Stimulating the Postdocs

Like a lot of folks in the science biz, I've been wondering about the outcome of the science spending in the stimulus package. The econ crowd argues that an effective stimulus should be both fast acting and temporary. Common sense also dictates that the spending should be something that will eventually either reduce spending in the future, or grow the GDP. There's much speculation that some fraction of the NSF and NIH spending will go towards funding recent proposals that were very highly ranked, but fell just below the funding cutoff. Given how ridiculously oversubscribed the individual investigator grant programs are, there will be no lack of worthwhile projects to fund. On the other hand, these types of grants are not necessarily fast acting. Notifications take a while to process, and by the time the funding becomes secure, job "season" for academics would be well over, causing a significant delay before personnel could be hired and money spent. However, I think there is a pretty obvious use for some of the money that better targets the goals of the stimulus package -- fund postdocs directly. In astronomy, there are a number of high prestige fellowships that are awarded to postdocs through the NSF or NASA. These awards offer postdocs complete freedom to direct their own research programs, a high degree of flexibility as to where they go, and a modest budget to support their research. Thus, instead of spending 2-3 years performing labor for a senior PI, the postdocs can develop new lines of research. I see a lot of benefit to this idea, and not too many drawbacks: First, postdocs are typically at a very productive stage of their careers. They've learned tons of useful tricks in grad school, but are not yet bogged down by teaching, grant writing, and sitting on endless committees. Scientifically, postdocs are a lot of science bang for the buck. Second, of all of us on the science track, postdocs are possibly getting slammed the hardest. Faculty searches are getting cancelled left and right, so we have an academic generation of highly trained scientists with nowhere to go. In the past, many of these people have successfully transitioned into industry (thus moving the benefits of past investment in their training back into the private sector), but these days that's not much of an option either. Giving the most promising of these folks a way to tread water for a few years might keep more of them in the scientific pipeline long enough to transfer into a stable position which made use of their skills. Third, independent postdoctoral fellowships allow one to develop skills that one needs to make a longer term scientific career work -- namely, the ability to choose your own scientific questions and then plan and execute your approach. Instead, if the stimulus package gets funneled to postdocs solely through PI grants, then a significant fraction of postdocs are primarily going to learn additional skills in "doing what their advisor suggested". (While ideally there's mentoring to support grant-supported postdocs, that doesn't always occur.) Moreover, the PI has a responsibility to the granting agency to deliver the products supported by the original grant, and cannot legally support the postdoc working on topics that are unrelated, no matter how cool and clever they are. Developing one's scientific judgement, and prioritizing one's effort are skills that transcend the particular needs of academic science -- thus, even if these postdocs do not eventually wind up on an academic track, the skills they acquire during a truly independent phase would be of huge benefit in the private sector. Finally, the postdoc applications are ready to go. Committees have met and made prioritized lists for this most recent round of awards, and my past experience suggests that they could probably double the number of awards before having any substantive concern that the money was going to someone who was not yet ready for full scientific independence. The money could then be out there stimulating those postdocs by the fall, but would be over in 3 years -- fast acting and temporary, just like it's supposed to be. If more stimulus is needed next year, they can just increase the number of awards a second time (preferably opening it up to people who are more than three years past their PhD, which is a current limitation on some of the programs). The main drawbacks I can see are (1) that it takes money out of the hands of PI's who have a proven track record of making smart scientific judgements and (2) that it adds to the overpopulation of postdocs compared to faculty positions. With regard to the first, there is nothing that says that PI's can't lure these independent postdocs to their project (especially if the agencies keep rules in place to keep all the postdocs from bunching up at one or two particularly attractive institutions). If you are doing interesting things, and have a good record for mentoring, some of these people will be more than happy to collaborate with you. Moreover, in many fields postdocs need access to infrastructure that only PIs have (lab space, big fancy science toys, large data sets, etc), in which case the postdocs would be likely to affiliate themselves closely with PIs anyways. As for the second concern, I'm not quite sure where I come down on the issue. I've always thought it was a mistake for people to see a tenure-track faculty position as the only acceptable outcome of PhD level training, and by giving people scientific independence at an early stage of their career, you're offering them a chance to develop skills they'd need for anything they'd do in the future. These people are stuck in a holding pattern anyways, and it makes more sense to me to let them do their best work while they're looking for a place to land.