Heather

Sigh... or they are willing to face the likely consequences anyhow. I personally went in with my eyes pretty open. Of course in hindsight my whole series of friends tell me, but you ALWAYS wanted to be a scientist - but that is not how I remember it. Doubt ruled the day, especially between fellowships. - Heather

I confess, if I had known then what I know now, I'd probably still have pursued a research career. But I'd have played my cards differently and I never would have married and saddled someone else with my gambling habit. It's one thing to resign yourself to a life of insecurity, quite another to demand it of someone else who has not got the same addiction. - Bill Hooker

I sometimes wish I'd "known then what I know now". But to be honest, I could have known it then, had I bothered to look into it. I just assumed that people kind of "became scientists". The key is for people to understand (1) the odds of getting permanent jobs and independent funding (low) and (2) the alternatives - there are many more science jobs than the traditional academic group leader. - Neil Saunders

I remember thinking hard about wanting to do a post-doc and in the end deciding not to do so, partly cause I went through the decision tree that Neil mentions (being married had something to do with that decision as well) - Deepak Singh

At least in my case I have been reading about the difficulties of getting jobs/funding even before I started the PhD. Thats the only thing I dislike about my work, always keeping "score" and thinking about the next stage. - Pedro Beltrao

Pedro, to some extent that does change, does it, regardless of field even - Deepak Singh

The only deserving postdocs are those who manage to secure a job. - Egon Willighagen

Agree with Bill. Have dragged my wife to the Netherlands, Scotland and now England. Having two kids makes it even more difficult now. Sometimes wish I were a baker, settled in a village in my home country. - Jan Aerts

Agree with all the above (particularly with regards peoples' personal circumstances complicating things), and agree it's very hard getting a position. I also agree with the poster on the Nature network site who says the reason it's so hard is because it's so competitive, that's all. People will jump through significant hoops and make terrible sacrifices, because being a postdoc is (in... more... - Matthew Todd

*sigh* - Duncan Hull

Of course not all deserving postdocs will get a job. That's one of the reasons why we will see more and more high-profile fraud cases in the coming years. That's where we are putting the incentives these days. - Björn Brembs

+1000 Bjoern. Unless incentives change, behaviour will not change. And it's not even the high-profile Hwang Woo Suk cases that worry me -- it's the "normal misbehaviour" a la Brian Martinson that I think is a cancer, rotting the guts out of science. Sending the wrong plasmid in response to a materials request; "data not shown", which really means "experiment not done"; "oh, I'll crop that band out, because I just know it's not relevant"; and so on and on. - Bill Hooker