[PREV - JONAHS_WOLFE]    [TOP]

JONAHS_TECHNICAL

                                             January 15, 2012


I saw a comment on the net-- can't                      JONAHS_COOKIE
remember where-- from someone who
remarked that he tends to give
Lerher some credit because "he
used to be a scientist"

Actually, he was a lab technician.
Lab technicians vary wildly in intellectual
capability, ranging from bottle washers to          Even more wildly than the
people who should really be running the             tenured, phD-wielding
place but don't have the union card.                nominal "scientists".

   "When I began working in Dr. Kandel's lab, I
   dreamed of being a scientist.  After spending a
   few years with his post-docs and grad students, I
   quickly realized that I wasn't good enough.
   (W.H. Auden once said that when he found himself
   in the company of scientists he felt like "a
   shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a
   room full of dukes."  I understand the feeling
   entirely.)  ...  I want to thank all the
   scientists who talked with me while I wrote this
   book.  I'm convinced that postdocs are the
   suffering artists of the twenty-first century."
          -- p. 199, "Acknowledgments"


He's right about postdocs: underpaid, overworked,
no less capable than the tenured folks they
serve under, but without any established
place in the world, and with only bare hopes
of finding one in the future.

--------
[NEXT - JONAHS_WHITMAN]