Podcast – Perpetual Postdoc – A chat about academic careers that Important People Need to Hear

Voice Over:

Welcome to, The NIHR Dementia Researcher Podcast, brought to you by dementiaresearcher.NIHR.ac.uk in association with Alzheimer’s Research UK and Alzheimer’s Society. Supporting early career dementia researchers across the world.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

Hi everyone. Welcome to, The Dementia Researcher Podcast. For those of you in for the long haul, I’m Associate Professor Yvonne Couch. And I’m an Alzheimer’s Research UK Fellow at the University of Oxford. Once again, if you are joining us today for the first time, you’re at the end of a mini series on postdoc life. So jump back and listen to the first two episodes, where you’ll hear some tips for early career researchers, and how being a perpetual post stock affects the science and the people. As before, I’m joined by Dr. Kamar Ameen-Ali, Research Associate at the University of Glasgow, Dr. Kritika Samsi, Senior Research Fellow at Kings College, London, and Dr. Sarah Kate Smith, Research Fellow at Sheffield Hallam.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

Now, I’m going to be bold and say, today we are going to fix everything. So we’re going to start with a pretty brave, and fairly opinionated statement, set out in the ironic form of an undergraduate essay title. “I don’t think universities are particularly interested in students.” Discuss. Who wants to jump in.

Dr Sarah Kate Smith:

I’ll go, then. I’m going to be pretty bold here as well. I think some universities are more teaching-focused, and some are more research focused, and the teaching-focused universities maybe generate the majority of their income from students. So I’d be as bold to say that those universities provide a better experience. So the research-focused universities maybe tend to generate more income through research funding, and I realize that’s a huge generalization, but I’ve worked in both Met universities and Russell Group universities, and I’ve found that neither emphasize the importance of teaching and research, and the focus tends to be on one or the other, in my experience.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

Yeah. I think at Oxford that’s definitely the case. So in theory, the idea here is that the students are taught by the forefront researchers, the people who are at the cutting edge of the science. Whilst I love bringing my work, and the work that I do, to my tutorials and saying, “Oh, actually, this is what we found out, and this is what’s interesting, and this is how it applies to the stuff that you’re studying now,” I don’t necessarily think that everybody does that. I think that what happens a lot of the time is, the people who are really at the forefront are all of the big wig professors who have all of the money, and what happens is the teaching ends up trickling down to the people who want to make a good impression, and the people who want to get experience.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

Do you think that it’s anything to do with the reputation of the university, in terms of the prestige? Because sometimes those more prestigious universities, they can rely heavily only on their reputation to bring in students. They don’t necessarily have to invest so much in the teaching experience, or the student experience. So they can focus much more on generating research income, and supporting research, and investing in research facilities, because they can just rely on their reputation to bring in the students. Particularly the really prestigious ones, not just Oxford and Cambridge, but places like Durham, Exeter, York as well. These are universities that have a really, really strong prestigious reputation, and I think they’ll never struggle to recruit students.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

Yeah, that’s almost certainly the case, and this is probably my ignorance of the situation, but I’m not even entirely sure how output is measured, or whether the student experience is even a thing that’s considered. It’s almost like their measurement of success is, how many people pass, and how many people get decent jobs afterwards, or how many people go into further education. It’s not necessarily actually, “Did your students actually learn anything? Did they come out as different people? Did you improve their lives in any way?” You could almost rote-teach or make minimal effort, and I feel like it would make no difference, but for me, when I’m teaching, I almost don’t want to do that because I don’t feel like that, like you say, I don’t feel like that gives them a good experience and I don’t feel like that allows them to develop as people.

Dr Sarah Kate Smith:

I think that it depends on the institution. Like Kam was saying, that when I was doing my PhD, we were expected to teach, and we were expected to teach post-grad students as well. So, in the school that I was in, they didn’t have undergrad students, so it was only postdoc but we were expected to communicate in teaching every week. Now, I’m a hundred percent research, and I teach, I don’t get paid for it, of course, but I teach because I really, really want to, and I have to find the time in my schedule, which means something else will go, or something else will be late or something else, because I’m a hundred percent research, and actually the funder would perhaps have an issue, if they knew. At the end of the day, to be an academic, you have to do more, you have to embed yourself and do some teaching, and do some seminars, and do some workshops, in order to be an all around academic. So I think that there’s two sides, but I do believe that we are expected, certainly as researchers, to do teaching as well.

Dr Kritika Samsi:

I confess, I don’t know exactly what the balance in Kings is. I feel they’ve emphasized the teaching when I am teaching, and I feel like they emphasize the grant income when I’m applying for a grant, so I’m not very sure what they think is more important or less important. The setup I’m in currently is a research unit. So we are primarily, we are not a teaching institute, we are very much a research-focused fund, we’re all on what is a research-only contract, but to progress up the King’s ladder promotions, pathways, whatever it is called, you need to have some teaching experience. But we aren’t being paid by [inaudible 00:06:53], so there’s this very weird intersection, where we are not expected to teach, but when we apply for a promotion, it should be somewhere on our CV.

Dr Kritika Samsi:

So like Sarah, I do teaching and like Kam, actually, I do teaching, I don’t get paid for it, and the something that suffers is me, or my health, or because I fit it in, and end up staying up to midnight finishing the report I should be finishing in my day job, when I actually have been teaching, for instance. So I feel like the promotions pathways in a lot of these universities expect you to, or in another job, they expect you to have all these different credentials and this experience. But a lot of universities don’t support this, and this whole research-only contract has become an easy way, out where they say, “We don’t want you to teach. We don’t expect you to teach,” but then it doesn’t allow you the flexibility to move to another job if you so choose, or even move up your own promotions pathways in the same institute itself. So I feel like there is a big misalignment with what they expect of you and what they ask you to do.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

So I think you’ve made a really important point, and I’m actually slightly horrified that all of you have specifically said, “I do teaching, but of course I don’t get paid for it.” I think that’s absolutely horrendous, and I’m now feeling guilty by saying that I only do teaching if I get paid for it, because I don’t think that the university should be undervaluing teaching like this. I think it’s fairly horrendous. Do you think there should be some kind of change in the institutional structure, maybe? Do you think, so, Kritika, you’ve just said you work in an institute and it’s research-only. So do you think there’s going to be more of a swing towards research-only institutions, and that the teaching will be done almost separately, and do you think that would be a good thing? Do you think that would work?

Dr Kritika Samsi:

Well? My research institute itself is set up like a consultancy. So I think we’ve been told that the business model doesn’t support you to be… So this is another thing, that the business model of my research institute doesn’t allow me to be a permanent member of staff. So it’s that whole instability of contracts, which seems like an easy get out from the business model, of, “Why was the business model not set up to be able to encourage people to be permanent members of staff?”

Dr Kritika Samsi:

So I think, if I wanted to stay in my research unit and progress up, the research unit is part of Kings. So it isn’t working independently. So the promotions pathways will subscribe to what the King’s role is, which requires you to be having some PhD students and teaching requirements. So I don’t understand where this mismatch comes, and I’m not senior enough to contest it. I just feel like, who is making these decision? Why was the business model set up in a way that doesn’t allow me to be paid for my teaching, or me to be required to teach, so that then I have time in my week to actually do it?

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

I think I’m seeing more and more lectureships that are either research and teaching or they’re advertised as teaching and scholarships. I think that from lectureship onwards, they are distinguishing between those roles where it’s almost 50-50 research, teaching, and those that are going to be much more teaching-focused. So they want to invest more time in improving student experience and student learning, but certainly below the lectureship level, postdocs, research associates, research fellows, I don’t know, outside of Oxbridge, how many people actually get paid for their teaching. It’s, if you are on a research contract, you are contracted just to do that research, and if you are thinking about progressing to lectureship, you are almost seen as taking on these things as extra, but then you feel like you have to take them on if you want to, to progress to being a lecturer. So, that balance between doing what you are employed to do, at this level, but then also trying to think about the next step and prepare for that.

Dr Sarah Kate Smith:

I also, certainly in the university I work in, it is quite teaching-focused and as a new researcher there, as in, I started in the summer, they jump on you to teach, because they have so many lecturers who are full-time lecturers and are amazing, but they’re not researchers. So it is a different experience. Certainly, teaching research methods, which is what I do, the teaching that the students get from lecturers who are pure lecturers is, dare I say, theoretical, and the teaching they get from researchers is more applied, I imagine. That’s my experience, anyway. So they do want you, as researchers, to teach, because if you’re teaching research methods, you’re teaching something that you do every day, but they don’t recognize this in the sense that there’s probably two researchers in a department and 20 lecturers. So it’s not 50-50. So we don’t have, like Kam was saying, we don’t have positions that would do 50% research, 50% lecturing, because that’s the dream. But there isn’t anything like that. You’re either a lecturer or a researcher, but you’ll be pulled in, as a researcher, to lecture.

Dr Kritika Samsi:

I feel like a lot of these academic roles that we do are preparing us for the next step, but that next step is not guaranteed. So we think we should do a lot of the teaching, a lot of the PPI, a lot of our own writing of papers, and all of this extra networking, and all of this extra work, but the guarantee of the next promotion, or the next job, not being there makes it really hard to even justify to yourself to thinking. It feels like you’re applying for a new job every time you apply for a new grant. So it just feels like there’s no guarantee to any of the work we put in. I think, in one of the discussions we had, you said, “What does success look like?” I think that’s it, there’s very little returns. We can get returns from our everyday work, from our everyday interactions with other colleagues, and conferences we go to, and a paper published here. But on a regular basis, there is very little feedback on every extra bit of work that we do as an academic.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

Yeah. I feel like so many of the institutions don’t really know what their own focus is, and I think that, for me, that’s part of the problem, is that, “Do you want me to be good at teaching? If you want me to be good at teaching, I need to have a little bit more time, or I need to stretch my research contract out for longer.”

Dr Yvonne Couch:

So when I was working in Denmark, they had really wonderful systems out there where, within a department, if the department contributed so many hours of teaching time, the university paid for so many hours of a research assistant’s time. So the lab that I was in, basically, the PI, she taught for, I can’t remember how many hours a week, but she taught every week during term time. So for one of every three weeks, she got a research assistant to do whatever she wanted. So this, this lovely lady, Louise, would turn up and Kate would go, “Right, this week, I need you to do these Western blots, and this genotyping, and I need you to culture up these cells and I need to you cut these brains.” And it was just doing all that stuff that she potentially didn’t have time to do, because she was teaching.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

I was like, that’s the kind of thing that we really need here, because the reality is that it is kind of assumed, like you say, Kritika, it’s assumed that it’s for the next job. The reality is that that next job is isn’t there, but if it is there, we do need the experience, and we need that more rounded CV that they’re expecting us to have, now. If you do get, there are so many departments at Oxford, like yours, which are research-only, and so often these people, they don’t even have access to teaching. They don’t know how they would to get that experience if they wanted to.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

I was lucky, or unlucky, depending on how you see it. I got roped into teaching very early, but I know lots of people who don’t do any teaching, which I think is wonderful for them, because they get all their time to focus on their research. But, when it comes to their CV, it’s potentially slightly less well rounded than it could be. But we’ve very firmly been focusing on undergrad teaching, but we are now, I think, all three of us at the stage where we are thinking about, if we don’t already have them, maybe having PhD students. Do you think there’s an issue with the current system in terms of getting a PhD student, having a PhD student, supervising one consistently?

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

I actually do have a PhD student, which is scary to think of. I’m second supervisor to a PhD student who’s in their first year. I feel almost completely unprepared for it, because I guess you always, and in other jobs that I’ve had as well, other postdoc positions, you would do a lot of unofficial supervising of PhD students. When they would start, you’d teach them how to do certain things, and they’d come to you for advice, and so you’d do a lot of that unofficial supervision, and there is actually a bit of a leap to then becoming an official supervisor, even if it’s a second supervisor. I feel like I’m quite lucky, in the sense that being in the position that I am, that I’ve been given that opportunity, but at the same time, I feel like, “Am I prepared for it?” I haven’t had anything official training or anything like that that has been done to prepare me for it.

Dr Sarah Kate Smith:

I think that’s the worry, isn’t it? Because I have had a few PhD students and this one, I’ve just got a new one, and the PhD will outlast my contract. So, who’s at a loss there? They’ve jumped on it because of the topic, and they wanted me because of the topic, which is fantastic, and I’m thrilled to bits to do it, but it’s the long-sightedness that’s lacking. What happens when I leave, and what will happen to that PhD student’s thesis, and what have you? Does it mean that I do that in my spare time, then, or in the next role, for a different university?

Dr Kritika Samsi:

Did that not come up, when it was first being decided? Because it’s such an important point, right? You just think, “How has this not come up from the student point of view, from the university? How has it been signed off?” Did it come up at all?

Dr Sarah Kate Smith:

It didn’t come up at all. I think, as well, that I do end up feeling grateful and I know that I’m working and getting paid and have a contract, but I feel grateful to have a job. I know I shouldn’t, I’ve worked really hard for it, so why shouldn’t I have a job, but I do think that not rocking the boat is a bit of a personality trait of mine. I want to just keep my head down, don’t rock the boat, don’t make things. So for me to say, “Oh, we’ll do this supervision as long as you extend my contract,” or, I didn’t feel in the position. I just wanted to get the job and do my best, really. So no, it didn’t come up and that will be on me, definitely, by the end of it.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

I think that’s part of the problem. So there are two points I really want to jump on, from what you and Kam were saying. One is that, “Why are institutions not asking these questions?” I feel like, now, the only way that people that are our level can supervise a PhD student is as a second supervisor to someone in a permanent academic job, and the institutions should be thinking about that. But does that mean, and this is a controversial question, “Do we think that there are just too many PhD positions at universities?” Do we need fewer PhD students?

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

I don’t think we need fewer PhD students, because if we’re thinking about progression through academia, people will filter out into different careers along that path, and we need people to work in academic publishing, or for these research funders. These jobs are actually PhD level jobs. When I worked with the NC3Rs as a program manager, I needed a PhD for that job. So I don’t have an issue with the number of PhD students that we have, but I do have an issue with those who do want to progress in academia, that it’s not supported, and that when we don’t have the support in that progression. I think there’s a lot of support for PhD students, but that diminishes the further along that academic track you get.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

Yeah. I think we mentioned in a previous episode that there is, I think, Kritika, it was you who said that there is increasingly support for early career researchers, which is lovely, don’t get me wrong. I really like the fact that they’re getting support. But as I’ve mentioned, I think a lot of people almost do this first postdoc to test the waters, and they will often leave and go and do something else, because they’ve decided that actually it’s not for them. It’s almost at this level when you’ve been a postdoc for like 7, 8, 9, almost 10 years, that you do need support, because you’ve clearly made that decision. You’ve clearly said, “This is what I love. This is where I want to be,” and I feel like institutions need to recognize and value that. But, I don’t know what they’re recognizing and valuing, and I think that’s part of the problem, is that I don’t know whether they’re recognizing and valuing the money, or whether they’re recognizing and valuing any teaching input that we have.

Dr Sarah Kate Smith:

I think, going back to what we were saying in one of the earlier podcasts, there is this expectation that every postdoc, or if you do a PhD, you become a postdoc and stay, you’re going to want to be a professor. I think that’s an assumption, it’s a huge assumption. I don’t want to be a professor, and I put my hands up there, and I think people are horrified when I say that, especially funders, because they think, “Well, there’s no investment there, then,” but I do think that it’s independence, that’s what I want. I want to follow my own path through academia. I’ve done my training, I’ve worked on the postdoc contracts, but now the short term contracts don’t allow this research independence and job security, and rather, the importance of my role is delivering somebody else’s research project in a way that they want it delivering.

Dr Sarah Kate Smith:

I think, in order to undertake my own research, I’d need to hold a permanent position. Yet, permanent positions are there unless you have a track record of attracting funding, which is a challenge when you don’t have a permanent position. So, it’s Catch-22, although it’s understandable, as universities, like we said, are businesses, and they have to invest in people who can attract the funding. So it’s not necessarily about how many journal articles or book chapters you write, or how published you are, but rather, how good you are at writing successful funding bids. I think that’s my issue.

Dr Kritika Samsi:

I feel like the new drive that has happened in a couple of research grants to encourage first-time applicants to become a PI, or this whole concept of a [co-PI 00:23:20], is quite supportive. In lots of ways, I think it may be the next step into being an independent researcher, where you can be a core PI, because again, at Kings, there is this stipulation that you need a certain amount on your contract after the grant ends, which then doesn’t always tie up with if you’re not a permanent member of staff. But a co-PI enables you to be a little bit more as an independent researcher, while having the support of someone who has a track record that they can demonstrate. But I don’t know how well it works in practice, whether it needs to be someone you really get on with, or whether it can just be a collaborator relationship, really.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

Well, that’s an interesting point, and actually it harks back something that you said, Kam, in terms of training to be in these roles. So it’s really useful to be co-PI on a larger grant, because it almost allows you to learn how to do that as you progress up. I think, for me, it’s really important to do that with someone that you trust, with a mentor, with someone who’s really going to help you through the process, rather than go, “Write this grant for me. Bye-bye. See you next week.” So, Kam, you were saying that you’ve been made this second supervisor, but they’ve just, or they’ve not made you be a second supervisor, I’m assuming you’ve volunteered for it, but they’ve put you in this role, and then there is almost no support and no recognition of, almost, whether you’re doing a good job or not. Do you think we need more training? And do you think that is something that universities can or should be paying for? Or do you think we should just be left to sink or swim?

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

I feel like it’s such a lottery, isn’t it, because I feel like some kind of formal training would be good, that could give you some like core skills and some core understanding of what is required of you as a supervisor. But then, at the same time, I think if you were, and this goes back to when we talked about the type of environment being really, really important, and the type of supervisor that you have being really important. Because, I think if you were working in a group where you had that support from, if we take a situation where you’re a second supervisor and your PI is the primary supervisor of that student, if you have a lot of support from your PI, who is the primary supervisor, you can learn a lot from them. They can give you tips and they can invest that time in helping you.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

But so often, PIs don’t have that time, and even though you might be this second supervisor, you might actually be the one who ends up investing most time in the supervision, or at least the direct supervision of that student. So I feel like, even if you didn’t have that formal support, that formal training, if you had a really, really good environment and a really supportive PI, you would be getting that anyway, but you just need to learn from somewhere, and it’s not just good for you, it’s good for the PhD student as well.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

Yeah. You pick up knowledge by osmosis. I was lucky enough to have three PhD supervisors, or again, unlucky enough, and they all had very, very different approaches to supervision. So what I’ve done with my first PhD student was try to distill the aspects of them that I liked, and ignore the aspects that I didn’t. So, one of them was very much, she didn’t do this on purpose, but she was very much a pastoral supervisor. So she sat down at the beginning of every meeting that we had, and just went, “How are you?” That gave me the opportunity to either leap straight into my science, or to go, “Actually, I’m really miserable right now because nothing’s working,” and I just got to have a bit of a moan.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

So I really liked that, and I tried to take that onto my other students, because my primary PhD supervisor never did that. It wasn’t that he wasn’t interested. It just didn’t occur to him. I could be miserable, and he probably wouldn’t have noticed. I think I try and take aspects of everything that I’ve seen, but there are still people who do almost the opposite. They’re like, “Well, I suffered, so my PhD students have to suffer, too.” I think that’s just an unbelievably terrible attitude.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

But I think part of the problem, for me, is that, so, Kam, you and I are in the same position in that, I have been supervising students, but only as a co-PI because of the contract issues. But I know that I have friends who are on slightly longer contracts, so a friend of mine managed to get one of the five-year fellowships. So within that five year period, she can have a PhD student. But then, the trouble is, if she’s the principal for PI, she’s still junior, and at this point, there’s this pressure for her to produce, and to be successful and to publish. So that almost trickles down to any PhD student she gets. So my supervisors had permanent contracts, and I’m not going to say it means that I was allowed to mess around, because that’s wrong, but I was allowed to do experiments that like failed, and I was allowed to do things that I was like, “Maybe this might be interesting,” and then spend six months doing something that turned out to not be very interesting.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

I think that is so important for scientific creativity. You’re not going to get novel ideas and things unless you’re allowed to play around a little bit. I think if you have this very short-term PhD, contract thing, because you’re being supervised by someone who also has a short term contract, there’s this pressure to produce on the PhD student, which I think is not necessarily a good thing either.

Dr Sarah Kate Smith:

I think something you said really resonated there with me, Yvonne, and it’s about these traditional academic roles, that are so fixed and rigid, and dictated by funding, I think, rather than experience and dedication and passion. What if we really do want to dedicate our careers to one thing, and to making lives better for people. What if that is it? Why do we have to be reduced to lack of funding, or how well we write funding applications? I think it’s a bit of a dilemma, and I think the system is old-fashioned and needs a refresh.

Dr Kritika Samsi:

I have an opposite point of view, where I sometimes think that the more senior I get, someone says, “You need to have a niche. You need to be good at one thing.” I think, “Why? Why can’t I just do lots of different things, and get stimulated by different experiences and different research projects?” Rather than focus just on one topic and get better and better at it, which I recognize has its value, but you learn a lot from just doing different things as well. So I totally agree with you, Sarah, but I feel like there’s a flip side to my personality sometimes, which is the opposite.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

Exactly. As part of our sort of tips for early career researchers, I asked lots and lots of friends, “What would you have wanted to know when you were in early career research?” One of my friends said that she wished she’d found her niche earlier. I was like, “I don’t know whether you want to find your niche early, because I think that doesn’t allow you to have lots of different experiences, and it doesn’t allow you to distill all those experiences, and go, “Actually, no, I didn’t enjoy doing that, actually. No, I didn’t enjoy doing that.” Kam, I know that you did many different projects, doing many different things. Do you think that the system is set up to allow you to do that, or do you think it’s becoming more and more restrictive?

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

It’s tough, because I do value the fact that I’ve been able to work on different projects because of moving around, and in a way it’s almost one of the benefits of the precarious contracts that I’ve had, is that I’ve been almost forced to move, but it’s meant that I’ve had the opportunity to work on these different projects and learn different skills. But the downside of that is, I haven’t been able to stay anywhere long enough to develop my niche and to develop, “Where do I fit into this?”

Dr Yvonne Couch:

I think that’s really important, and one of the things that I think is missing here, from a funder’s point of view, and from potentially university point of view, is longevity in terms of a research project. If everything is reduced to this three-year niche, then you don’t have of the opportunity to persist and pursue an idea in any depth, or with any decent, reproducible way. So there’s this huge reproducibility crisis in science, and I think part of the problem is because you get this three-year postdoc and then you leave, and then maybe somebody else comes into the same group and does a three, and then they spend six months, essentially, optimizing something that you optimized a year before, but they don’t know about it, because you’ve left.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

There’s just not that longevity in terms of any of the projects, and in terms of demand research, because this is a dementia research podcast, that’s so important, because so many of the models that we need to use are two years long, in terms of animal research. But even in terms of people research, if you are looking at prognostic biomarkers, for example, you’re going to want to be looking at these people for years, and years and years at a time. The idea of having a whole bunch of different people rolling through those projects just, for me, financially, doesn’t make sense, and doesn’t make sense in terms of the project.

Dr Kritika Samsi:

Again, I know there can be a three year postdoc, but in health and social care research that I work, in projects have been much, much shorter. I think three years sounds like a luxury. I know so many projects are just a year, year and a half, and I think that lends itself to, before you’ve even begun, you’re looking for the next grant and you just think, “How is this adding to science? How is this adding to research?” This is really just a job after job, after job rather than slow scholarship or any of the beauty of research, which is, mulling over a problem, finding the solution, as it were, and taking it forward. There’s no time to even think, because you just go through the treadmill of finding the next grant.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

Yeah, and I worry that the people who are, then, senior enough to be permanent are not necessarily enmeshed in the much anymore. So they’re slightly detached from the literature. Don’t get me wrong, some of them are amazing, but some of them are slightly detached though. There are things that they might not know, because they’re not doing that day to day, and they don’t appreciate how long techniques take, or what techniques are available. So they have the permanency, but they don’t necessarily have the scientific insight anymore.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

I think, for me, one of the most interesting conversations I had was with a chap who used to work at the MRC, and he made it a really basic statement, and it was so plain that I almost laughed. He just said, “I don’t understand why is not a permanent job.” It’s not, and I don’t think there’s any way that we can fix that, but I think the universities and the funders need to talk to each other, because something that you said, Sarah, I thought was really important, is that you said you don’t want to be a professor, you just want to pursue some independent research. Does that mean you want to have a group, or do you just want to pursue your own research, or how do you foresee? In an ideal world, if I gave you a squillion pounds, what would you do?

Dr Sarah Kate Smith:

I think, in my experience, the professors I’ve worked for don’t do the work that I want to do, because they’re higher level, and so they oversee. I think I would love a team, or being part of a team, that we could, like you said, Yvonne, pursue those avenues that you never have time to do in contract work. I don’t think it should be assumed that everyone wants to be a professor, but I do think that it should be assumed that people have a passion, and want to see things through. I just find it’s all, we’re losing really good people in academia because of job insecurity, and I think it’s something that is essential that we look at, really.

Dr Kritika Samsi:

I think it’s something Kam had said, the last time we had the pre-chat, which was, I think it works differently in a lab setting, where one person can be an expert at a particular methodology, or a technician or something, that brings a technical skill. I feel like the more senior someone gets in academia, you do more, rather badly. I wish I could just stay as a qualitative methodologist, not aspire to a professorship just because that’s the gold standard, but be better and better at what I want to do, and contribute my knowledge just to every research study going. Whereas it’s not become like that. It’s become to be a PI, you have to do everything, or prove you can do everything, and why is that the end goal?

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

Yeah. I don’t know many people who actually care about becoming a professor. I certainly couldn’t care less if I become a professor or not, it’s just not something that I care about, but I agree that, I really feel that it is a waste to have really highly-skilled scientists driven out of jobs, because they might not be interested in progressing up that academic career ladder. So for example, I think we mentioned this before, where if, for example, in my group where I work, if we wanted to run a pilot FMRI experiment, then we would either need to employ somebody who already has those skills, or we would need to spend time and really invest in learning them ourselves, which can be, it’s such a difficult skill to learn anyway, but to invest the time in it, which we don’t have.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

I just feel like, imagine if you had somebody, who was maybe at postdoc level, and they were so highly skilled and knowledgeable, not just on that piece of equipment, and you know how to troubleshoot with that piece of equipment, but also in the experimental design aspect. Then, I really feel that would advance a lot of projects, because it stops that gate keeping of certain methods and certain techniques, and it allows a lot more fluid collaborations, because you don’t have that barrier there, of, “I don’t have the skills to do that, therefore I can’t do that experiment.” I really feel that a role like that, I know some universities do have roles like that, but I don’t feel that many do.

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

I feel like a lot of postdocs would probably like to have a job like that, because it’s different to what a technician, because you’re not just doing technical work, you’re also contributing to the research design and the research analysis, and using your skills there as well, but you’re just collaborating on many, many different projects that people are bringing to you. So it works well from both perspectives, both that person, that has that skill, and also research groups coming to them to use that skill.

Dr Sarah Kate Smith:

I think that what the system is telling me is that I’m not worth a permanent contract. If I was a lecturer, and I could get a lectureship, because I have the qualifications and the teaching experience, I am worth a permanent contract. So why aren’t researchers, postdoc researchers, worth a permanent contract? That would be my question, really?

Dr Yvonne Couch:

Yeah, I agree. I feel like that’s something that universities and funders need to think about answering, but in terms of what you said, Kam, I think for me, what universities are often lacking is this, what I call scientific middle management. I have friends who genuinely have no interest in running labs, but they’re very good at what they do, and they like doing what they do, and they like teaching other people the skills that they have, and, but they don’t really like writing grants. But I feel like they should be given the opportunity to, almost, spread those skills around. I think, if we have that kind of setup and more permanency, it would almost allow for more collaborations.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

If I knew that there was someone in Nottingham, who had access to an MRI machine that did a very specific type of sequence, who was an expert in something, and I knew she was going to be there forever, and I was going to be here forever, and then we could set something up and we could run with a project together. But I don’t know whether I’m going to be here in two years and she doesn’t know whether she’s going to be there in two years. So, realistically, it means that a project that could potentially be interesting, exciting, is going to potentially die on its arse, because neither of us know where we’re going to be.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

It means that those skills are going to be lost, the very specific skills that she has, they’re very specific skills that I have. I think it’s a massive waste and what we are ending up doing is almost wasting money learning, we’re reinventing the wheel. With all these new short-term contracts, we’re just reinventing the wheel. I think it’s a huge waste of money, and I think that is something that the funders really need to think about. Is this person progressing knowledge, or are they just going to be starting again, essentially, and then starting again in another three years time?

Dr Kritika Samsi:

Ironically, one of the things that we said at the beginning that we really liked about academia was different kinds of people in the environment. Whereas, I feel like the more senior people get, it’s driven out of us because you’re expected to do more, do it in a quicker timeframe, be more, be more places, and your specific skillset gets diluted because you are expected to take on a lot more of these other roles.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

Yeah. It almost, for me, I know that, Sarah, you said something about, what you needed to get a grant was to be a good salesperson. I feel almost, as you go up the ladder, it’s almost selecting for good sales people, and good sales people are not necessarily good scientists. I’m not saying that they’re never good scientists, I’m just saying someone who can, there’s a very rude word that I really want to say right now and I’m not going to, but they can talk the talk, and it doesn’t necessarily get followed up with any action. I worry that that’s not necessarily the way we want to go within science.

Dr Sarah Kate Smith:

Can I make a quick point there? Just that I have done some funding applications that are based on people living with dementia’s opinions review, they have reviewed the funding applications, and have been very clear that this funding is required. But then the actual decision is down to me going to interview, and being interviewed by a panel of 10, 12 senior academics, and then them deciding that, no, that I’m not the candidate for this fellowship. But what about those people living with dementia, who reviewed my proposal and said that, “Yes, they needed this in their lives,” or what have you? That’s a bit of a dilemma for me. It doesn’t sit well.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

No, I can imagine. So many, there was a great study in 2014, the names of whom I cannot remember, but basically it said that peer review panels are terrible at predicting future success. It may as well be a lottery and for a lot of these fellowships, you have to turn up for interview, and I interview terribly, I get nervous, and flustered, and sweaty, and it’s horrible, and I don’t perform as well as if I could have 12 individual chats with all of those senior researchers. I’m sure I would come across better, not confident, but I’m sure I would come across better than having to stand in front of all 12 of them, 95% of whom are checking their emails anyway, and try and sell my science within a 10-minute window.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

I appreciate that is a skill that I’m sure we have to have, but I feel like if somebody has that skill already, and is very good at it, then it’s, it’s going to select for their science over my science, and we don’t necessarily know how to judge science well, and we all come to these panels with our own biases. I know what I find exciting, and it may not necessarily be what Kam finds exciting or what Kritika finds exciting. So it’s difficult to rectify at the interview level, and then at the funders level. So one of the things that I would be keen to get everyone’s opinion on is whether we think the changes that need to happen, need to happen at the level of the funder, or do we think they need to happen at the level of the university, or both?

Dr Kritika Samsi:

I think the funders are trying. I really think this move, there’s been a big push in social care research. So I work in social care research, so I do feel like the funders have reached out a little bit more. I think this whole drive to make people to be a co-PI is a movement that I fully support, just because I would benefit from it. I think that a lot of charities that I know are also allowing early career researchers to be PIs for the first time. So I definitely think the funders are trying. I don’t see the same level of awareness or support coming from universities. So, maybe because Kings is such a big behemoth, it finds it hard to take these opinions on board. So maybe that’s the reason, maybe smaller universities are trying harder, succeeding more, but I feel like funders are trying more than universities, in my opinion.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

I completely agree. So there are, from my perspective a whole swathe of things that I cannot apply for, because like you say, the funders are trying. So the way that they’re trying is, they’re giving you longer pots of money, with the idea that the pot of money sort of trails off towards the end, then your institution picks it up. But I work in a bit of the university that is not teaching-focused, and therefore they have no real need to keep me, because I don’t contribute anything, other than money, to this department. If I worked in a teaching department, it would be different, because then I could say, “Actually, look, this will trail off. I can pick up a bunch of teaching and a bunch of lectures and stuff, so it’s in your benefit to keep me around.” But in this department, there’s no benefit for them. So they won’t let me apply for those grants. So it needs to be a conversation, I think, between the institutions and the funders. I think, hopefully, someone might be listening who has opinions or can do something. I desperately hope that is the case.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

Well, I think you’ll agree we’ve definitely fixed everything. If nothing else, hopefully someone important is listening, and they can crack on and do something. Anyone out there who might be struggling with anything, The Dementia Researcher, is a great resource for many of your research needs. It has funding calls and job ads, but it also has podcasts, like this one, covering all sorts, from scientific methods to molecular biology, to conference roundups, as well as blogs from people like Kam and I, on topics like mental health, stroke, and animal models of disease. So for the final time, I’d like to thank our panelists, Kritika, Kam, and Sarah. Before we round up this one, does anyone have anything they’d like to plug? Charity runs, bake sales? Kam, I just mentioned your regular blog now, any hints on topics that might be coming up from you?

Dr Kamar Ameen-Ali:

Well, I think by the time this goes live, I’ll have a blog out that will be on similar themes around this. So that blog will probably be a nice introduction into this podcast.

Dr Yvonne Couch:

Excellent. Good to hear. Anyone else, anything fun going on in your lives that you want to share with the world? Nope, that’s fine. I am a regular blogger with, Dementia Researcher, and I have extremely strong opinions. So if anybody wants to listen or read those, feel free to jump on the website. All of our Twitter bios are somewhere on the Dementia Research website. So again, have a look at those, have a jump on social media, see what we post about. Once again, thank you all for listening and remember to like and subscribe to, The Dementia Researcher at Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. So for the last time, stay safe and keep researching.

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Brought to you by dementia researcher.NIHR.ac.uk in association with Alzheimer’s Research UK, and Alzheimer’s Society, supporting early career dementia researchers across the world.

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