The suggested hiring process, especially solving work related tasks while thinking out loud, sounds a lot like how software developers are interviewed.
The concept of lab techs exists and those don’t have to be the PhD scientists. If it’s PhDs doing all the pipetting then it may be because there is an oversupply of mediocre PhDs. Everyone wants maximum status. Everyone wants to be an intellectual, at least upper middle class, educated white collar. It’s the mantra everywhere. Nobody dreams of sending their kids to one day robotically move lab material and vials from one fridge to another on the command of a boss. That’s not prestigious enough. Make it dignified by the culture and they will be more willing. And or pay better. But again, if there is an oversupply, they don’t have to. And robotics will make all this go away pretty soon either way.
"there is an oversupply of mediocre PhDs" -> exactly correct. I have an essay in the works on how robotics will solve much of our angst surrounding academia and its power structures. Not sure many have priced this in or thought about it, but it will be glorious.
In my view the real function of academia is to attach prestige to ideas. If the current iteration is somehow obviated by AI and robots, there will still be demand for producing people who have the necessary status to rubberstamp ideas with the prestige of centuries of intellectual history backing them up.
Definitely too many PhDs, and rarely are they asked to leave school even when during training it becomes obvious they can't cut it. And while not all PhDs need good hands, many of them do. And certainly not understanding what goes into a day of physical labor contributes to PIs who are unreasonable in their expectations.
I wonder to what extent we could untangle bench work from cognitive work, and how little context overlap is needed between who designs the experiment and who carries it out. Similarly to how coding agents (claude code, cursor...) have increased software developers' productivity, allowing postdocs to spend significantly more time on the cognitive parts of their job could lead to them asking better questions, devising more efficient ways of testing them, and being better at analysing and sharing their results.
In biotech and pharma this structure seems to be working – I wonder if academia could reimagine its funding and career systems to follow industry's example?
I think deep knowledge of physical techniques is probably required to design experiments well. With coding everything is fully deterministic and exact, but with wet lab science, two scientists could follow the same algorithm (a protocol) and get very different results depending on skill.
That said, you don’t have to be actually good at enacting protocols if a robot can do them for you. In this instance though, robot programming/prompting becomes a new scientific technique that requires mastery.
I agree re academia shifting career systems. It’s just so stagnant and dogmatic due to lack of incentive to change!
Completely agree with this! Been talking about something similar with friends for quite a while. Science - bench work - is so practically driven, but when we start at somewhere like a PhD we’re woefully under equipped. Lots of science writers I know bailed on research because the practical aspects simply weren’t for them (for lack of skill or interest reasons).
Would love to see something more akin to a Lab Apprenticeship, moving graduates from their uni lectures straight into lab work to get a handle on just how practical it is, before diving into a PhD. It is blue-collar work for a large part and learning experimental design from a hands-on perspective would sound wonders for prospective scientists’ confidence and general aptitude at the bench.
Exactly! Acknowledging this reality and shifting how we frame science would also likely attract slightly different people to the career path—probably for the better
And just like a blue collar vocation such as plumbing or being an electrician, recent grads should have apprenticeships, not internships! Long-term, paid, structured programs to learn the skills of the trade from an expert. Not a few months of unpaid or minimally stipended work that is less hands-on or strictly observational. I’m talking 1-5 years of truly learning and honing your craft🤘
I often gripe that academic labs should endeavor to retain some of the grad students they spend years (and hundreds of thousands of dollars) training to be competent bench scientists.
Much the same problem in white collar services jobs actually - not physical competence, more like mental competence of a sort that is hard to assess in interviews or tests. Some people are practical, take good decisions, and get three times as much done as other people - it's just hard to tell who - except by looking at career history.
I've long imagined that what we need is a sort of trade school for bench science, either structured like the artisinal crafts like woodworking or the technical one like electricians. Right now the only career path to working in a wet lab is kind of falling into it and learning on the fly
A great idea. Or at least much more practical/technical training as part of an undergraduate science degree. It should be a hybrid knowledge/vocational degree type
Am a physics person who ended up doing a biophysics PhD. Cannot agree enough how true this is; ended up switching to theory because the experimental work was so far from what I was trained for/interested in
Add to all of this the current cult of project management, in the absence of pertinent experience (and often grotesque mathematical naivete), and at the end of the day, one is very much drained.
That cult of project management is very real. I think it stems from “team science” and collaboration being pushed as a dogma, regardless of how useful it actually is. Essay on that coming soon …
Nope! Never handled a mouse before my postdoc. Now I'm doing adoptive transfer of T cells in tumour models etc, but only after one training session with the veterinarians for each procedure (e.g. subcutaneous injection). One thing I didn't allow enough wiggle room for here in my essay is fast learners who may not have the skill before starting the job. It's hard to figure out who is going to be a fast learner, but it's definitely possible to pick up manual skills on the job.
Hi, as a PhD student from Germany I partially agree with your perspective. I think the problem you describe comes from systemic lack of technical support for scientists. Yes, our work includes a lot of manual labour. But many methods, and mice handling should be work of technicians. In Germany every institute hires technicians who are trained in many methods and support your project. The difference between scientist and technician is that the first one should be able to see the bigger picture, analyse literature, plan experiments, while the latter masters the methods and animal handling. Otherwise, why be a scientist? Why undergo all these studies and training when at the end your job is the same as that of technical assistant?
That's a fair distinction, which I think exists less outside of Germany/Europe. I wonder to what extent scientific has to be married to actually doing the manual work, though. I do find that deep technical expertise helps with designing experiments or even knowing what kind of scientific questions can be asked.
But yes I agree with the scientist having a cognitive role above and beyond the technician. The impact of robotics in life sciences in also something that will become increasingly important to think about.
Something similar to this, which I imagine could be useful in e.g. hospital labs (and any lab that uses a pretty limited set of protocols) would be to hand them one of the standard protocols, have them show up, and just let them at it. It's a bit less of a time investment, since you're not shilling out a whole day plus whatever time it takes for the previous step where they have to make their own protocols.
Not relevant for every lab, of course, but a somewhat simplified version of your idea, that still shows their actual practical skills.
The suggested hiring process, especially solving work related tasks while thinking out loud, sounds a lot like how software developers are interviewed.
It just seems like a sensible way of doing things. Software engineers know a thing or two!
The concept of lab techs exists and those don’t have to be the PhD scientists. If it’s PhDs doing all the pipetting then it may be because there is an oversupply of mediocre PhDs. Everyone wants maximum status. Everyone wants to be an intellectual, at least upper middle class, educated white collar. It’s the mantra everywhere. Nobody dreams of sending their kids to one day robotically move lab material and vials from one fridge to another on the command of a boss. That’s not prestigious enough. Make it dignified by the culture and they will be more willing. And or pay better. But again, if there is an oversupply, they don’t have to. And robotics will make all this go away pretty soon either way.
"there is an oversupply of mediocre PhDs" -> exactly correct. I have an essay in the works on how robotics will solve much of our angst surrounding academia and its power structures. Not sure many have priced this in or thought about it, but it will be glorious.
In my view the real function of academia is to attach prestige to ideas. If the current iteration is somehow obviated by AI and robots, there will still be demand for producing people who have the necessary status to rubberstamp ideas with the prestige of centuries of intellectual history backing them up.
Definitely too many PhDs, and rarely are they asked to leave school even when during training it becomes obvious they can't cut it. And while not all PhDs need good hands, many of them do. And certainly not understanding what goes into a day of physical labor contributes to PIs who are unreasonable in their expectations.
Very much agreed!
I wonder to what extent we could untangle bench work from cognitive work, and how little context overlap is needed between who designs the experiment and who carries it out. Similarly to how coding agents (claude code, cursor...) have increased software developers' productivity, allowing postdocs to spend significantly more time on the cognitive parts of their job could lead to them asking better questions, devising more efficient ways of testing them, and being better at analysing and sharing their results.
In biotech and pharma this structure seems to be working – I wonder if academia could reimagine its funding and career systems to follow industry's example?
I think deep knowledge of physical techniques is probably required to design experiments well. With coding everything is fully deterministic and exact, but with wet lab science, two scientists could follow the same algorithm (a protocol) and get very different results depending on skill.
That said, you don’t have to be actually good at enacting protocols if a robot can do them for you. In this instance though, robot programming/prompting becomes a new scientific technique that requires mastery.
I agree re academia shifting career systems. It’s just so stagnant and dogmatic due to lack of incentive to change!
Completely agree with this! Been talking about something similar with friends for quite a while. Science - bench work - is so practically driven, but when we start at somewhere like a PhD we’re woefully under equipped. Lots of science writers I know bailed on research because the practical aspects simply weren’t for them (for lack of skill or interest reasons).
Would love to see something more akin to a Lab Apprenticeship, moving graduates from their uni lectures straight into lab work to get a handle on just how practical it is, before diving into a PhD. It is blue-collar work for a large part and learning experimental design from a hands-on perspective would sound wonders for prospective scientists’ confidence and general aptitude at the bench.
Exactly! Acknowledging this reality and shifting how we frame science would also likely attract slightly different people to the career path—probably for the better
And just like a blue collar vocation such as plumbing or being an electrician, recent grads should have apprenticeships, not internships! Long-term, paid, structured programs to learn the skills of the trade from an expert. Not a few months of unpaid or minimally stipended work that is less hands-on or strictly observational. I’m talking 1-5 years of truly learning and honing your craft🤘
Superb idea.
Reading this and wishing I was put through this hiring process so I hadn't landed the PhD I was woefully ill-equipped for 😭
Great article.
I often gripe that academic labs should endeavor to retain some of the grad students they spend years (and hundreds of thousands of dollars) training to be competent bench scientists.
I think institutes could retain them if they gave them more independence earlier!
Much the same problem in white collar services jobs actually - not physical competence, more like mental competence of a sort that is hard to assess in interviews or tests. Some people are practical, take good decisions, and get three times as much done as other people - it's just hard to tell who - except by looking at career history.
I've long imagined that what we need is a sort of trade school for bench science, either structured like the artisinal crafts like woodworking or the technical one like electricians. Right now the only career path to working in a wet lab is kind of falling into it and learning on the fly
A great idea. Or at least much more practical/technical training as part of an undergraduate science degree. It should be a hybrid knowledge/vocational degree type
it is called a labor-atory that’s a pretty big clue
Am a physics person who ended up doing a biophysics PhD. Cannot agree enough how true this is; ended up switching to theory because the experimental work was so far from what I was trained for/interested in
Add to all of this the current cult of project management, in the absence of pertinent experience (and often grotesque mathematical naivete), and at the end of the day, one is very much drained.
That cult of project management is very real. I think it stems from “team science” and collaboration being pushed as a dogma, regardless of how useful it actually is. Essay on that coming soon …
… You didn’t get pre-work training of ANY kind with animal handling? Not a certification for it prior to your job? Nothing?
Nope! Never handled a mouse before my postdoc. Now I'm doing adoptive transfer of T cells in tumour models etc, but only after one training session with the veterinarians for each procedure (e.g. subcutaneous injection). One thing I didn't allow enough wiggle room for here in my essay is fast learners who may not have the skill before starting the job. It's hard to figure out who is going to be a fast learner, but it's definitely possible to pick up manual skills on the job.
Hi, as a PhD student from Germany I partially agree with your perspective. I think the problem you describe comes from systemic lack of technical support for scientists. Yes, our work includes a lot of manual labour. But many methods, and mice handling should be work of technicians. In Germany every institute hires technicians who are trained in many methods and support your project. The difference between scientist and technician is that the first one should be able to see the bigger picture, analyse literature, plan experiments, while the latter masters the methods and animal handling. Otherwise, why be a scientist? Why undergo all these studies and training when at the end your job is the same as that of technical assistant?
That's a fair distinction, which I think exists less outside of Germany/Europe. I wonder to what extent scientific has to be married to actually doing the manual work, though. I do find that deep technical expertise helps with designing experiments or even knowing what kind of scientific questions can be asked.
But yes I agree with the scientist having a cognitive role above and beyond the technician. The impact of robotics in life sciences in also something that will become increasingly important to think about.
Something similar to this, which I imagine could be useful in e.g. hospital labs (and any lab that uses a pretty limited set of protocols) would be to hand them one of the standard protocols, have them show up, and just let them at it. It's a bit less of a time investment, since you're not shilling out a whole day plus whatever time it takes for the previous step where they have to make their own protocols.
Not relevant for every lab, of course, but a somewhat simplified version of your idea, that still shows their actual practical skills.
Great suggestion!
For bench scientists this is absolutely true...as one moves gradually moves from the bench to the boardroom, this gradually becomes less true...
That's fair. Different jobs though! I'm not sure I'd call both of them "scientists" in the true sense