轉錄~~~沒排版 大家看的懂就好:P == http://wuphys.wustl.edu/~katz/scientist.html Don't Become a Scientist! Jonathan I. Katz Professor of Physics Washington University, St. Louis, Mo. [my last name]@wuphys.wustl.edu Are you thinking of becoming a scientist? Do you want to uncover the mysteries of nature, perform experiments or carry out calculations to learn how the world works? Forget it! Science is fun and exciting. The thrill of discovery is unique. If you are smar t, ambitious and hard working you should major in science as an undergraduate. But that is as far as you should take it. After graduation, you will have to de al with the real world. That means that you should not even consider going to g raduate school in science. Do something else instead: medical school, law schoo l, computers or engineering, or something else which appeals to you. Why am I (a tenured professor of physics) trying to discourage you from followi ng a career path which was successful for me? Because times have changed (I rec eived my Ph.D. in 1973, and tenure in 1976). American science no longer offers a reasonable career path. If you go to graduate school in science it is in the expectation of spending your working life doing scientific research, using your ingenuity and curiosity to solve important and interesting problems. You will almost certainly be disappointed, probably when it is too late to choose anothe r career. American universities train roughly twice as many Ph.D.s as there are jobs for them. When something, or someone, is a glut on the market, the price drops. In the case of Ph.D. scientists, the reduction in price takes the form of many yea rs spent in ``holding pattern'' postdoctoral jobs. Permanent jobs don't pay muc h less than they used to, but instead of obtaining a real job two years after t he Ph.D. (as was typical 25 years ago) most young scientists spend five, ten, o r more years as postdocs. They have no prospect of permanent employment and oft en must obtain a new postdoctoral position and move every two years. For many m ore details consult the Young Scientists' Network or read the account in the Ma y, 2001 issue of the Washington Monthly. As examples, consider two of the leading candidates for a recent Assistant Prof essorship in my department. One was 37, ten years out of graduate school (he di dn't get the job). The leading candidate, whom everyone thinks is brilliant, wa s 35, seven years out of graduate school. Only then was he offered his first pe rmanent job (that's not tenure, just the possibility of it six years later, and a step off the treadmill of looking for a new job every two years). The latest example is a 39 year old candidate for another Assistant Professorship; he has published 35 papers. In contrast, a doctor typically enters private practice a t 29, a lawyer at 25 and makes partner at 31, and a computer scientist with a P h.D. has a very good job at 27 (computer science and engineering are the few fi elds in which industrial demand makes it sensible to get a Ph.D.). Anyone with the intelligence, ambition and willingness to work hard to succeed in science c an also succeed in any of these other professions. Typical postdoctoral salaries begin at $27,000 annually in the biological scien ces and about $35,000 in the physical sciences (graduate student stipends are l ess than half these figures). Can you support a family on that income? It suffi ces for a young couple in a small apartment, though I know of one physicist who se wife left him because she was tired of repeatedly moving with little prospec t of settling down. When you are in your thirties you will need more: a house i n a good school district and all the other necessities of ordinary middle class life. Science is a profession, not a religious vocation, and does not justify an oath of poverty or celibacy. Of course, you don't go into science to get rich. So you choose not to go to me dical or law school, even though a doctor or lawyer typically earns two to thre e times as much as a scientist (one lucky enough to have a good senior-level jo b). I made that choice too. I became a scientist in order to have the freedom t o work on problems which interest me. But you probably won't get that freedom. As a postdoc you will work on someone else's ideas, and may be treated as a tec hnician rather than as an independent collaborator. Eventually, you will probab ly be squeezed out of science entirely. You can get a fine job as a computer pr ogrammer, but why not do this at 22, rather than putting up with a decade of mi sery in the scientific job market first? The longer you spend in science the ha rder you will find it to leave, and the less attractive you will be to prospect ive employers in other fields. Perhaps you are so talented that you can beat the postdoc trap; some university (there are hardly any industrial jobs in the physical sciences) will be so imp ressed with you that you will be hired into a tenure track position two years o ut of graduate school. Maybe. But the general cheapening of scientific labor me ans that even the most talented stay on the postdoctoral treadmill for a very l ong time; consider the job candidates described above. And many who appear to b e very talented, with grades and recommendations to match, later find that the competition of research is more difficult, or at least different, and that they must struggle with the rest. Suppose you do eventually obtain a permanent job, perhaps a tenured professorsh ip. The struggle for a job is now replaced by a struggle for grant support, and again there is a glut of scientists. Now you spend your time writing proposals rather than doing research. Worse, because your proposals are judged by your c ompetitors you cannot follow your curiosity, but must spend your effort and tal ents on anticipating and deflecting criticism rather than on solving the import ant scientific problems. They're not the same thing: you cannot put your past s uccesses in a proposal, because they are finished work, and your new ideas, how ever original and clever, are still unproven. It is proverbial that original id eas are the kiss of death for a proposal; because they have not yet been proved to work (after all, that is what you are proposing to do) they can be, and wil l be, rated poorly. Having achieved the promised land, you find that it is not what you wanted after all. What can be done? The first thing for any young person (which means anyone who does not have a permanent job in science) to do is to pursue another career. Th is will spare you the misery of disappointed expectations. Young Americans have generally woken up to the bad prospects and absence of a reasonable middle cla ss career path in science and are deserting it. If you haven't yet, then join t hem. Leave graduate school to people from India and China, for whom the prospec ts at home are even worse. I have known more people whose lives have been ruine d by getting a Ph.D. in physics than by drugs. If you are in a position of leadership in science then you should try to persua de the funding agencies to train fewer Ph.D.s. The glut of scientists is entire ly the consequence of funding policies (almost all graduate education is paid f or by federal grants). The funding agencies are bemoaning the scarcity of young people interested in science when they themselves caused this scarcity by dest roying science as a career. They could reverse this situation by matching the n umber trained to the demand, but they refuse to do so, or even to discuss the p roblem seriously (for many years the NSF propagated a dishonest prediction of a coming shortage of scientists, and most funding agencies still act as if this were true). The result is that the best young people, who should go into scienc e, sensibly refuse to do so, and the graduate schools are filled with weak Amer ican students and with foreigners lured by the American student visa. --

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