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Poor mental health is an issue for many of our readers. That fact is underscored by the response to a tweet sent by @NatureNews earlier this week, which highlighted that rates of depression and anxiety reported by postgraduate students are six times higher than in the general population (T. M. Evans et al. Nature Biotechnol. 36, 282–284; 2018), and asked what should be done to help. The figures are a shock, but it was the reaction that blew us away: more than 1,200 retweets and around 170 replies.
“This is not one dimensional problem. Financial burden, hostile academia, red tape, tough job market, no proper career guidance. Take your pick,” read one. “Maybe being told day in, day out that the work you spend 10+ hrs a day, 6–7 days a week on isn’t good enough,” said another.
The feedback emphasizes something that Nature has highlighted often in recent years: there is a problem among young scientists. Too many have mental-health difficulties, and too many say that the demands of the role are partly to blame. Neither issue gets the attention it deserves. “I’d love to see some of the comments under this thread published,” wrote one responder. “There needs to be real conversation about this, not just observation.”
We agree — which is why we are publishing some of the responses. (You can read the full thread here.)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 02 2018, @12:26PM (12 children)
The nihilistic, self-loathing inflicted by neo-Marxist indoctrination.
The individual does not exist, all your problems are external comrade and you cannot therefore discipline yourself. Every bad decision you make is the fault of evil capitalism. Evil capitalism infests every aspect of your life; your every thought but a capitalistic neuron. Only the socialist collective can discern what is best for you. Happiness is to be found in your complete, willing subservience to the collectivist will. Overthrow the evil capitalist system and your poor self-esteem and neurotic behaviour will magically be cured... as you starve to death in a gulag.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 02 2018, @12:57PM (3 children)
Not "offtopic" [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Nerdfest on Monday April 02 2018, @01:20PM (2 children)
Post hoc, ergo proctor hoc?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 02 2018, @01:43PM (1 child)
Assuming the fallacy? [aei.org]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday April 03 2018, @01:23AM
Thanks A/C. It looks like we're pretending The American Enterprise Institute is anything other than cover for the Koch brothers and others of their ilk.
No-one is quite as good at propaganda than the American elites.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by fritsd on Monday April 02 2018, @02:07PM (5 children)
Not offtopic, but the bits the AC put in bold are NOT a quote from the article (for shame AC! you made it look like you were quoting the Socialist Revie warticle in that bolded bit of bullshit text!)
This is an actual quote from the article (which is kinda interesting):
and a bit further:
( the article is not *that* great, it gets a bit accusative of "The System", but I'm curious what MichaelDavidCrawford thinks of it )
As someone with a PhD, I can concur that the thought "why the fuck am I doing this to myself? how can this be worth it?" occurred often when I was finishing off writing my thesis.
An unthinking sense of "I started it so I'll finish it" and a loving girlfriend pushed me through the barrier.
And now I'm working as an underpaid computer programmer in another country, haha! Life is full of surprises!
One time, when I saw a Postdoc job advertisement, it said (I paraphrase): "give us an A4 with no more than 60 of your highest cited articles". Since I had 1 (where I was co-author, not even main author, so that doesn't even count), I didn't waste their time by applying.
I'm crap at writing articles, I know this of myself. So be it. I'll do work as a developer / scientific programmer instead.
Wow that made me feel a bit lighter writing this down in public. Sort of a "Mea Culpa". Sorry taxpayers!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 02 2018, @02:46PM
I apologise, I should have enclosed in sarcasm tags as a substitute for satire tags.
Rather, you evaluated priorities and pushed yourself through the barrier? There is a world of difference self-esteem and narcissism. [psychologytoday.com] That article too goes of the rails after a good start, it talks about self-esteem being a social construction. Self-esteem does not require external validation, rather building self-esteem requires a process of evaluation, failure, re-evaluation and eventual success. Assigning responsibility to nebulous "oppressive" concepts like "the system" [kafka-online.info] is not healthy, "every child gets a trophy" is not healthy while concepts like "white privilege" are completely disgusting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 02 2018, @02:47PM (1 child)
Is that a European thing to not have to publish? Over here, students need two primary author papers in first tier conferences to graduate, plus regular publications with their group wherever they can get in.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Monday April 02 2018, @07:11PM
It depends per university, maybe even per research group.
I saw a trend (at another university) to publish 4 primary author articles, staple them together, and call it a PhD thesis. I think that is more common than the old fashioned "write a book about it".
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday April 02 2018, @03:53PM
I know why I worked for 2.5 years as a TA, getting $14K/yr and my master's degree in the process: because the job market was shit when I got my BS. Once I had my MS the Uni asked me to stay on, I asked if there was any way I could move to a better paying position like associate professor (making $30-35K)? Oh, no, can't do that... we can get you more money as a TA, maybe $16K? Yeah, 3 more years riding my bicycle in the rain to and from a crap apartment? Let's check the want-ads: oooh lookee, $30-35K just down the street for a normal job... let's try that instead.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday April 02 2018, @04:04PM
Thank God, then, that the barrier wasn't guarding a train line level crossing!
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Troll) by VLM on Monday April 02 2018, @02:25PM (1 child)
Its a problem but not the only problem. Doesn't affect employees and strivers in the Democratic Party apparatus, for example.
Here's an example of conflict:
Publish or perish. Papers are evaluated blind such that scientific quality is all that matters.
Hiring to get into a position of publish or perish is base primarily on demographic membership, race, politics, and currently trendy qualities are in historical opposition to scientific quality. This also fosters impostor syndrome, because if you're hired because you're not a white male, and you know thats the only reason you got hired, you aren't going to be too confident about doing the job (and rightly so).
So if you can publish a paper good enough to keep the job or get a promotion, you're probably the wrong race or gender to get hired in the first place, so the human pain both inside and outside the system will be very high. Its like selecting members of a basketball team by some criteria other than experience, athleticism, and height, then wondering why the team is highly stressed when they often fail.
Imagine an alternative universe where we selected Arabic language professors primarily based on whiteness of skin, whitest least freckled guy wins. I'd get hired, then having no experience with Arabic I'd have quite a stressful employment.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 03 2018, @12:06AM
You're insane and such this GS occur more often in the private sector with people lying on their résumés. You like to overly complain about one aspect of life while totally ignoring the other problems. This makes you an asshole.