This article makes it sound like this is a new problem, e.g., "But in recent years, the postdoc position has become less a stepping stone and more of a holding tank." As was pointed out in the comments of the article, the grey-haired postdoc problem in biology has persisted for decades. It's difficult to sustain sympathy for people trapped in a endless postdoc when the problem is not a secret.
Also, have to say, the article picture showcases a great pet peeve of mine with media pictures of scientists in the lab: where is the rest of this guy's PPE? One of the nice things about industry is that safety is far more likely to be taken seriously.
I got my PhD in 1993, and the postdoc position was recognized as a holding pattern, already by that time. The other well known effect was known as the "birth control problem," which was that a professor only had to produce one PhD during her career, to replace themselves. Anything more than that was surplus.
But to be fair, nobody ever told us that becoming a professor was supposed to be our only option, and it would have been silly to expect such a thing because of the "birth control problem." Yet, silly is exactly how we managed our careers. Myself included. I intended to work in industry with my PhD, but didn't exactly do anything intelligent about making it happen.
It's been my observation, visiting lots of labs, that the "culture" of always wearing safety glasses doesn't extend into biology labs. My spouse, a chemist now working in a bio lab, is aghast. "And the kids wear flip flops too." Yes, industry takes safety more seriously.
Yeah, I hate to stereotype biologists but it's true, there is a serious safety culture deficiency.
I learned cell culture from a guy that didn't wear gloves while working under BSL-2 conditions. Back then, I thought he was so cool. Now, what a moron.
My sister is a biologist, she was invited to work in a lab in her first year of university already, and her lab professor left her in charge of running the lab in general, even above PhD students because she was the only one that used all equipment correctly, safely and in an organized manner.... My sister even berates her professor when he is disorganized or forget stuff
A lot of that comes from who their mentors were and the conditions of their lab. They're often missing vital safety materials and the senior scientists have already given in to apathy. I've heard plenty of horror stories but it always comes back to "that's just how we do things in our lab, oh well"
The shift has been rapid. When I entered grad school (2003) a single postdoc was expected, 2 years. By the time I left the expectation was 4 years, and by the time I completed my second postdoc, it had bloated to two postdocs and 6-8 years. This sort of rapid shift can be expected by exponential growth which might be the short term outcome of a pyramided organizational structure replicated over and over... For years other outlets like industry and nontraditional courses (law, journalism, etc) could keep up but then there was a hockey stick catastrophe.
For most people it's not, but some people subscribe to the notion that choice implies consent/endorsement/approval regardless of mutual inclusions, mutual exclusions, or tradeoffs inherent in the structure of the choice. I do not sympathize with this point of view. My best guess is that people accept it primarily as a means to rationalize away blatant and immediate inequities for a number of reasons:
1. To comfort themselves (X would never happen to me because I would just Y)
2. To justify past decisions by framing the decision as a positive difference in street smarts rather than as a negative difference in selflessness/drive/dedication (I'm such a smart guy for leaving / never entering science!)
3. To reconcile evidence with strongly ingrained just-world or libertarian philosophy (it's ok to abuse people on the wrong side of a supply/demand asymmetry because it forcibly drives people towards the market-determined equilibrium point (assumed to be a net positive for society) while maintaining individual freedom in the sense of "you are completely free to do anything but you will be punished for disobedience")
My usual counterargument strategy is to call attention to the fact that it's actually an extreme point of view by applying it in more extreme circumstances:
"It's difficult to sustain sympathy for <coal miners dying from black lung> when the problem is not a secret."
"It's difficult to sustain sympathy for <trapped firefighters> when <the fact that firefighters occasionally get trapped in fires> is not a secret."
"It's difficult to sustain sympathy for <a soldier who jumped on a grenade to save his buddies> when <the fact that this would certainly kill him> is not a secret."
>The academic system is badly broken. Personally, I think that the only winning move is not to play.
Well, problem is, if you want to do basic scientific research (rather than engineering based on a preexisting base of scientific research), that system is the only game in town.
Pictures of a lab I worked in were taken, we were marched out because we were almost all fat middle aged white guys, then a team of Very attractive college students of politically correct gender and race were marched in and pictures were taken for the PR brochure.
Also the photography crew had a team of makeup artists making last minute corrections, and PPE is going to mess that up. More important to get the hair and makeup correct than proper wearing of gear.
Responses were highly variable, ranging from don't care to absolutely incensed. The people who were incensed got pretty mercilessly teased about it later on, all in good fun.
I suspect this is not an isolated incident when lab pix are taken.
Also comically on NANOG mailing list a long time ago I remember a legendary thread about one particular male model that somehow appeared in multiple competing long distance company ads and a couple competing telecom gear ads, before merger mania. Someone screwed up and ran two ads with him in the same industry trade rag leading to someone on NANOG noticing he's in the Cisco ad and the AT&T ad or whatever it was.
i think you're over-estimating the 'situational awareness' of many grads (myself included back in the day). while it's great that lots of first timers are entering the tertiary system and gaining degrees, they don't have the family or professional networks that can help them spot 'risky' decisions. i was the first in my family to go to uni let alone get a PhD - looking back i had NFI what was going on. getting a phd is neccessary (i knew that) but not sufficient (i did not know that) to be a pro-scientist. with the benefit of hindsight, i probably zigged instead of zagged in my MSc and from there the odds were totally stacked against me - just took me another 10 years to realise...
further - is suspect the 'long september' effect in science to continue for a lot longer - there will always be a surplus of young and eager proto-scientists who will drive the cost down and the competition up.
Also, have to say, the article picture showcases a great pet peeve of mine with media pictures of scientists in the lab: where is the rest of this guy's PPE? One of the nice things about industry is that safety is far more likely to be taken seriously.