Jennifer Rohn's solution to the problems of postdoctoral careers does not add up (Nature 471, 7; 2011).
Most fields of science are at a steady state of funding, or worse, so paying for new professional postdocs would require cuts to training postdoc positions. But a career spans 30–40 years, so each career postdoc would replace 6–20 training postdocs. If there were enough professional postdoc positions to make a difference, there would be a huge reduction in the number of training postdocs. The scrap heap would be larger: each rescued professional postdoc would be replaced by several new PhDs with no chance of finding a postdoc position.
The only other way to avoid a scrap heap would be to restrict the number of people who start PhDs, which raises a host of other complex issues.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Insall, R. Career postdocs increase scrap heap. Nature 471, 578 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/471578e
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/471578e