There is always something slightly humbling about human tragedy. Such is the case with the suicide two months ago of a fifth-year graduate student, Jason Altom, at Harvard University. It is impossible to speculate on the full range of factors that led an apparently outstanding and respected student, outwardly stable and well-liked by his fellow students, to decide to take his own life. What does prompt comment, however, is the fact that Altom left a detailed note describing the pressures to which he felt subject, and suggesting how some of these might have been avoided in different circumstances (see page 826).

The contents of the note, extracts of which have been published in the Harvard Crimson, allude to a situation with which all graduate students will be familiar. One is the constant pressure to succeed, with eyes fixed on a sometimes distant, often daunting and always challenging goal. A second is the intense relationship, which can be either supportive or destructive, with a single supervisor — a relationship that some Harvard students joke tends to last longer than most marriages.

Both pressures can be exacerbated by a lack of the financial means and social networks that might otherwise allow their more extreme impacts to be softened. Further problems are created by the system of ‘indentured servitude’ at some institutions, under which graduates are used to meet teaching and other commitments, and end up feeling that they are being treated as a source of cheap labour.

There is no reason to believe that the situation at Harvard, despite a hot-house culture in which many ambitious graduate students willingly participate, is significantly different from that at other leading research universities. And the chemistry department, which had already been engaged in debates about mitigating such pressures, has been prompted by Altom's death to take immediate action, such as requiring every second-year student to set up a three-member pre-thesis advisory panel, and making psychological counselling services readily available.

Such moves can only be welcomed. But they inevitably raise the question, prompted by genuine concern rather than reflex recrimination, of why it took the death of an outstanding student to prompt the department into action. According to one recent PhD student, proposals for improved student oversight had been submitted by a graduate student committee three years ago, but stalled when faculty members were unable to agree on its implementation. Yet, she points out, this happened at a time when the faculty was able to conceive and start construction of a new building, renovate existing laboratories and hire new faculty.

It is impossible to pass judgement without knowing the full circumstances. But such situations raise a key issue that lies behind a broad swathe of current concerns, from scientific misconduct to the plight of contract research staff: is a culture of achievement, fanned by an increasingly competitive job market and tight competition for research grants, now in danger of driving out the culture of mutual support from which both science and its protagonists have gained so much in the past?