How Long are Postdoctoral Fellowships? - Part 2

Following some interesting interactions with readers on Twitter and in the comments, it seems my initial post could have improved with 1) more data, and 2) break-down by gender. So, I spent some time this weekend digging through my last two Bumper Cars posts (2014-2015, 2015-2016) in order to provide a clearer picture.

How did we get here? Read the original post.

2015 - Random Trillium from a recent weekend hike

For starters, raw numbers - as of this writing, there are 194 confirmed new hires between the two lists. Of these, I was able to track down information about postdoctoral appointments for 132 (68%). Unfortunately, there's no consistent format for how candidates track their experience; I found myself cobbling it together from LinkedIn, university websites, ACS member profiles, and digital thesis repositories.

To keep myself honest, I'm pasting my assumptions below* this post, as before.

Now, to the numbers: First, the aggregate statistics - of the 132, here's the new mean/median/mode:

MEAN:	3.49 years
MODE:	3 years
MEDIAN	3 years

MIN:             0 year (no postdoc!)
MAX:            9 years

(n = 132)

So, roughly in line with what I had before. But what about the gender gap? Do men spend significantly less time as postdoctoral scholars?

First, it helps to clarify what the real split looks like: Of 132 candidates, 39 (29.5%) are female. This may be an admittedly small data set, but I see only a slight difference** in overall time: 

3.47 years for men (n = 93), 3.54 years for women (n = 39).

Edit (6/21): A good spot to insert a quote from a 2013 Beth Halford piece in C&EN:

"For one, although there are no hard numbers to point to, some say people are spending more time in postdoctoral positions. In chemistry, one to two years used to be the norm, but that time frame may be creeping up. Some chemists tell C&EN that they are spending five or more years doing postdoctoral studies."

Seems to be the case, at least to me.

Of course, the best way to make this data set relevant is to send in even more new names! Once I can figure out a good mechanism to capture pharma / gov't hires, I'll try to expand the analysis. Who knows? Maybe we'll get a real live database set up...

--

*These postdocs reflect faculty appointments; I'm clearly not counting those who went into government, pharmaceutical, industry, or left chemistry entirely. If someone has a good idea for how to capture that data, I'm all ears.

Counting time: If someone gave a graduation year - "Ph.D. 2009"-  I assumed a postdoctoral stint until their faculty start date. For example, 2015 start = 6 years a postdoc. If, however, they provided a range - "postdoc 2012-2014" - I assumed that they postdoc'd the difference of that time, or 2 years, despite the fact that, depending on start and end dates, that could reasonably be interpreted as any length of time between 13 months (Dec 2012-Jan 2014) and 36 months (Jan 2012-Dec 2014).

Of the 77 new faculty starting in 2015 or 2016 (as of June 2015), I was only able to find bio-sketch information for half. The following people from my list are represented in the above statistics: Li, Engle, Hyster, Matson, Menard, Personick, Thoi, Tsui, Wasa, Blakemore, Browne, Devery, Gahlmann, Kempa, Limmer, Nelson, Sing, Thompson, Bantz, Hubbard, Garcia-Bosch, Huo, Wei Li, Mirica, Rossini, Seiple, Wu, Anand, Boudreau, Genereux, Jiang, Sletten, Theberge, Fu, Ke, Conley, Raston.

**One additional complicating factor? It's tough to tell who's a postdoc anymore. This study only includes candidates who list their experience as "postdoc", "postdoctoral fellow", "research associate", or something of that ilk. Senior researcher? NSF Fellow? Visiting researcher? Lab assistant? Are these postdoctoral positions, or not? Tough to tell, so I excluded them. Thus, I may be artificially shortening certain candidates' timelines.

Additionally, certain candidates had "gaps" of 1-2 years in their experience, and I could find no information for what they did. Took time off? Worked somewhere that didn't pan out? Had a child? I simply don't know.

What's Important? Data Analysis

Thanks again to everyone who wrote in with their two (or three) most important job criteria.

We had a final tally of 42 (!) respondents, who gave a total of 94 answers. Here's the much-vaunted pie chart I promised on Friday:

Comments:

1. Many people wanted "meaning" behind their daily work. There're a lot of terms one could use to describe that special feeling of fulfillment - they're all included in the largest pie wedge.

2. Only a tenth of you indicated salary or benefits as part of your criteria. Two percent mentioned promotions or advancement. Shocking, really, especially in a down economy.

3. The "Misc" category included responses such as autonomy, lack of bureaucracy, morality, health, and...free food.

4. Prediction: If I offered a 5-year job working on cures for neglected diseases, starring top-flight, team-oriented colleagues located 10 minutes down the street from your house, most of you would take it.

Right?

So, in the end, have we vindicated Mr. Sturgeon's beliefs about modern science workers? I believe we have. Interesting work and collegiality really do seem to matter most!*

*Limitations: Now, this only surveyed 42 chemists, so I'm missing out on the other 90,858. I'm well aware that the survey only caught 1) chemists reading blogs, 2) chemists on Twitter, and 3) chemists who could comment on blogs during (presumably) working hours. Not exactly perfect conditions for such a study. My 'analysis,' such as it was, had no tests for accuracy, and no way to filter out trolls. C'est la vie.

Challenge: I'd love to see this survey writ large...wouldn't you? Perhaps a larger journal or scientific society could issue the survey to their members (lookin' at you, ACS, Science...).

Readers: Questions, comments? Feel free to contact me (Seearroh_AT_gmail).

What's Important to YOU?

Yesterday's post over at Chemjobber's place really caught my attention. Paul Sturgeon, writing in trade mag Plastics News, opined that employers don't attract top talent due to fundamental misunderstandings in what "next-gen" employees really care about.

Made me wonder, if you asked some current science professionals about their top two workplace criteria, what would you get? Would Mr. Sturgeon be dismissed, or vindicated?

OK, readers, here's the game: Please list your top two workplace criteria in the Comments section. Once I get ~10 entries, I'll start to input them in a super-sciencey gizmo called a pie chart. Hopefully, we'll get a few more entrants, and I can start to pin down what's important (and what's really not).

I'll go first: My top two criteria are 1. interesting / meaningful work, and 2. length of commute.

Can't wait to see your responses!

(N.B. Certainly, a wide demographic visits chem blogs, but I'd argue the results will skew towards slightly younger, highly-educated, potentially job-seeking professionals. Exactly the demographic the above article argues companies wish to hire!)

Digging Nobel Data

The hot topic in the chemblogosphere this past week? The 2012 Nobel Prizes.

Just after the fervor had died down, Samuel Arbesman over at Wired wrote a piece about data mining the Nobel prize nominees. Well, there goes my weekend!

Sea Creature? Alien ship? Nope, just a light fixture.

See, the Nobel foundation (wisely) restricts release of the nominations until 50 years have passed. Thus, the data are somewhat dated, and they're not available online for all the prizes yet; sadly, Chemistry currently lacks any nomination data. But, ironically, a fully searchable database exists for Physiology and Medicine prize nominations, ca. 1900-1951.

Raw Hits - Playing around, I entered in terms one might choose for interdisciplinary awards: chem (235 hits), drug (only 7 hits!), crystal (54 hits), antibiotics (28 hits), and reaction (84 hits).

Usual Suspects - Future winners no doubt collect their share of early nominations, such as Waksman (streptomycin, 43 nods), Fleming (penicillin, 34 nods), and Ehrlich (chemotherapy / staining, 73 nods).

Superlatives - Obviously, the "career prize" aspect of the Nobel entered into judging quite early. Paul van Grutzen nominated Emil Abderhalden in 1917, saying "With great elegance [he] has solved many problems in chemistry." Two nominators in 1901 and 1905 nominated Albert von Koelliker for "A 60 year career in anatomy." In 1950, 10 nominators chose to "stuff" the ballot box in favor of Edward Kendall "...for his notable contributions to biochemistry."

Special Award Goes to...Prof. Jacques Loeb (UChicago / UC-Berkeley / Rockefeller). Far as I can tell, Dr. Loeb wins for most nominations in this category - 79 times, from 1901-1924 - without winning the Prize. His work involved artificial parthenogenesis, inducing egg cells to begin division without prior fertilization, using chemical signalling molecules and UV light.

Readers: Have fun with the database, and let me know what you find in the comments!