Hacker News Reader

Comment by KRAKRISMOTT | Hacker News Reader

Outside of the overfunded Ivies, Stanford and MIT, most other state schools and academic institutions do not have the ability to absorb the sheer quantity of researchers employed by NIH.

> It’s also not even remotely true that being an MD is the first choice for researchers

You should try talking to some actual graduates in the life sciences department at your local state school, and not just MD-PHDs. I am willing to bet money that the number of non-medical biology researchers whose number one choice is medicine outnumbers wannabe researchers.

View on HN

My wife is nearing the end of her postdoc (cell biology). I’ve known her since she was 18 years old. She never wanted to be an MD. Neither did the colleagues of hers I talked to.

Try a bigger sample size. I have seen countless life science graduates switch into software engineering precisely because of medical school admissions and the rest of the industry and academia being a career dead end.

You told them they should talk to some life sciences graduates. They relayed that they knew several such people. And now you're telling them the experiment you proposed is anecdotal and not meaningful, seemingly because it didn't produce the result you wanted.

Another approach would have been to say, "interesting, my experience differs," and then to compare notes.

For instance, is it the case that you're a software engineer who occasionally meets people who've pivoted into software engineering from life sciences? That could be a very different sample than someone who's spouse has successfully gained traction in the field (with neither being representative, as they're subject to complementary survivorship biases). Seems likely to me that there's something to be learned from both perspectives here.

> You should try talking to some actual graduates in the life sciences department at your local state school, and not just MD-PHDs. I am willing to bet money that the number of non-medical biology researchers whose number one choice is medicine outnumbers wannabe researchers.

As a biochem PhD holder, you're really gonna have to back this up.

I want to credit your point and believe what you're saying, but the burden of proof is on you to give evidence that most Biology researchers want to be in medicine.

> actual graduates in the life sciences department at your local state school, and not just MD-PHDs

That's me, graduate of a life science department at MD, microbiology not medical biology. Guess what, I always wanted to do research. Definitely didn't want to be a doctor, especially if a someone like, well, you, ended up being my patient.

That makes three anecdotes to counter your assertion. You gonna pay up or move the goalposts a little more?

It is common knowledge in the local community that many of the post docs at Tulane medical school qualify for food stamps.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com