The breeding of researchers  

Fabio Paglieri, postdoc journal keeper for Nature and researcher at Cnr-Institute for cognitive science and technologies (Istc) compares the postdocs' life to natural ecosystems and he wonders if the pressures of the academic system will generate "useful creatures or creepy monsters".
"Like organisms filling a niche, postdocs need to adapt to their ecosystems if they want to survive and thrive", he writes. "The qualities of the best among us depend in part on the pressures exerted by the academic system. Every postdoc is required to learn (and never publicly mention) five basic survival tactics: get your results published as fast as you can; orient your research activity towards well-funded areas linked to excellent labs with good resources; don't bother attempting to publish negative findings; focus your attention on trendy topics; and try to gather counter-intuitive findings".

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Fonte: Fabio Paglieri, Istituto di scienze e tecnologie della cognizione, Roma, tel. +39 06 4459 5336, email fabio.paglieri@istc.cnr.it