The most daunting numbers I’ve seen yet

This week’s Nature has a horribly depressing article. If you’re a graduate student, don’t read any further.

Really, stop. I hate to see young biologists cry.

NSF data show that the number of students in US graduate programmes in the biological sciences has increased steadily since 1966. In 2005, around 7,000 graduates earned a doctorate. But the number of biomedical PhDs with academic tenure has remained steady since 1981, at just over 20,000. During that period the percentage of US biomedical PhDs with tenure or tenure-track jobs dropped from nearly 45% to just below 30%.

7,000 students per year casting a covetous eye on a total of 20,000 positions? You’re all waiting for me to die, aren’t you?

What about the post-docs?

Although numbers of applicants for postdoctoral fellowships awarded by the NIH increased between 2002 and 2006, the percentage who were successful dropped sharply (see graphic). And the average age of scientists earning their first R01 grant — the NIH’s bread-and-butter grant to an independent researcher — has risen from 34 in 1970 to 42 now.

i-046279d60bd7c66173626225ef60d57a-fellowships.gif

A suggestion:

A posting to an online careers discussion group puts the matter bluntly: “If you aren’t thinking about ‘alternative careers’ before ever setting foot in graduate school, then you’re being foolish.”

The article does mention that the number of Ph.D.s going into industry has tripled in recent years, so it’s not totally hopeless … but we are seeing a shift in the biology profession, that’s for sure.

Check, E (2007) More biologists but tenure stays static. Nature 448:848-849.

Boys and their penises

If they aren’t singing about the drugs they take to make them work, they’re wondering why their ex-wives set them on fire. I think I have a new explanation for the Fermi Paradox: the aliens are out there, but they’re so freaked out and baffled by human sexual behavior that they don’t want to get any closer than the orbit of Pluto. Or maybe the reason the alien Greys are hoovering up people and giving them anal probes is that they’ve got this twisted idea that that is how we say “hello.”

(Yes, I am aware that those are two contradictory rationales.)

Janet Browne’s new book

I must have been sleeping, because I hadn’t noticed that this came out: Janet Browne, the author of a most excellent two-volume biography of Darwin, has a new book titled Darwin’s Origin of Species: A Biography. That one is going right to the top of my Amazon wishlist.

Michael Barton has a review.

I’m gonna be a ? MOVIE STAR ?

Last April, I received this nice letter from Mark Mathis.

Hello Mr. Myers,

My name is Mark Mathis. I am a Producer for Rampant Films. We are
currently in production of the documentary film, “Crossroads: The
Intersection of Science and Religion.”

At your convenience I would like to discuss our project with you and to see
if we might be able to schedule an interview with you for the film. The
interview would take no more than 90 minutes total, including set up and
break down of our equipment.

We are interested in asking you a number of questions about the
disconnect/controversy that exists in America between Evolution,
Creationism and the Intelligent Design movement.

Please let me know what time would be convenient for me to reach you at your
office. Also, could you please let me know if you charge a fee for
interviews and if so, what that fee would be for 90 minutes of your time.

I look forward to speaking with you soon.

Sincerely,

Mark Mathis
Rampant Films
4414 Woodman Ave. #203
Sherman Oaks, CA 91423
www.rampantfilms.com

[Read more…]

I’m gonna be a ☆ MOVIE STAR ☆

Last April, I received this nice letter from Mark Mathis.

Hello Mr. Myers,

My name is Mark Mathis. I am a Producer for Rampant Films. We are
currently in production of the documentary film, “Crossroads: The
Intersection of Science and Religion.”

At your convenience I would like to discuss our project with you and to see
if we might be able to schedule an interview with you for the film. The
interview would take no more than 90 minutes total, including set up and
break down of our equipment.

We are interested in asking you a number of questions about the
disconnect/controversy that exists in America between Evolution,
Creationism and the Intelligent Design movement.

Please let me know what time would be convenient for me to reach you at your
office. Also, could you please let me know if you charge a fee for
interviews and if so, what that fee would be for 90 minutes of your time.

I look forward to speaking with you soon.

Sincerely,

Mark Mathis
Rampant Films
4414 Woodman Ave. #203
Sherman Oaks, CA 91423
www.rampantfilms.com

[Read more…]

You have got to be kidding me

Come February, we are going to be privileged to see a brand new movie that stars Ben Stein and portrays Intelligent Design creationism as the cool rebel oppressed by the stodgy old Darwinist bullies. Did you know that “scientists are not allowed to even think thoughts that involve an intelligent creator”? I didn’t either. I think a lot of scientists have thought about it and noticed that there is no evidence for such a hypothesis, and have therefore rejected it.

This movie fits with the intelligent design strategy of declaring itself the victim of an unfair exclusion (which isn’t true, of course: they haven’t ponied up the science that would legitimize them), but interestingly, its central theme seems to be that Big Science has excluded god from the classroom and the lab … it’s a raw demand for a violation of the separation of church and state and for the inclusion of superstitious dogma in science. That’s very convenient. It’ll make it easier to use the courts to keep their religious propaganda out of the classroom.

Oh, and putting Ben Stein in short pants and playing “Bad to the Bone” does not make him a rebel. He’s a Republican apologist, and he’s not “cool” at all.

Denialists exposed

Scienceblog’s own Tara Smith, with Steve Novella, has an article in PLoS on HIV Denial in the Internet Era. It describes some of the major players among the HIV deniers, and most importantly talks about their tactics. It’s useful even if you aren’t at all involved in that branch of biology or invested in that particular argument: one section is titled “Portraying Science as Faith and Consensus as Dogma” and that certainly struck a chord with me — that is one of the most common creationist arguments, as well.