Advice to young scientists

A few things I learned doing research

Welcome – or welcome back, to The Science Fictional Now! Today’s post is a bit of a break from our usual diet of molecular biology history and stems from changes in my own professional life. Last month, I packed up my bench and left Jennifer Doudna’s lab at UC Berkeley after two years of research; I’ll start grad school in the history of science at Cambridge this fall. I learned a lot of science over the past few years, but I also got a lot smarter about being a scientist. This post is my attempt to organize and write up those lessons for other budding researchers.

The advice here is specifically directed those in the life sciences at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels, but it might also contain something for older scientists or even people in other fields.

It’s also worth noting that I’m just one person, and everything written here is colored by the peculiarities of my own experiences. Different things also work for different people, and others might tell you things that contradict what I’ve written here. For these reasons, I’ve come to think of getting career advice as a “data collecting exercise” and consistently sought out advice from different people. This post can be viewed as a synthesis of all the individual tips and tricks I picked up over my three and a half years of doing research. Most of these came from my colleagues in the Doudna and Bassler labs – thanks everyone!

Let me know your best piece of career advice by commenting below or reposting with a quote!

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Choosing what and where to study

Prioritize mentorship

In my view, having a good support system in the lab is the single most important thing when you’re starting out in science. Having good mentors early on will give you a better technical foundation, help you learn how to ask scientific questions, and give you a better handle on how science works as a social practice.

The principal investigator or group leader sets the tone for how trainees in the group are treated. If possible, get a sense of this person’s approach to mentorship before agreeing to work for them. You don’t need a PI who’s in the lab every minute, but you do need one who cares about your development and will support you at important times.

You might also have a direct mentor who actually works with you in the lab. Again, try to suss out their commitment to training you beforehand if you can. If you don’t have a direct mentor, find someone (could be multiple people) to informally fill this role. Your direct mentor should (1) be present (2) be willing to answer your questions as you learn new protocols and concepts. This person will shape your technical know-how and ability to plan experiments, so it's crucial that they be willing to go a good job teaching you.

Focus on something that you care about

This might sound obvious, but I want to emphasize it because I think studying something highly motivating to you should be second only to mentorship on your list of priorities. The lab often has a steep learning curve, so being legitimately curious about the results of your experiments will make it easier to persevere through failure early on. Choosing something you don’t like early on can also cloud your judgement: you might decide you’re not cut out for science period, when it’s really just your current project you don’t like. Things like specific skills, prestige, and publication record also matter less at the beginning of your career, making it advantageous to choose something that interests you at this point specifically.

Consider how you’ll build employable skills

With that said though, not all molecular biology skills are created equal and it’s worth at least thinking about how to make yourself employable. In the long run, knowing how to do tissue culture, biochemistry, and especially computational biology or bioinformatics make you much more employable in industry. This isn’t a total deal breaker for early career researchers since you’ve had less time to gain technical experience period, but for moving into industry after a PhD or postdoc these skills are crucial. The importance of this point scales depending on how seriously you’re considering industry, but even those of you dead set on academia should have a backup plan.

Curiosity is cool but so is social responsibility

I’ve sometimes encountered scientists who will look down on you if you’re not purely motivated by the intellectual stimulation that science provides. Please ignore these people. Don’t be afraid to do research because you’re excited about what it could do for human health, sustainability efforts, or any other worthy cause. Choose something that’s intrinsically interesting to you but don’t feel the need to be motivated by that alone.

Moreover, I’d actually encourage you to adopt an altruistic mindset and search for things that could make a difference. (To be clear, that could be doing fundamental research on something you think will pay off in way in the future; I’m not trying to limit you to translational research.) Important discoveries have been made “accidentally” but that doesn’t mean it’s useless to do science with a goal in mind.

Research mentality

(Or: abstract stuff to keep in mind)

Try and see the cathedrals

When you’re deep into optimizing a protocol or figuring out why your experiment failed for the third time, it can become easy to despair. Funny enough, there’s an old bit of wisdom relevant to these exact situations. The medieval quarry workers’ creed says that “those of us who cut mere stones must always be envisioning cathedrals.” Indeed, trying to remember the big picture and the logic behind what you’re doing can be surprisingly liberating in times of distress. When I got stressed in the lab, oftentimes I would take a breath and then remind myself why the little task that was bugging me mattered: “my goal is to do __, but first I need to do __ because it will tell us __.”

Get inspired whenever you can

Another way to pull yourself out of the weeds is to go hear someone else talk about science, especially when the person has a complete narrative to tell. I found going to seminars and lectures to be a great way of getting out of my own head, and I’d recommend getting in the habit of hearing people outside your lab talk about science on a regular basis. Hearing other people’s presentations can help recontextualize ideas you’ve been struggling with or even give you ideas for new projects and collaborations.

Don’t give too much of yourself away

Sometimes, doing molecular biology means doing long protocols or going into lab at weird hours. This doesn’t mean that you need to overextend yourself in the name of science though. Going home to relax so that you can come in and perform tomorrow is a very reasonable think to do. So is wanting to think before jumping into a new experiment or project. Biology labs are full of people who are past their limit but are so used to working at less than 100% that they don’t even realize it anymore. Know your limits and if need be, set boundaries to ensure that work doesn’t encroach on your health and well-being.

We are privileged to do science

Science can be hard, but there are plenty of jobs that are much worse. Being able to study or even get paid to do research is a privilege that shouldn’t be taken for granted. This is especially true given how much government (read: taxpayer) money is mobilized to support science in the United States. When computer scientist Jelani Nelson became the chair of his department at UC Berkeley, he emphasized how being at a state school made him a public servant. Berkeley biologist Mike Eisen expanded on this, opining that we’d be better off if all scientists considered themselves public servants. Science funding in the US might be abysmal these days, but as scientists we’re tasked with expanding human knowledge and using it to create beneficial technologies nonetheless – and we’d all do well to remember this.

Extra-scientific things to do

Learn about history, safety, and ethics

During his appearance on the 80,000 Hours Podcast, MIT biologist Kevin Esvelt described what went through his head after a “Eureka” moment:

The day after I realised that CRISPR-based gene drive was possible, I woke up in a cold sweat because I was thinking, “This is wildly different. Could this be misused? Could this be weaponised?” So I didn’t tell anyone else. I didn’t tell George Church — who was my advisor at the time, who I was working with — I didn’t tell him until I was confident that this technology favoured defence.

This is a more extreme scenario than most of the rest of us will encounter, but it illustrates the important of thinking about the implications of your work. Learn the history of your field (both good and bad), think about how scientific advances could be misused, and work to prevent such scenarios. This is all a crucial part of scientists’ social responsibility.

Learn the metagame

Doing experiments is part of being a good researcher but so is understanding how science works at a social and logistical level. Especially when you’re starting out, it’s important to figure out how things actually get done in biology. Learn how labs are structured, identify the rhetorical strategies you need for a qualifying exam or thesis defense, figure out the quirks of your own field, understand how funding works, etc.

Network regularly

Science isn’t always a perfect meritocracy; doing good work will help you advance your career but so will meeting the right people and knowing how to talk to them. Networking can seem soul-sucking at first but gets much easier with the right approach. Your goal should be to meet lots of people but also to forge relationships with them that aren’t shallow or transactional. Try and find what you have in common with people so that you can ask them questions you’re actually curious about. Avoid being fake or sycophantic and don’t step on other people.

Start close to home: get to know your peers and develop a rapport the more senior scientists around you. Be prepared to ask a professor or executive an interesting question if you run into them randomly. Once you have a bit of a network, you can use it to seek out people that you admire. As FutureHouse’s Matt Durrant recently put it: “Find all the smartest people in your field and become their friend.”

Learn to be a good communicator

One of my favorite science moments wasn’t in the lab at all – it was the time I explained CRISPR using three beer cans at a party (one was the protein, one the RNA, the other the target DNA). As bro-ey as this might sound, it was a moment where time I had spent working on explaining my research in plain English really paid off. People were laughing and having a good time but they also understood what I was explaining. In that moment, science wasn’t some incomprehensible black box, but something that we could all talk through together.

Whether we like it or not, being biologists makes us ambassadors for science. Beyond being good for scientific literacy, being able to explain our work helps non-scientists see that science is done by normal, well-meaning people. Americans’ trust in scientists has declined since the pandemic, and talking frankly about science with your friends, family, and neighbors is an easy way to be part of the solution. (It’s also a good way to level up your oral presentations; being able to speak clearly makes talking to your colleagues easier too.)

Don’t fall prey to scientific exceptionalism

Of course, being able to talk about science with non-scientists requires you to interact with them in the first place. Living in the Bay Area, I met a number of people who only interacted with other scientists (or programmers) and acted like total dweebs as a result. In fact, when your world is this small, it can be easy to other or dismiss people who are outside of it – some of these people seemed to have a complex about how working in science (or tech) meant they were somehow superior to other people. Please don’t act like this. As scientists, we should be looking to exchange ideas with people in other fields, not break them down.