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I've heard of incredibly variable experiences from people working on science PhDs. I've known maths PhD students who found they could only really do 2-3 hours

I've heard of incredibly variable experiences from people working on science PhDs. I've known maths PhD students who found they could only really do 2-3 hours of truly productive maths in a day, allowing them to spend the rest of the day playing games and suchlike, and after two years their supervisor told them they'd got enough interesting results to graduate. And I've known chemistry PhD students whose supervisors felt if you're doing a mere 8 hours a day of work you might as well drop out now because you're obviously not serious about graduating, and expected their students to be in the lab tending to long-running experiments on evenings, weekends and even christmas day. And yes, we only give you three years of funding but everyone takes four years to graduate.

tptacek 3y ago
I believe it. I've surveyed friends and friends of friends about chem and bio because one of my kids is a biochemist, and that's where most of my telemetry comes from; lab STEM in general has a bad rap, but chem and bio might be distinctively awful.
nomadpenguin 3y ago
I think there's a huge division in toxicity between wet bench and computational/dry lab work. If your math PhD friends go on a wild goose chase or slack off for a few weeks, the only thing that is lost is time. In a wet lab, it could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. The stakes, stress, and constant attention required from experiments feeds into the toxicity in wet labs. Adding to that, a large portion of (important) wet bench work is mind-numbing manual labor. This work really should be done by a tech, but techs are just as if not more expensive than grad students, and techs can leave the job if they're not happy. Which means that grad students are at the bottom of the totem pole of intellectual respect, and PIs who had to do the same expect a lot more "due paying". Meanwhile, students in computational labs are working from home.

tptacek 3y ago

I believe it. I've surveyed friends and friends of friends about chem and bio because one of my kids is a biochemist, and that's where most of my telemetry comes from; lab STEM in general has a bad rap, but chem and bio might be distinctively awful.

nomadpenguin 3y ago

I think there's a huge division in toxicity between wet bench and computational/dry lab work. If your math PhD friends go on a wild goose chase or slack off for a few weeks, the only thing that is lost is time. In a wet lab, it could cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. The stakes, stress, and constant attention required from experiments feeds into the toxicity in wet labs. Adding to that, a large portion of (important) wet bench work is mind-numbing manual labor. This work really should be done by a tech, but techs are just as if not more expensive than grad students, and techs can leave the job if they're not happy. Which means that grad students are at the bottom of the totem pole of intellectual respect, and PIs who had to do the same expect a lot more "due paying". Meanwhile, students in computational labs are working from home.