I’ve noticed during my attendance here at the 2009 meeting of the American Society for Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) that, when introducing myself as working for a publishing company, people look at me slightly wary – and that even though my company has a very good reputation in marine science. It’s the ‘oh, a non-scientist’ look. I know this because, as soon as I talk a little about my background – or someone else stands next to me who I know from my previous two lives – people start to warm up and talk more openly.
Honestly, people, you need to get over it. It’s not exactly easy to get funded in science. Those who do are, to a large extent, lucky (on top of being hopefully very good). In this time of financial crisis, there will be even more scientists who have to consider ‘alternative careers’, and not all of them will do this by choice.
I had dinner with a group of US scientists yesterday, and they were all talking about the recent budget cuts and hiring freezes at their institutions. A postdoc recounted that she received a letter with the information on the cuts, telling her that they “would appreciate if you could write a brief statement on how this will affect your research”. Her reaction was predictable: “what do you mean how will this affect my research – this is my job!!!”.
As science is among the first things that usually go on the chopping block in times of a cash shortage, it might be worth considering a change in attitude among scientists. Be nice to those of us who ’didn’t make it in science’ or are following other career paths – we have a multitude of reasons. And – dare I say it – you could be in the same situation tomorrow. You might even consider a career at Nature..!
P.S. I almost wonder whether more scientists working in other jobs won’t have a positive side-effect: we can infiltrate everything!
I used to get that reaction a lot when I started working for Nature and went to conferences for the first time as someone who’d gone over to the
OtherDarkpublishing side. The unsaid reaction is ‘how come a total non-entity like you is in a position of power over my career and livelihood’?I get it less now because (1) I’m bigger than they are (2) I have a 21-year track record at Nature, so everyone knows who I am: to the extent that recent graduates and postdocs have ALWAYS known me as an editor, not a scientist, and some of the older generation who first looked askance at me are
retiredinsanedead.This familiarity is helpful – in my experience, authors are always reassured to know at least the name of the editor handling their manuscript, and get upset if the handling editor changes during the review process.
Some of the same people who equated the publishing industry with the Great Babylonian Carbuncle of DOOM have since become close friends, and because of that, evangelists for Nature. The trick is to get to know as many researchers as you can personally, with a view to exploding the myth that your journal is some impenetrably oracular black box (insert alternative mixed metaphor of your choice), but is in fact staffed by human beings whose decisions are at least explicable, is not always sensible.
I am currently working at an undergrad Biology department, and all the students (give or take a few) want to go to med school after they’re done. They have to be told of alternative paths, such as research because not everyone can be a doctor.
For some people, research is the alternative.
I should make this a blog post, not a comment. But there really isn’t much more to say about it.
Henry: sure, I’m getting to know as many people as I can; it’s something I’ve always done and I’ve always found it helpful. I feel fortunate in having been able to collect some ‘connections’ in my different jobs, it often turns out to be a good starting point! But my big extra credit today is for getting the really nice chap from Oxford University Press to hang up our posters in his booth…
Eva: You are right of course, but don’t you think those people are, overall, the minority? Speaking of medical research: I talked to two students yesterday who told me they don’t know many people here because they just happen to work on a marine bacterium, but they do medical research. It’s quite cool: the bacterium they’re looking at gets itself inside other bacteria, eats them from the inside, reproduces in there, and then bursts out. This might be used to target harmful bacteria; for example, this thing seems to like E. coli. Of course, the challenge will be to prevent it from doing this to beneficial bacteria… (now, that really should have been a seperate post somewhere!).
Oh, they are a minority. It’s just to show that “alternative career” is very relative and subjective.