The Next Generation of Biomedical and Behavioral Sciences Researchers: Breaking Through by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Education: Higher Education, Health and Medicine: Medical Training and Workforce, Behavioral and Social Sciences: Policy, Reviews and Evaluations
Publisher: The National Academies Press
Published: 2018-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

If due care is not taken in addressing these issues, widespread and consistent imposition of the cap could very well harm the populations that this recommendation is intended to benefit—especially ESIs and individuals already underrepresented in the biomedical research fields. At any rate, the need for careful consideration of these issues is precisely why the recommended pilot studies are important instruments for stimulating evidence-based changes in the country’s complex biomedical research enterprise.

Finally, Recommendation 4.4 endorses recommendations from earlier reports that postdoctoral training on any funding mechanism be limited to 5 years (Appendix B). After 5 years, any postdoctoral researcher continuing in the same laboratory should be shifted to employment as a staff scientist with an increase in salary and benefits appropriate for a permanent staff member. However, postdoctoral researchers should be allowed to request a short extension beyond the 5 years to account for unplanned circumstances or parental responsibilities.

Taken together, these recommendations seek to engage an enduring concern, one expressed in numerous earlier reports, that most postdoctoral researchers are supported for extended periods of time on RPGs that do not adequately promote their mentorship, training, or transition to independence. RPGs enable the PI to use postdoctoral researchers as technicians who are expected to execute predefined aims. Under these conditions, many postdoctoral researchers face barriers to cultivating independence. It was not always this way; the percentage of postdoctoral researchers supported on these mechanisms has skyrocketed in recent years. These recommendations seek to ease the postdoctoral research population away from this funding mechanism.

While acknowledging all of these complexities and their diverse opinions about the potential implications of these recommendations, the committee members were unanimous in the belief that the postdoctoral experience should be considered a period of mentored transition to independence and that an enforceable, innovative, and tested mechanism is necessary to promote the career progression to independent careers. Previous recommendations have fallen short of stimulating the action needed to transform this crucial career stage. The system is now primed for innovative, rather than incremental, systemic change—if done deliberately and with care.

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