent posting, we here at The Black Hole don’t want to just complain about problems, but rather want to focus on what we can do about addressing those problems.  To this end, I’d like to note that the Liberals are demanding the Conservatives reverse this decision to scrap the mandatory long form and, if they don’t, to introduce legislation to protect it themselves.  Personally, I’ll be writing to my own MP and Industry Minister Tony Clement to inform them about why the long form is so vital.  And I’ll be writing to some Liberals to suggest that they stick to their guns on this one and introduce legislation to protect the mandatory long form.

Tip:  Don’t know who your MP is?  You can search here to find out!

Update: There is now a petition on this issue. Check out: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/keep-the-canadian-census-long-form.html

Over the first six months of this site’s existence, a lot of virtual ink has been dedicated to highlighting the major concerns about the way we train scientists and how scientific information is communicated to the public and government. The next six months will continue to present this type of information, but will also focus on how to move forward while embracing the current trends within the system.

Importantly, we’ve now started our guest blogger section with two excellent entries from Carl Wonders and Marianne Stanford. We are certainly keen to expand this section as we go forward, using it to represent the diverse views in an attempt to build consensus and devise solutions moving forward – if you are interested email us here.

These two entries commented on the Canada Revenue Agency’s response to the CAPS letter of January 2009 and engage the major issue of Post Docs: Trainees or Employees? – this is a critical issue moving forward and the work of CAPS is beginning to gain clarity of how the post doctoral fellow is (and should be) classified. If Canada wishes to recruit and retain this class of researchers, major changes have to take place as the international reputation of Canada as a place to do a post doc is faltering and this uncertain status is a major contributor to such feelings. A personal take on it – Nobody in my current Institute complains about salary or vacation days… this might be because they are employees with standard incremental pay raises based on experience, have access to staff pension plans, and have 31 days of vacation.

While we’ve been very lucky to have such stellar guest bloggers, Beth and I have also continued writing on a multitude of issues:

Beth started the quarter with an entry on communicating science to non-scientists alerting readers to the metric of the “fog index” which approximates how difficult your writing is to understand. Many scientists would be shocked to know how difficult their writing is to interpret and should take note when trying to write for, or communicate to, a non-academic audience.

She also pulled on the heart strings of many PhDs and post doc prospective and current parents with her musings on having a family while undertaking academic science careers. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation showed that childcare at UBC would cost 38% of a post doc’s salary if they were being paid $35,000 (which is the situation of nearly 20% of post docs in Canada according to the November 2009 CAPS survey). The comment box was very active – Post Docs are often not paying into EI (and can’t get parental leave), contract working post docs often have to take a break in their contract and/or risk not getting it renewed, and my personal favourite:

My university’s policy on the matter is: “We don’t have a policy, talk to your supervisor.” What is this, the 1950s?

Most recently, Beth has taken a Q/A type approach, posing very open ended questions that have attracted a good deal of attention from our readers:
• Why does anyone think science is a good job?
• Why Do Scientists Blog?
• What Does A Graduate Degree Mean?

I started to spill over into the stuff that Beth normally writes about, starting off this quarter wondering: “If 80% of PhD holders do not become tenure track academics, what do they become and are universities helping them get there?” Looking at the Canadian numbers, we graduated nearly 5000 doctoral students in 2007 and 4000 of them will not become tenure track professors. Assuming we continue this trend (in fact it’s likely to increase as it has been doing), this equates to 40,000 workers over a ten year period who will have PhDs but will not be tenure track professors. The entry basically asked what resources were available to this large sector of workers to find this job while they were being trained and the answer was highly variable depending on the university you attended? Some great resources do exist though and I tried to highlight them in that entry.

Next, I touched on one of the things that I find most challenging about new groups with great ideas and mission statements. The Council of Canadian Academies has much to uplift one’s spirits in this way, but I am really concerned that this effort will not retain the support of the Government when its 10 year funding expires and has yet to convince me that they can sustain themselves on a cost recovery basis, so the hunt for new funds must begin. Why is it that such necessary programs (like an arms length scientific advisory panel) find it so difficult to cultivate support in Canada?

Finally, I wrote three entries that underscore some major themes of this site and the issues that are most pressing for science trainees in Canada:

1. Facilitating career mobility for senior lab based scientists – to become advisers, politicians, entrepreneurs, etc without being severely detrimental to the trainees?
2. Addressing the gap between policy makers and scientists
3. Focusing the training of PhDs on thinking and innovating rather than generating requisite amounts of information or data.

That’s it for this summary, stay tuned for a summer filled with ramblings from Beth and I as we try to bring new and exciting developments to the front page of the Black Hole site. Thanks, as always, for reading and spreading the word.

Quick Hit:
I now write for the Stem Cell Network’s blog and have published two entries for them. The first is on stem cell resources and organizations in the UK, and the second is of broader interest regarding a New Scientist article that did a network analysis of peer reviewed publication with some rather severe implications surrounding the process.

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I haven’t done research at a University since 2003.
While my CV suggests that I obtained a doctorate at UBC and I am currently at Cambridge University for post doctoral training, I have lived and worked at least 30 minutes from the central university campus for almost my entire research career. I am a product of “hospital” or “institute” based research operations – where millions get spent on scientific research. No large university in Canada is without them these days – the BC Cancer Agency, Sick Kids Hospital, and the Institut de recherches cliniques de Montréal are some examples that spring to mind.

The reasons for such an approach by universities are plentiful:

Access to Clinical Samples – medical doctors who see patients are next door and sometimes affiliated directly with particular research labs.

Interactions with Doctors – scientists meet medics and medics meet scientists… this allows an understanding and appreciation for the various stresses and operations of each career while also building strong collegial relationships.

Concentration of Resources – Medical research often requires expensive machines and resources. Sometimes these even get organized into core facilities that many labs can take advantage of which would not be possible without close proximity to one another.

All campuses have a limited amount of physical space to house research laboratories. Moving or creating certain theme based centres (Cancer, Engineering, etc) can definitely free up valuable real estate on the main campus.

It seems like such a simple no-brainer – put all the biomedical people together and they will do great things.

However, in this blog entry I will contend that while this silo based approach is effective at producing lots of data, it is having severe and lasting negative consequences on the well rounded training of scientists and we need to adapt training programs to deal with this sooner rather than later.

Location, Location, Location
The BC Cancer Agency in Vancouver is located at least 30 minutes by transit/bicycle to UBC. This means that any UBC campus service that is provided (counseling, recreation facilities, professional development workshops, university wide lectures, etc) cost the campus based trainee 5-10 minutes in travel and the off-campus trainee 1.0-1.5 hours. When coupled with the length of the event, this often results in a huge chunk of the day and typically results in most off campus students declining participation.

Workers, not Students
It was never more clear to me than the day I told my friend Graeme that I couldn’t stay out too late because I had to go into “work” early the following morning. He asked “but aren’t you a student?” and I replied “well yes, but…” and then trailed off realizing that most on campus students would have said “I have to go into the lab” or simply “start early”. It really is like a workplace routine – you go into a physical workplace every day, wouldn’t dream of staying home to read or research with giving prior notification, and you often have standard vacation days and reasonable compensation. This is a far cry from the English Literature doctoral student who is often isolated, completely flexible with their timetable, and critically under-compensated. The on campus lab based student finds themselves somewhere in the middle of these two extremes.

Too specialized?
I can imagine that many senior professors simply cannot relate to the degree of specialization that today’s trainees are forced to undertake in order to be at the cutting edge of their field. We do not get general science or even general biology degrees anymore, many do not know the names Karl Popper or Thomas Kuhn, and the divide between geneticists and biochemists is even widening to the point of not understanding each other. It is extremely frustrating to witness the complete lack of trainee enthusiasm to attend lectures and events that aren’t directly relevant to their exact field of research – I believe this is a product of their training and the increasing pressure to produce data and publications as opposed to being trained to think up the next big advances.

Pressure from Above
Professors at these institutes are not inculpable, though it can be argued that the tenure track pressures that they feel may lead them to cut corners in training as it is difficult to assign a metric to outside of “numbers of trainees” so is deemed less valuable. PhDs are often given cookie cutter projects pre-designed and pre-assessed for likely success.

Silo Mentality
The off campus situation reinforces the silo mentality and further fractionates scientists and this is beginning to bite us already. A great example is the increasing amount of engineering technology that is utilized in medical research – how many hospitals have on staff chemical or materials engineering professors? The systems biology approaches that are emerging from the reductionist single protein/molecule days of the 1980s and 90s risk being under-developed because the inter-disciplinary teams that need to be formed are often found outside of comfortable “informal coffee/chat” distance.

Possible solutions
Now that Canada has built many of these research complexes, I can hardly suggest razing them in an effort to let graduate students get one or two professional development sessions a year or to meet engineers over tea. What I think is necessary, however, is something that some groups have worked toward and all groups should work toward – building capacity at these research institutes to host such events and to facilitate broader thinking in their current programming. Engaging with university partners to enable off campus trainees to have some level of access to things like counseling, recreation, lectures, etc will greatly enhance the university experience and encourage more blue sky research.

As an example, I know that GrasPods (the trainee group at the CRC) has levied funds from the UBC Graduate Student Society to run off campus professional development workshops and networking events. This is exactly the type of thing that off campus research institutes need to create and support in an effort to compensate for the lack of a physical university campus.

Importantly, there needs to be space and time given to exposing graduate students and post docs (and professors!) to new lines of thinking outside of their field. Are we satisfied with training a cohort of lab monkeys that know how to sequence genomes and run PCRs without having the slightest idea (or desire) to engage or understand the social and economic implications of their research? I for one am not, and urge off campus research institutes and hospitals to assess and improve the quality of training that they are giving the next generation of scientists.

“A science researcher at Harvard now earns an annual salary that is only 1/50th the price of a family-sized house in Cambridge, a fact that may not be lost on an intelligent female Harvard undergraduate choosing a career.” (Source)

The announcement of the new Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) – 19 scientists granted $10 million over 7 years to establish research program in Canada – has raised some eyebrows for its notable lack of women among the recipients.  We’ve talked a bit about this issue here before, notably about the mat leave issue and the disadvantage one faces in a career in academics should they choose to take time off to have kids.  But while reading some of the articles and blog postings about the CERCs, I came across this interesting article, which poses the question: “Why does anyone think science is a good job?”

From the article:

The average trajectory for a successful scientist is the following:

1. age 18-22: paying high tuition fees at an undergraduate college
2. age 22-30: graduate school, possibly with a bit of work, living on a stipend of $1800 per month
3. age 30-35: working as a post-doc for $30,000 to $35,000 per year
4. age 36-43: professor at a good, but not great, university for $65,000 per year
5. age 44: with (if lucky) young children at home, fired by the university (“denied tenure” is the more polite term for the folks that universities discard), begins searching for a job in a market where employers primarily wish to hire folks in their early 30s

Not to mention that academics who make the above salaries aren’t just putting in a 40-hour work week with four weeks paid vacation and stat holidays that aren’t spent working on the next grant application, as they would be in another, higher paying, career. Put like that, it’s not hard to see why I – and many people like me – have gotten off the academic career track, regardless of whether or not we have/plan to have kids.  In fact, when I see the fierce competition that recent PhD grads and post-docs face trying to land a tenure-track position, it makes me wonder why so many people are willing to fight so hard for what, in many ways, is a thankless job¹.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that no one should ever become an academic researcher.  In fact, I think that academic research is essential – we can’t leave science solely in the hands of industry, for example.  But I think we need to give some serious thought to the compensation and work-life of our academic scientists. So while we talk about the ways to advocate for appropriate compensation and benefits for postdocs to help keep good scientists in the game – a very important issue, to be sure – we also have to be thinking about what comes after that for those postdocs who are lucky enough (or is that “unlucky” enough?) to land a tenure-track gig.

1. Maybe in the comments section those of you who have chosen to stay on the academic career path can shed some light onto why you think being an academic scientist is a good job?

While I was completing my doctorate, I was in a “big” lab. At its peak, the lab reached about 25 people (~8 each of graduate students and post doctoral fellows plus technicians and research students). Competing for time and attention with the boss was a definite reality – and my particular supervisor was not exactly working a 40 hour week either… the double all nighter before a conference trip was not an uncommon sight with trainee meetings often running well into the late evening and weekends. Clearly this model can work as numerous professors have been spun out from this lab and others just like it, but it takes a pretty special person to be able to train and direct the research of nearly 20 junior scientists. Additionally, it does not exactly work toward reducing the major stresses caused by the changing human resources of science.

This blog entry is a pitch for the large scale adoption of an idea that could be used to put a major dent in the number of professor hopefuls that are currently drowning in a sea of competition that has more sharks added daily. The amount of physical lab infrastructure that has been added over the last 20 years (especially through the efforts of the Canada Foundation for Innovation and charities too numerous to name) has been exceptional in Canada – just look at the MaRS Discovery District in Toronto as a shining example. With this relative abundance of space compared to the 1990s, many more groups are growing to big lab status having major implications on the training and research workload thrust on a single lab head. What we have yet to embrace is a shift from the “top-down, one person runs this show” mentality and this blog entry details the benefits that might be gained from having jointly run laboratories.

Hybrid Vigor: The tag team effect
We all know professors who do some things brilliantly, and make a miserable mess of others. Some are excellent experimentalists but just can’t seem to nail that massive grant while others thrive on big picture blue sky thinking, but lack the ability to help their trainees troubleshoot the nitty gritty. In any case, finding the perfect combination is a rarity and it stands to reason that some of these deficiencies could be complemented by a joint lab head with those particular strengths. A nice analogy is found in something my brother used to throw at me whenever I thought a musical was entertaining – “good singers do opera, good dancers do ballet, a musical tries to combine them both and ends up wallowing in mediocrity”. While I still maintain that there are people who can do both quite effectively, I can also see that sometimes it’s a good idea to let the singers sing and the dancers dance.

Reduced down-time
Ask a new tenure track laboratory professor about their first two years of research productivity in the new lab. My guess is you’ll be hit with a barrage of “not much because it took a long time to set up _____, _____, and _____”. If a newly minted principal investigator were instead able to join a group that already has things running smoothly, the list of blanks would be cut down dramatically and they could get on with the research much more quickly.

Mentoring
If one of the joint lab heads is more senior than the other, there is a remarkable opportunity to benefit from close mentoring. Poor navigation of the institute, university or external politics and administration are the first things that come to mind for slowing down research for no good reason. If the senior professor derives direct benefit from a successful junior researcher, then the help from this end will flow much more rapidly. Additionally, the trainees in the lab would benefit from having multiple perspectives on their research projects.

Possible Career Changes
Why do very few experienced laboratory scientists enter politics, journalism, or industry? Because if they left their laboratory full of graduate students, post doctoral fellows, and current grants, they would never be able to come back. If you could take a year or two to try something out (something like what UBC based Nobel laureate Carl Weiman just accepted from the Obama team) and leave your lab and trainees in the trusted hands of your co-investigator, the decision would be made substantially easier. As it stands now, a 3-6 month sabbatical sometimes cripples a lab’s productivity or an individual’s aspirations to complete a thesis – in short… there is never a good time to leave the lab.

In the end, the jointly run lab model would create more jobs without unreasonable strain on the overall laboratory research budget, would allow more time energy for alternative projects and teaching by the top tier of researchers, and would result in a more diverse training environment for graduate students and post docs. Importantly though – this cannot be made into a short term training post and needs to carry the same stability that a standard assistant professor position would carry and hold the same potential for career progression. It’s time to change the old model of “one person in charge” as team science becomes increasingly prevalent and good scientific training is often the first thing to get cut from busy professor’s schedules.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

PS: A huge thanks to Philip B, Mike O, and Lindsay G specifically for some great chats about this series of thoughts.

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Quick Hit:
A big welcome to our second guest blogger Marianne Stanford, current chair of the CAPS group. As a follow up to Carl’s excellent article on the CRA’s response to the CAPS letter on Post Doc status. This is exactly the type of discussion that needs to be had and The Black Hole site is happy to be able to give it some e-presence. Please weigh in and let us know what you think and look forward to summaries each quarter that will synthesize the ideas in these articles and your comments!
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Firstly, I would like to commend Carl Wonders on a thoughtful and valid assessment of the potential implications of the CRA ‘clarification’ on postdoctoral fellow (PDF) taxation. I’d like to follow up on that discussion from examining the issue from a different angle. I personally have been a PDF for 6 years, at two different institutions in Ontario, a president of a postdoctoral association and more recently the Chair of the Canadian Association of Postdoctoral Scholars (CAPS). My opinions are my own, not solicited or contributed to by CAPS, but certainly formed by my many discussions with that group. I personally in the past 6 years have been classified as the typical ‘no distinct status’ that most PDFs in Canada share, an ‘employee’ PDF of a research institute and most recently as a ‘trainee’ or academic PDF receiving tax exemption on my stipend. The ideal situation for a PDF in Canada has in the end little to do with exactly how they are paid or taxed, but requires that they are appropriately compensated for experience, extensive education and enormous contribution to the scientific endeavour. Indeed, considering that many graduate students and technical scientific employees bring home considerably more than the average PDF indicates that this needs to change. How that change is enacted must be carefully and thoughtfully done so as not to penalize the current PDFs nor prevent new PhDs from entering the Canadian PDF system.
Having PDFs treated akin to medical residents is a wonderful idea, but no matter how it appears to be stipulated by the CRA it isn’t feasible in the current system. Why? Frankly, it is due to how we are compensated. PDFs, by in large, are paid from public research fund budgets through granting agencies – either directly through fellowships or indirectly through competitive grants earned by our mentors. Residents, who perform clinical duties are paid from health care budgets, not academic research ones. In our case, the granting councils, particularly the Tri-council of NSERC, SSHRC and CIHR have a lot to say about the nature of our tenure. They have explicitly said that the postdoctoral period is one of extended training and not one of employment. Thus, this explains the modest stipend levels and why like graduate student scholarships, PDF fellowships should be tax exempt. Obviously this message did not reach the CRA or the government of Canada. So, assuming that they rather than granting agencies, provinces and academic institutions gets to decide who is a legitimate trainee, where do we go from here?
The obvious choice is employment. The problem with this is the assumption that a simple change in status will result in higher wages, extended health benefits, job stability and overall better conditions for PDFs. It will by its nature allow PDFs to contribute to EI, CPP, RRSPs, but I emphasize the word CONTRIBUTE. That does not necessarily mean a higher wage to cover those contributions. Indeed, in my personal experience, employment status in and of itself only resulted in a smaller paycheque. That may sound glib, because it did results in significant changes to the nature of my relationship as a PDF, and provided me a number of basic rights that I lacked prior to the change. However, I was in a good lab, with a great mentor and a clear career path. When we approached our institute with our new found ‘employee’ status looking for benefits we thought we were due, we were promptly informed that we were a ‘temporary, contract employee’ not entitled to the extended benefits of permanent research staff. By its very nature, a postdoctoral period is NOT a career, thus is temporary, even up to 6 years. Thus, access to anything other than basic employee deductions is likely to require significant negotiations and will depend on employee relations within the individual institutions. This is not something that will be mandated nationally, unless instituted by those who provide our funds – the funding agencies. Thus, before any PDF seeks employment status they need to be clear of its implications. Unless and until we can first lobby for reasonable and well earned compensation (closer to the $70,000/year the government suggests we receive than the $38,000/year average stipend that currently exists) than a change in status will likely hit the individual PDF very hard, in the pocketbook. On the other hand, for the first time in history, both the government and the CRA have provided us with solid evidence that the current system is not appropriate and requires significant change. They must now mandate the national community (particularly the publically funded research councils) to enact this change in a reasonable and proactive way.