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The Seamy Side of Science
Postdoctoral appointments have become holding patterns for otherwise unemployed young scientists.
By Daniel S. Greenberg
Postdoctoral fellows are the stoop labor of science, indispensable for progress in research, but consigned to lowly status in the lab. That’s an old story, capped in recent years by a rising din of grievances followed by efforts in the scientific establishment to do better by these entrants to research careers.
In 2000, scattered but continuing reports of paltry postdoc pay and mistreatment by tenured masters were echoed in a study conducted by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences. Postdocs, a summary preface noted, “are neglected, even exploited inappropriately, while making creative and fundamental contributions to the research projects on which they worked.” Observing that postdocs “have no place to go to determine appropriate expectations or redress grievances,” it added that “often the sole person to whom they can turn for assistance is the Principal Investigator who hired them and upon whom they depend not only for support in their current position but also for help in advancing their careers.”
Corroboration that something was seriously amiss soon became plentiful. In 2003, the journal Nature Genetics observed that “nightmarish stories are told of labs in which postdocs are set against each other on the same project, of fights over ownership of projects and of abusive behavior.” Pillars of the scientific establishment, the National Academy of Sciences and Nature Genetics do not customarily spotlight the seamy side of science.
In the ensuing years, improvements have been made, starting with overt recognition that a problem exists. In 2003, several scientific organizations teamed up to establish the Washingtonbased National Postdoctoral Association, which has evolved into a clearinghouse for information about postdocs as well as a drumbeater for humane treatment of these transients on the pathway to careers in science. In addition, federal and private organizations have increased stipends for postdocs. The National Institutes of Health (NIH), a major funder of postdocs through grants to university-based researchers, among other grantees, provides a stipend that starts at $47,200 a year and rises to $60,000 in the fifth year. Health benefits, once a rarity for postdocs, are increasingly common and often include family coverage. Postdoc campus associations, offering strength in numbers, have also become more common, as has the appointment of ombudsmen to receive and evaluate complaints. Conflict-of-interest codes restrict the employment of postdocs in their professors’ off-campus commercial activities—or at least they are supposed to. In general, then, correctives have been put in place and seem to be taking root, though some wariness is in order, given the career vulnerability of postdocs and the understandable reluctance to be branded a troublemaker.
Even as postdocs’ working conditions seem to be improving, however, their long-term career prospects are stagnating. A crucial factor in the progress of a postdoc from humble apprenticesubordinate in someone else’s lab to grant-supported principal investigator is the grant economy—now in a tenuous condition. The original purpose of the postdoc appointment was to deepen and focus the training of freshly minted PhDs through two or three years of research in the lab of a senior scientist. But as the growth of government research funds underwrote the expansion of PhD programs, the pipelines to professional independence became clogged. The postdoc appointment took on an additional role: “holding pattern” for otherwise unemployed young scientists. Twenty-three percent of engineering PhDs recently reported taking postdoc appointments because “other employment options [were] not available,” according to a survey by the National Science Foundation. Multiple postdoc appointments were reported by 17 percent of PhDs in the life sciences and 12 percent in the physical sciences. The low unemployment rates for scientists—around 2 percent—may, in fact, be skewed by postdoc appointments that keep young scientists off the jobless rolls, though at relatively low pay.
In the life sciences, which account for 57 percent of postdocs, the prospects for moving on to independent research are especially grim. The reason is plain: the stagnant budget of the NIH, which Congress doubled between 1998 and 2003 to a total of $29 billion and ever since has left at the same level. In response to the big budget increase, applications for NIH grants also doubled, reflecting the Willie Sutton principle. At the same time, purchasing power has declined by 12 percent as a result of inflation.
The young are suffering most from this perverse financial turnabout. Senior scientists have the experience and political skill to make it through the peer-review system when applying for NIH grants. The hopeful newcomers do not—a disparity reflected in a dour accounting of the NIH by the magazine Science: “The agency now funds significantly more people over the age of 70 than under the age of 30.” Noting this disparity, NIH director Elias Zerhouni commented, “We’re eating our seedcorn.”
Daniel S. Greenberg is a Washington journalist. He is the author of Science for Sale: The Perils, Rewards, and Delusions of Campus Capitalism. His e-mail address is danielg523@aol.com.
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