I Don’t Want To Be A Scientist Anymore

Man, I swear to God if you film that, you’ll get fired…

Hey guys, seeing as it was International Women’s Day yesterday, and I’m out of a job, I thought I would make this video. And yes, you’ve read the title correctly: I don’t want to be a scientist anymore.

**Not True**
**That’s impossible**

But I should explain. So for those of you who’ve been following me for a while, you’ll know that I did my PhD in 2015. And I’ve now done two postdocs, and these postdocs were in my research field of bioengineering.

Now, I’ve loved research. I’ve loved working in the lab, working in a really exciting field, and finding out some amazing things and networking with some amazing scientists. But going further in an academic career, I’m finding this isn’t for me, and actually isn’t for quite a few people. Typically, to become a professor, you need to go through a few stages.

First of all, you need to do your PhD, and then do a few postdocs to gain experience in a research group in the lab, in your field of expertise. A postdoc typically lasts anywhere from between a year to three years. These projects are generally on a fixed term contract basis, which means that if you’re doing a few of them in your career, you might need to move around institutions, maybe even countries. This can be pretty hard, the instability, the fluctuations in wages. It can be pretty tough.

If you’re a woman doing a postdoc, and you want to start a family, this might be inconvenient. Now generally, in the UK, institutions are good at supporting women who want to do this and have a career break to have a family. And my first postdoc was actually a maternity cover. But there’s always worries about how employable you are, as a woman of a certain age who potentially wants to start a family, in all sectors, not just academia.

You’ll then become a lecturer. So this is where you’ll start doing independent research, forming your own group, taking on PhD students, and really becoming a notable individual in that scientific field. And if you’re good enough, and lucky enough, you’ll get your senior lectureship position, be able to expand your group, expand your reach into the scientific field. And then potentially, you could become a professor. But it’s really becoming a professor that’s the hardest thing. And less than half a percent of people who do a PhD actually become a professor. So why is this?

Institutions will only have one professor of a certain thing. So, a Professor of Synthetic Biology, a Professor of Astrophysics; basically, there aren’t enough jobs. And there are a lot more people now doing PhDs than there are places available. What’s more is that you don’t generally fire a professor. That’s kind of a position generally for life or until the professor wants to move on to another institution or another job. But if you’ve done a PhD, and you don’t want to go into academia, it’s not all bad news.

A PhD gives you so many transferable skills, as well as technical skills. And these transferable skills are really useful to go into different sectors and other areas other than academia. And just speaking from personal experience, some of the people that I’ve done my PhD with have gone into so many different areas of science: from industrial research, to medical writing, consultancy, project management, teaching, there’s so many different options. And for me, I’m really not sure. I know I want to stay in science. I’m not ready to let go of being a scientist just yet. And my previous venture into poetry didn’t turn out so well.

“There is the colour red in me, a rich colour representing blood
anger strikes like lightning into my soul, going deeper and deeper
bursting to erupt like a volcano, waiting to strike
waiting, waiting.”

So right now what I’m doing is looking at different jobs and seeing what I take to. That kind of seems like a sensible option. And as part of that, I decided to do an internship at the Science Media Centre in London.

So here is a day in the life of an intern at the SMC.

Oh my god. It’s far too early. The Science Media Center is an independent press office for science based in London. And to tell you a bit more about it, here’s Fiona Fox.

So I’m Fiona Fox. I am the chief executive of the Science Media Center. And we were established in 2002 in the wake of a number of major science stories that were considered by the scientific community to have gone wrong. So the scientific community got together and recognized that I had to get much, much more effective at engaging with the public through the mass media. And being part of the debate. They’re not keen to dominate the debate or win the debates. But we really do believe that the public discussing issues like vaccination, new technologies, need to hear from the scientists who are developing these technologies, and to have the best evidence and knowledge about them. The way we fulfil our remit is that we have a database of 3000 eminent scientists. We always recruit more senior scientists who publish in peer reviewed journals or work for respected scientific institutions, who are really kind of well known for being a leading figure in their field.

There are three main services that we offer to national news journalists, one is breaking stories. So that could be Fukushima, Ebola, Zika, floods, the horsemeat crisis, volcanic ash, Charlie Gard, Grenfell tower. So these are really big media stories that everybody will remember for many years, where science was either at the heart of the story, or was a significant element. When the story breaks, we go straight to that database. And we will get quotes from them, comments, links to studies they’ve done. And we will literally, proactively get into every inbox of every news journalist in the country, saying here are experts on Fukushima radiation, who know everything about the design of nuclear power plants, who know everything about what levels of radiation can cause harm to humans, or the environment. And they are here, here’s their mobile phone number, here’s where you can reach them. And here’s what they think.

The second service we offer is slightly calmer. And that is, again, if you go back to our remit of improving the quality of science that’s reaching the public, you have to look at the kind of daily diet of a national newspaper science coverage, and it is the journals. There are 10 to 15 scientific journals, which have big media relations operations. So the journalists, science, health, environment journalists on every national news outlet, receive these press releases every week, saying, here’s three stories in the Lancet this week, which we think you ought to report.

We, the Science Media Center staff get them at the same time as the journalist, which is fantastic. So we see two or three days before the embargo lifts, and we’re able to identify the ones that could be misreported. So we will go back to that same database, and ask those experts to read the study. And to give us a short comment, not telling us everything they’ve ever known about pesticides, or cancer and coffee, but to look at that study and say, based on this study, readers should treat this claim with caution, because it’s only done to mice, it’s a very small study, or the exact opposite. So these comments really are putting this new study into the wider context of other studies, and really telling the journalists, should this be on the front page, or should it be on page five, with the caveats emphasised? So that’s the second.

And then our final service that we offer news media is press briefings, and that can be arranged. It can be a background briefing on a really topical issue that we think the journalists will benefit from hearing from 4 or 5 experts. Or it can be like with the Lancet study today on antidepressants, a study that’s already in a controversial area, is very complex, is a large data set, its statistics are heavy. The opportunity to get 10 journalists in a room and the author sit and explain and answer their questions always results in better quality coverage.

Because the SMC is in London, it means that like most Londoners, I’ve got a fairly long commute. And it’s definitely more than what I’m used to in Edinburgh. So I’d best get out of the house.

Today should be fun, because we’ve got a press briefing on antidepressants. Although the SMC holds loads of press briefings in a year, a lot of interns won’t get to see maybe three during their time. And I got to see three within my first week of working there. Press briefings are cool as well, because you get to meet the journalists behind the stories in some main newspapers. It’s really interesting to see what types of questions the journalists ask about scientific stories. And from an academic perspective, sometimes they’re not the things which I would think would be important in a paper.

Morning! Morning!

One of my first jobs as an intern is to do a press summary. So that involves going through all the main newspapers and looking at all the science stories that they have in them, and then summarising them, sending them around to the press offices, so they can get a gist of what science stories are in the news.

Oh hello! I’ve got a briefing today. They might be some of the most fun we have at SMC. And today we have it on antidepressants.

In the press briefings, my job is to stand by the door and let people in and then take their names down. And note all the journalists so that the press officer chairing the session can see who’s here.

I’m Ed Sykes and I’m Senior Press Manager here at the Science Media Center. This morning we ran a press briefing on antidepressants. It was for us a definite briefing we wanted to do because antidepressants are such a controversial topic, as lots of coverage in the media is about whether they do more harm than good, whether or not no more effective than placebo, whether the side effects are kind of overbearing and things and it’s one of those cases where the public really misses out if they get the wrong information. So this is a piece of research that’s been six years in the making and looking at over 500 trials and collating all the data together that’ve been done really objectively was really able to give a brilliant overview of what was going on.

I’m very proud of this. It’s like my first son.

All the scientists we spoke to about it said it was a top piece of research. So for us, it ticked many boxes. So we decided to run a briefing and we had a good turnout with journalists from Mail, Times, Telegraph, BBC, Guardian, Reuters. They asked some great questions. The Sun asked some very good questions as well and got some of them. Hopefully, there will be some really good coverage that happens tomorrow or the headlines.

What did you think of the briefing Sophia?

I thought it was very interesting. I definitely think that it would be interesting if they could do it with people who have minor depression as opposed to just minor or major..not sure what the differentiation is. I do need to read the paper.

I finished my masters in the summer and did an internship back in October in SMC, same as what you’re doing.

Yep

And then I went into another internship and stuff. And then a six month contract for the Operations Assistant here came up and I applied and got it started back in January. And Joe’s massive phone. Hold up to your face. That’s ridiculous.

You have to lunch in an hour and then come back. 17 emails. As well as the cool stuff that you get to do as an intern in the SMC, you still got to do the obligatory tea run. What a selection of tea we have.

It’s five o’clock, I’m done for the day. And now I’m off to meet an old friend.

So that’s where I’m at now. I want to come out of academic research. But that doesn’t mean I want to stay out forever. I’m really interested in what you guys think. I don’t know what I want to do next. Do you? Are any of you guys in this situation, any of you guys want to go into academia and really go and be a professor? Or are you like me? Are you thinking about doing a PhD? And maybe you don’t know the route yet? And you’re worried about it. I would love to know what you’re thinking. So leave your comments. And hopefully we can start a conversation. And just remember not all scientists wear white coats.

So thanks for watching my video, guys. I hope it was helpful or maybe just enlightening. Or maybe you can just laugh at my awful poetry. If you want to know more about the Science Media Center, you can go to the description box. I put a link there to their website where you can see what they do, what they produce, and maybe apply for an internship if you’re interested. I know it’s helped me see a side of science that I didn’t really know was there, but actually found it quite fun. And if you want to check out more of my content, go to my channel and subscribe if you like it, but as always, thanks for watching, and have a wonderful day.

Thank you for watching with STEMcognito. Find more videos using the search box or the drop down menus above. If you think there’s something wrong with this video, please use the Report button to inform the STEMcognito team. Questions about the video content should be directed to the researcher. You can find their details below. Go to our submission pages to find out how to submit your own video. And don’t forget to follow us on social media.