Getting Philosophical

Posted on May 2, 2011 by Athene Donald

A month or two back, in the editorial for the edition of Eureka discussing science and the media on the back of an event at the Royal Society, it was written

We should send chemistry graduates to poetry slams, physicists to literary festivals, while the non-scientists should be welcomed on to lab benches until we all learn to speak the same language and appreciate what each other does.

I am not precisely following this admonition, but nevertheless I have accepted – with some trepidation – an invitation to participate at one of the Hay festivals; not the well-known literary festival but the more recently initiated philosophy one known as HowTheLightgetsIn which runs in parallel.

Flyer for HowTheLightGetsIn Festival

When I was first rung up I just assumed that this was an invitation to discuss gender issues, since I seem increasingly to be wheeled out to do that. So I was completely gobsmacked to find instead I was being asked to take part in a debate about Human Enhancement. What, I thought, do I know about this? When pressed, it turned out that I was being invited to participate because I have done some work potentially related to prosthetics. Readers may recall I wrote previously about the original press release associated with the L’Oreal/UNESCO prize and how Chinese Whispers transmuted the content relating to protein aggregation into something very different. Now, the other part of this release was similarly taking on a life of its own from ‘work relevant to hip replacements’ to being an apparent expert in something totally other. So at the end of the phone I took a deep breath. I paused. I said I’d come back to them. But upon reflection I thought, as a scientist I should enter into a debate with philosophers and bioethicists and not run away from it; on a subject like this a science input is extremely important and so I agreed. Earlier I wrote

Professors aren’t without their own weak spots and it’s never too late to improve one’s skillbase.

I have accepted the challenge, am setting out to improve this particular skillbase of public debating, and now I await with some nervousness my participation in the following (I quote from their blurb):

Human and Superhuman
Mary Warnock, John Harris, Athene Donald, Aubrey de Grey. Bryan Appleyard chairs.

Scientists now claim a brave new world of designer humans is on our doorstep. Is this an illusion, a disaster, or a great opportunity to reinvent what it means to be human?
Life extension proponent Aubrey de Grey and philosopher John Harris take on bioethicist Mary Warnock and Cambridge physicist Athene Donald.

(You will see I am starting with the very best: Mary Warnock, who is a long term heroine of mine and erstwhile Mistress of my alma mater college Girton. She it was who chaired the production of the 1984 Warnock ‘Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology’, the bedrock of the 1990 Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act. I am glad I am on the same side as her!)

Right, I thought, I had better get to grips with the other side. So I spent much of Easter reading John Harris’ book Enhancing Evolution, the Ethical Case for Making Better People. Harris is a philosopher, currently a professor of Bioethics at Manchester (in the Law Faculty). I have not made a habit of reading books by philosophers and I cannot tell whether my reaction to this book is specific or general. As a scientist, weighing up evidence, let me just say I did not find it convincing. I should probably save my detailed views for the debate itself but, suffice it to say, much of it seemed to me to be a case of Harris making assertions and assumptions which he thought were so self-evident as needing no discussion and then trouncing other people’s views who had perhaps done the same thing. He is clearly very sure of his own position. I am quite prepared to believe my reaction to this is because I am missing something crucial that underlies the way he writes, but I’ll give an example by way of illustration.

In his chapter on the Good and Bad Uses of Technology he is busily dissecting Leon Kass’s arguments, with whom he clearly violently disagrees. Kass says:

No music lover would be satisfied with getting from a pill the pleasure of listening to Mozart without ever hearing the music. Most people want both to feel good and to feel good about themselves, but only as a result of being good and doing good.

Kass does not believe enhancement by artificial means is good because (in part) it won’t make us feel good. However Harris attempts to negate the argument by saying

Kass is right, but not because he or the music lover to whom he appeals are fastidious. You cannot get music from a pill because a pill does not make a sound, even in the brain.

I find this rebuttal completely unsatisfactory because so much of what Harris talks about is equally implausible. We do not currently have a prevent-all vaccine for cancers – to which he frequently alludes as if it will happen – so why does he rule out a pill which makes us hear Mozart in the brain as not going to happen but asserts the things he wants to believe in as certainties? I am nervous that I am completely missing the points Harris wants to make (impostor syndrome rears its ugly head again), but I will discover this publicly at the end of May!  I do at least have a clear idea of my position, and I hope I can inject some rational science into the discussion in as well as my own more personal views about the desirability and plausibility of some of the  proposals Harris puts forward.

Having signed up for one debate at the limits of my knowledge base, in the interests of getting science into a philosophy festival, it seemed a small step to agree to a second one:

A Paradigm of Health
Athene Donald, Dylan Evans, Jayney Goddard, Steve Fuller. Rachel Armstrong chairs.

Even though the successes of western medicine are loudly applauded, alternatives from aromatherapy to raki, acupuncture to crystal healing, balloon in popularity. Is this evidence that the western model of health is flawed? Could any of these alternatives offer a genuinely new paradigm or are we seeing human gullibility at work?
Homeopath Jayney Goddard and iconoclastic sociologist Steve Fuller face up to Cambridge biophysicist Athene Donald and author of Placebo: The Belief Effect Dylan Evans.

I’ve only just started on my crash course of reading for this one yet…..but I do have a clear notion of where I stand. Having said that, it is a fact that I have carried out some research vaguely relevant to acupuncture (even if ultimately my motivation was to try to stop my international collaborators invoking a ‘vital force’ that I thought was no more than Brownian motion) and I don’t rule all alternative medicine out, just some of the obvious things such as homeopathy.

Finally, yes I have additionally agreed to give a solo talk on gender issues, bizarrely currently called ‘Saving Science’. I managed to get the blurb for my talk altered to the fact that women might be ‘vital’ for science rather than about to save it, but failed to spot the misleading word ‘saving’ was still present in the title

Saving Science
Athene Donald

The laureate for the Women in Science awards, Dame Athene Donald, talks about the dangers of prejudice, overcoming gender stereotypes and how women are vital for the sciences.
‘Revolutionary’ – Guardian

So you can see that the Chinese whispers continues. I – and not just my alleged treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease – have become ‘revolutionary’. Oh dear.

Maybe see some of you in Hay?

Posted in Communicating Science, Interdisciplinary Science | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Sagacity or Self-Centredness?

Posted on April 27, 2011 by Athene Donald

What should one talk about when asked to talk about one’s life, career path and general advice to a group of young persons? I use that awkward term advisedly to cover the range of categories that encompass schoolchildren, students, postgrads and/or postdocs. In the past few months I have received invitations to talk to groups of all of these. This week it was the turn of engineering postgrads in Edinburgh, next week it is young women in the physical sciences in Manchester.  I may have views about what has worked – and what has signally failed – for me at different career stages, but does this mean I am well-placed to give advice to others whose backgrounds, challenges, disciplines and personalities may be wildly different? I understand the logic in inviting me to talk; nevertheless I don’t have any certainty I can say much that is useful to the majority of any audience I speak to.  Some of what I want to say should be self-evident, but perhaps is none the worse to be spelled out because of that. However, where I talk about things that have worked for me personally that is exactly what they are. There is no guarantee tips that I have found effective have any wider applicability. I have asked for feedback from the Edinburgh organisers, because it would be useful to know what sort of stuff actually helps.  Part of the motivation for this blog post is to widen the debate about what it is that people may find useful from such a talk.

There are different categories of things one might offer. First of all career planning. I for one didn’t have any, when I set out my limited imagination didn’t extend beyond marriage plus a family a few years after graduation, possibly with a few years as a tax inspector in between university and the standard life of a woman of my generation. That is not the message I will be conveying in my talks of course, nor indeed in things I have written on this blog where I encourage people to visit their careers’ advisers (maybe I did that once, I can’t remember), ask pertinent questions of all and sundry about how the world works ‘out there’ and make sure they are constantly upgrading their skills base. All very wise things to say, and perhaps my defence about my miserable planning (or lack thereof) has to be life was different when I was setting out. The idea of a ‘skills base’, let alone transferable skills or any of these other phrases just hadn’t entered the collective consciousness.  So I just followed my nose and things panned out in unexpected and unintended ways that happen to have been extremely satisfying.

What about attitudes towards progression? A couple of years ago, when preparing a press release for the L’Oreal/UNESCO prize, I was asked for a pithy one sentence piece of advice for those just entering the career pipeline. I remember well what I said

It is the things one doesn’t do that one regrets, not the things one does.

I think that is also a very valuable piece of advice, but I am not sure I have particularly followed it, or even thought in those terms. To be honest, the comment was in large part prompted by an incident when I was about 16 when I turned down an opportunity to go water-skiing, mainly due to cowardice but also because the weather was nippy and windy and I wasn’t sure I fancied it anyhow. The offer was not repeated and to this day I have never water-skied and no doubt never will. It did teach me that one should think very hard before rejecting opportunities that fairly obviously are unlikely to recur, but I could not truthfully say I have lived by the advice ever after.

A much more useful piece of advice that ought to be given and one I hope I  have finally learnt to follow – the hard way – is what to do when things go wrong, as they will with monotonous frequency.  Gnash your teeth by all means, weep, wail, hit your head against the wall and generally rail against the unfairness of the world. But ultimately you either have to pick yourself up or give up completely. No one who has succeeded has done so without being kicked at regular intervals, in visible  – they didn’t get that job, fellowship or grant they really, really wanted – or not so visible ways, the latter encompassing the vicious rejection letters from journals and audible snide remarks cast casually in their direction by colleagues.  So the more useful piece of advice I feel should be given to all is to this effect: don’t assume the successful have never had knocks, don’t assume the externally confident don’t sometimes quake inside, and find ways of fighting back. Such ways may include boring your friends for a week or two with your rants after a knock, but must also include ways of re-establishing your sense of self worth even if ultimately it is by cocking a snook at those who’ve trodden on you by walking away. But these are fine words, because what works for me may have no resonance for others; everyone’s circumstances are different and I don’t particularly think I am a shining example of combatting fears (no comments on that statement from friends or enemies please). So I can identify what needs to be done, not how to do it.

Finally, and perhaps this is the other side of not saying no to things, I am a great believer in seizing opportunities. It doesn’t matter that the particular thing on offer may have had no place in your original game-plan; life is so full of twists and turns that you never know who or what may be relevant and useful in the future. It is part of the element of luck I have discussed before. If someone suggests you work on carrots, as long as you can see some way in which carrots look interesting, go for it. If someone offers you the opportunity to sit on some committee, the graduate student liason committee perhaps, or the departmental safety committee, it’s well worth giving the matter serious thought. Something which at first sight may not look as if it will be a ball of fun may yet offer all kinds of plusses, ranging from getting experience of holding your own in an argument to meeting people who you might otherwise not come across who could turn into mentors, friends or collaborators. One much-cited paper of mine grew from meeting an expert in algal spores at another university on a committee dispensing equipment funding. We didn’t talk about our own research at the committee – no time as there were dozens of proposals to review – but much later I came across some microscopy he had done on his algae and I felt convinced we could do a better job using our (then new) environmental scanning electron microscope. Because I ‘knew’ him through the committee I felt much more confident sending him an email out of the blue than I would have done had he been a complete stranger. And the outcome was satisfactory to both of us, with a decent paper forthcoming in a rather short space of time. You just never know what’s round the corner.

So, how should one put this across in a coherent and succinct manner to an audience whose backgrounds, personalities and motivations will be so different? And different not only from me, but from each other? All I can do is stand up and talk ‘with passion’ , or at least enthusiasm, and say that I love my job, that there is no single right way to tackle science or an academic career, but constantly questioning yourself and all around is a good way to proceed. (With an aside to state that combining families and science is not impossible.) Maybe, someone will benefit, and at least it shows that someone cares enough about the next generation to turn up and try to be sage (rather than just self-centred), however inadequately.

Posted in Careers, Science Culture | Tagged , , , | 15 Comments

Skeletons and Unconscious Bias

Posted on April 24, 2011 by Athene Donald

As scientists we like to believe that we seek and interpret evidence impartially. That has been the accepted position for generations. The reality is of course that we are sometimes influenced, unconsciously or otherwise, by received opinion, ‘experts’ or other cultural factors. In a few cases, which these days are frequently well-documented after the fact, substantial cherry-picking of data and evidence may occur (read Ben Goldacre if you doubt that statement). These thoughts are prompted by reading the book by Londa Schiebinger The Mind has No Sex? (which she kindly gave me after we met at the meeting I described previously in Austria), and specifically the chapter on the changing views of male and female bodies, during the 18th century as anatomy developed. This chapter appears as a stand-alone paper here, in at least very similar form to the book (I haven’t made a detailed comparison).

Before the early 18th century, anatomists had never thought specifically about differences between male and women’s bony structures, all the emphasis on differences had been associated simply with the sexual organs. However, as cultural attitudes moved towards stressing differences between men and women, rather than similarities, further attention became focussed on the whole body and not just the genitalia . The womb was no longer seen as an imperfect penis; on the contrary it was regarded as a perfect vessel to fulfil woman’s manifest destiny of Mother. But how, or indeed whether the skeleton differed between the sexes had not been explored. The first serious studies and drawings were produced under the direction of Marie Thiroux d’Arconville (interestingly herself one of the rare women who were active in scientific studies at this time in France, having studied at the Jardin du Roi) and published in her French translation of Monro’s Anatomy. This drawing of the female figure is shown below, in a later version appearing in Barclay’s The Anatomy of the Human Body (the appearance of the ostrich in this figure will be explained later), along with its male companion. One has to assume that Thiroux d’Arconville took her anatomy seriously. Nevertheless there are two extremely unrealistic features of this drawing: the head is far too small in relation to the body, and the rib-cage is unnaturally narrow thereby accentuating the pelvis – again stressing the motherhood motif. It is possible that this second ‘inaccuracy’ could actually merely have meant that the poor cadaver she chose to draw had spent a life bound in corsets, which were already known to distort the body.

The next female skeleton to be drawn was by Samuel Thomas von Soemmering. He prided himself on the accuracy of his drawing, but nevertheless one has to ask how ‘typical’ his woman was. She was, apparently, carefully selected but nevertheless Soemmering chose to draw the skull of someone else atop the body and for posture and proportions he made comparison with classical beauties such as the Venus de Medici and the Venus of Dresden, both facts which might be thought to affect the accuracy of his rendition. However, he made a better job of both head size (a woman’s head is larger in proportion to the body than a man’s) and the width of the rib-cage than d’Arconville. As a consequence he came in for subsequent criticism because, it was proposed that women’s rib cages are necessarily smaller than men’s because their ‘restricted life style requires that they breathe less vigorously’(according to the Scottish anatomist John Barclay). Recognition of the relatively larger size of the head in women also posed problems for subsequent generations who wanted to believe size of head/brain equated to intelligence (the ‘explanation’ that was advanced in order to maintain the position of man’s superiority was that women’s large skulls indicated incomplete growth, reasoning that seems distinctly flawed on many counts).

Female (left) and male skeletons taken from Barclay's The Anatomy of the Bones of the Human Body, 1829

Now back to that ostrich in the figure. Cultural subliminal messages seemed to be part of the artistic endeavour at this time; this was certainly something that was true of all the portraiture of the period where man’s accoutrements in the paintings were deliberately chosen as status symbols to convey messages of power and wealth. So it is not surprising that subsequent reproductions of D’Arconville’s female skeleton in the book by Barclay had, for comparison, an animal known for its long elegant neck and the large size of its pelvis. These were attributes deliberately intended to be stressed as relevant to feminine beauty and good child-bearing abilities. The equivalent male figure in this same book by Barclay was based on a drawing by Albinus and the comparator animal was selected to be a horse, remarkable for its strength and agility – though interestingly not intelligence.

So, what can we learn from this tale? Firstly, that despite attempts at objectivity, scientists may make choices in the way they portray their ‘data’, something that is as likely to be true now as then in different ways. For instance, as a microscopist I am always faced with the challenge of choosing a ‘typical’ micrograph to include in a paper. Which one is chosen might be influenced by many things including peripheral things such as how central the feature of interest is in the field of view, whether the contrast was optimised in one image more than another, and whether that annoying piece of dust on the lens left by someone else’s student got in the way. None of that has anything to do with whether the image is in truth typical. One will probably also be influenced by what one was looking for, what the hypothesis under consideration predicts to occur, so that it is too easy to fail to see other things. (As an aside, I have never forgotten the comment made to me after a seminar I gave, by a biologist working on amyloid fibrils who, having heard me talk about spherulites as suprafibrillar aggregates remarked ‘oh maybe that’s the crud at the bottom of the test-tube!’. In other words, they had been looking for fibrils, had been using transmission electron microscopy to study the fibrils, and the ‘crud’ was too large to be investigated in the TEM and so had been ignored.) However, finding a ‘typical’ skeleton is always going to be a challenge and, given the labour intensive work of drawing (and measuring) during the 18th century, it is hardly surprising drawn examples were so limited and hence potentially so atypical.

Secondly, back then as now we see that stereotyping occurred. If it was believed that women had small heads and rib-cages it would be perfectly possible to demonstrate that legitimately by finding and accurately drawing a particular figure. Whether D’Arconville deliberately chose a skeleton whose bones had been compressed by years of corset-wearing we will never know, but clearly intentionally or not, she perpetuated a myth about the shape of women for many years. Cultural norms may well have affected what she was looking for and what she felt ‘should’ be represented.

Thirdly, then as unfortunately too often now, people were ‘male by default’ so that thinking about the female skeleton at all came comparatively late in the days of anatomy. This was a point Londa discussed at length at the Vienna meeting at which I met her, but there are many familiar examples of it around us. Drug trials carried out, certainly in the recent past, on male participants only is a well-known example which may have disastrous consequences when women subsequently take the drugs; or psychological assessments done on males which are then extrapolated to females who are found ‘wanting’ because they do not fit the same mould, a topic discussed with great clarity in the classic book by Carol Gilligan In a Different Voice. We need to be on our guard for such assumptions, which of course underlie unconscious bias in all its manifestations.

So this tale may reinforce the message found in the common paraphrase of Hegel, ‘history teaches us that history teaches us nothing’. We are still capable of making the same mistakes in our approaches to science and the wider cultural embedding of science as this accounts identifies from the 18th century.

Posted in History of Science, Science Culture, Women in Science | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Evolution

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Athene Donald

No, not in the Darwinian sense but more in a socio-cultural one. This week I am at an annual conference that I have been attending on and off (but more on) for nearly 30 years, which is a rather sobering thought in itself. And I want to reflect on how the world has changed, as reflected in this microcosm, during this period. For those of you who feel attending a conference is a daunting thing to do, let me assure you things have improved! Breaking my normal self-imposed constraints of ‘anonymity’, I may as well state that the conference is the High Polymer Research Group Annual Conference ; anyone who knows me will know that’s where I am, so there is little point in suppressing the fact. Anyhow it is not my intention to throw brickbats at this present day conference, only that of days past. Once upon a time the atmosphere and culture of this meeting was wildly different, I suspect anachronistic even for its time. This is not, I’m sure, simply because it feels that way as I have progressed from being a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed junior to being part of the long term furniture of the meeting. Lots of people, new attendees though not necessarily young ones, have made encouraging remarks this year about the inclusivity and good atmosphere here this week.

This residential conference is a venerable beast, celebrating its 50th birthday with due pomp and circumstance last year. It is located in a rather beautiful location, with walks – and golf – on the doorstep, which contributes to its particular ambience. (So much so, that when perforce it had to relocate from the edge of Dartmoor a few years back, much care was expended on finding somewhere with similar characteristics; it’s now held at the edge of the Peak District.) Like Gordon conferences, the afternoons are free for exertion – mental or physical – and making contacts. I can no longer recall the first year I came but it was probably around 1985. One comes by invitation only, so I felt honoured back then to have made it onto the guest list. However, it was a pretty dispiriting experience, although some of my feelings about it are coloured in hindsight by realising just how odd and quirky it was. Let me list some of the things that made it an impenetrable wilderness as far as I was concerned:

• There were only 2 women present – Julia Higgins and myself – out of 100+ attendees. At the time that wouldn’t have felt quite so unusual an occurrence and I was inured to being the only woman in a room quite frequently at physics meetings. Nevertheless I’m sure Julia was glad to see a doubling of the number of women present having, in previous years, been completely on her own; it was still pretty lonely.

• The average age appeared to be around 60 (no hard evidence to that effect, since dates of birth weren’t supplied, but the general impression was that the majority were if not actually retired, close to it. The old guard who had set the meeting up in 1960 were going strong).

• Nametags were not in evidence, indeed I think explicitly outlawed. Clearly it was a sufficiently inward-looking group it was not felt necessary. Anyone who was anyone knew who all the other anyones were. Not helpful for an interloper like me.

• The attendees were almost entirely chemists. I realise not everyone feels that makes for a dispiriting atmosphere, but for me it just reinforced being ‘odd’ and ‘different’, even beyond my gender. It also contributed to the fact that I didn’t know the other attendees, or even have much appreciation of who the famous anyones were, because they weren’t famous in my field.

• Heavy drinking in the bar was de rigeur, particularly after the conference dinner (again not everyone may feel that that was a disadvantage).

Over the years there certainly has been an evolution, I believe for the better, reflecting a more inclusive and welcoming culture. This is in part reflecting wider cultural changes that mitigate against an attitude of self-serving arrogance and exclusivity – the ‘old boys’ club’ that I originally encountered where literally the attendees were old and boys, or at least male – to something where early career researchers are positively welcomed as the life blood of the conference and science more generally. The attendees are now much more diverse in age and gender, and particular attention is paid each year as the list of speakers is drawn up; gender, geographical location and academia/industry balance are all explicitly considered and 2-3 slots are reserved for less-established scientists. Furthermore, with the growth in science that is ‘interdisciplinary’ no longer is this conference the domain of a single subject with the odd hanger-on allowed in from cognate disciplines. Quite explicitly the themes cover much broader topics and speakers are expected to be intelligible to those whose research interests may be far away. The world of scientific conferences has moved on so that the idea of the well-established cliquishness that was so manifest originally is inconceivable. Name tags were introduced some years ago, so there is no excuse for not knowing who one is talking to (beyond the ubiquitous problem of the writing being so small that those whose eyesight is less than 20:20 may find themselves peering inappropriately down someone’s cleavage).

Nevertheless, conference attendance can continue to be daunting. I know senior professors who still express reluctance, perturbed by the fear of striking up conversation with strangers or preferring to sneak off to their rooms rather than face up to making small talk in the bar at the end of the day. Indeed, if it is any consolation it might be worth appreciating that attending as an (outside) invited speaker at general conferences can be particularly hard work: everyone knows who you are but you may have no idea who they are. But meetings, if appropriately welcoming, can also be a wonderful place to have stimulating conversations, build up contacts that may stand you in good stead over the years as collaborations build or you want professional advice about dealing with tricky situations, research councils etc. Out of the particular conference I am discussing, some years ago a new group gestated and came into life known as ‘Recent Appointees in Polymer Science’ to act as a forum and formalised network for young faculty. This in turn has spawned a similar organisation for Recent Appointees in Materials Science, possibly in other disciplines too. Establishing contacts can only happen if both the old folk are welcoming and the youngsters don’t hover on the sidelines but plunge into the Q+A sessions and join in conversations over dinner. I hope this particular conference will have a long and happy future promoting discussion, networking opportunities and to act as a fertile ground for new collaborations.

Posted in Interdisciplinary Science, Research, Science Culture | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

Surviving the Postdoc Experience – or Not

Posted on April 14, 2011 by Athene Donald

Last night I talked at an RSC/IOP event launching a report (Mapping the Future: Physics and Chemistry Researchers’ Experiences and Career Intentions) based on a survey of 776 postdocs. The report illustrates some interesting differences between the cultures experienced in the two different disciplines and also between the sexes’ experiences. However, what is clear is that academia needs to do a better job of supporting some of these postdocs, to make sure they feel valued and are able to develop optimally. I have not yet had a chance to read the full report (only the summary was provided to me in advance), but some of the feelings expressed will undoubtedly tie in with the working experience of life as a postdoc described in a recent NN blog (if I am allowed to mention NN on this site) which indicates the long hours culture so typical of postdoc life in a lab-based subject.

As with the ASSET survey I have written about previously, getting responses from those directly involved is hugely valuable in knowing what is really going on in the population, and the numbers involved are large enough to make conclusions drawn fairly reliable. The first thing that struck me when reading the summary report was how many years some postdocs are willing to stay in that role (I understand the term postdoc was meant explicitly to exclude those on independent fellowships): 19% of male physicists had been postdocs for 7 years or more, contrasted with 7% of female chemists. Are they receiving good career’s advice which makes these men think that if they just stick it out a bit longer a permanent career in academia will transpire? Well, probably not. Careers advice seems distinctly patchy, with only 21% of respondents having taken advice from their institution’s formal careers service during their present contract. More (45%) had obtained advice either from their PI or other academic staff member. However, putting these two bits of quantitative information together makes me worry a PI may be encouraging a postdoc to stick around because they are useful, rather than because it is in the best interests of the postdoc themselves. It will surprise few that some PI’s may be slightly self-serving in this way; the loss of an experienced postdoc can be a real blow to the successful functioning of a team. Of those long term postdocs there are far more men than women, far more physicists than chemists. The former may be explained by women jumping ship because they aren’t happy, but it may also be they are more realistic about career options.  The results show that female chemists in particular, who have done more than 1 postdoc, are getting increasingly dubious about pursuing a scientific career, with 60% of them expressing doubt.

Furthermore it is clear that most postdocs know very little about careers outside the academic world: not an astonishing finding if they are predominantly relying on their PI – who almost certainly hasn’t themselves worked outside the university sector – to provide advice. However, blame for not seeking professional advice from the careers service cannot really be laid at the PI’s door. A postdoc needs to take responsibility for their future to a large extent, making sure they get all the facts they can from wherever they can, and making sure the information they get is ‘in the round’ and not just a partial view from their PI who doesn’t want to lose a skilled pair of hands. At this point let me flag up the useful set of guidance notes the Athena Forum drew up to help postdocs work out just what it is they need to know and where they might go to for advice. Postdocs do need not to be passive, but take active control of their lives and the directions these might go in.

Even working on the assumption it is the individual’s responsibility to seek out careers’ advice, the postdocs ought to be given good appraisal and mentoring to help them work out what their strengths and weaknesses are, and what they need to do to improve the latter. By and large they aren’t. More than half the postdocs aren’t getting appraised and of those who were only 1/3 found the process useful. Many felt it was  a mere box-ticking exercise. This is shameful. The ASSET survey showed that in general the more senior you are the more likely you are to be appraised, something I feel is quite the wrong way round. We need to help our postdocs work out whether they should be staying in academia or if their talents would be better used elsewhere. We need to encourage the more diffident – often women, but not necessarily – when they may be far more talented than they realise. We need to make sure they know what opportunities are out there, and what gaps they have in their CV’s. And, collectively, it would seem we are failing to do so – or just assuming their PI will cover this comprehensively.

Some of these findings speak to the need for ’empowerment’ of postdocs, a point stressed by one of the other speakers, Tennie Videler from Vitae, an organisation devoted to

championing the personal, professional and career development of doctoral researchers and research staff in higher education institutions and research institutes.

She particularly stressed something that Vitae have been developing, called the Researcher Developer Framework, which provides a framework within which researchers can think about their strengths and weaknesses, and how they might tackle them to enable them to grow and progress. I had not come across this before, but a quick look at their website shows just what a valuable resource this could be for employee and employer alike.

There are further worrying bits of information this report throws up. For some, the transition from PhD student to Postdoc obviously brings greater responsibilities and a change in attitude from those around, but for no means all. The questionnaire specifically queried whether postdocs felt respected and that they were now treated more like a staff member than a student. More than half the physicists felt they were treated more like staff – both male and female – but the numbers were rather lower for the chemists, notably with less than 40% of the female chemists feeling this. When it comes to feeling respected, again the chemists were less content than the physicists by some considerable margin: 45% of the physicists felt respected and less than 10% felt definitely not respected with little difference between men and women, whereas for the chemists there was both a markedly lower number who overall did feel respected and a higher number who definitely didn’t. Furthermore, the women definitely felt less valued than the men (37% men and 29% women did feel respected amongst the chemists; and 11% men and 16% women did not).

This highlights, as have earlier reports, some clear problems with the culture and working environment in chemistry which seems distinctly less favourable for women than men. The RSC’s own previous report indicated that women in biosciences were less content in chemistry departments than in biochemistry departments; the EPSRC’s 2009 International Review of Chemistry highlighted how women were conspicuously absent from those asked to present to them, as if this was felt to be too risky a strategy. Chemistry, as a discipline, clearly needs to reflect upon its mores and work out why their working patterns are so particularly disadvantageous for women. It can be no coincidence that, despite the percentage of girls starting on chemistry degrees being at least 50% in most university departments, the number of female professors remains depressingly low. This seems to be the discipline where the leaky pipeline leaks most.

Postdoctoral years may be wonderful, a chance to develop independence and autonomy without, for instance, the grind of committees and grant writing. (A large number – 82% of physicists and 63% of chemists – reported being given an opportunity to teach, but one hopes this is at a level of their choosing and not the overload with which many lecturers feel burdened.) So, these years may be fruitful and exciting. But they are also a time of job insecurity and anxiety, as written about so poignantly by my fellow OT blogger Jenny Rohn. Postdocs need to think carefully about how to optimise their opportunities and seek out advice beyond their immediate circle, to ensure they are as well equipped to make decisions about their futures as possible, enabling them to take realistic control of the directions their lives are heading. Equally importantly, PI’s need to assume more responsibility about ensuring postdocs get sensible and constructive advice at each stage of the way. Neither party should be passive in this interaction.

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