Articles in 2019

We have known for a while that different doctors can produce different effects using the same substance, or even placebo, such that otherwise effective treatments might become ineffective or placebo becomes effective. Chang and colleagues now clarify that such differential effects are likely transmitted by subtle facial cues, using a placebo–pain model.

Abdellaoui et al. examine the geographic distribution of human DNA differences in Great Britain, finding that the geographic distribution of polygenic scores for educational attainment and other complex traits resembles the geographic distribution of economic differences.

Here we demonstrate that patients’ pain experiences are directly modulated by providers’ expectations of treatment outcomes in a simulated clinical interaction, providing evidence of a socially transmitted placebo effect.

Using billions of words of digitized historical text, Hills et al. develop and validate a measure of national subjective wellbeing, the National Valence Index, going back 200 years.

Bridgers et al. combine computational modelling and developmental experiments to show that even young children reason about others’ costs and rewards to make utility-maximizing decisions about what to teach and what to let learners discover on their own.

Mandating publications for graduation places a poor metric on PhD students’ skills and has detrimental effects on PhD training, argues Sharif Moradi, an Assistant Professor at the Royan Institute in Tehran; committees and future employers should focus on the many other skills that PhD students master.

Publications are often considered a hard currency for evaluating PhD students by graduation committees and funders alike. Anne-Marie Coriat of the Wellcome Trust calls for a change in how PhDs are assessed, placing more emphasis on other aspects of training.

Requiring Ph.D. candidates to publish to obtain a Ph.D. can provide much-needed improvements to academic systems in developing countries such as Vietnam, argues Quan-Hoang Vuong.

The pressure for scholarly publications creates a culture of knowledge silos, argues postdoctoral Fellow Sandra Obradović. If young researchers were also taught to explain research to a general audience, this would not only help their careers, but also bring science into society.

A monograph is an entirely outdated requirement in an age when publications and presentations are used as a measure of PhD students’ performance in all other settings, argues Mark Martin Jensen, a PhD student in Biomedical Engineering. It’s time to replace dissertations with something useful.

PhD students produce more than publications; they create a wealth of resources as a means to their research. Matt Crump, Associate Professor at the City University of New York, argues that PhDs should share these resources as portfolios that demonstrate their skills and to benefit the scientific community.

Hannah Hobson, a Lecturer at the University of York, published a Registered Report as part of her PhD and explains how this decision took the stress out of publication and brought the joy back into data collection.

Priti Mulimani, a health-care professional and PhD student, highlights how pressure to publish in high-impact journals that are biased towards research on Western populations obstructs pivotal research on the majority of the world’s population.

Recent changes in China’s research infrastructure have led to a rapid acceleration of the scientific process and increased pressure on all involved, argues Xiaopeng Li. The number of PhD graduates exceeds positions, and only structural innovations will ensure that PhDs can build careers in new sectors.

Brazil’s university landscape has undergone dramatic changes in recent decades, leading to increased pressure to publish despite stripped resources. Elisa Jordão argues that this makes it all the more important to educate the public about the value of scientific research and education.

Many PhD students have no intention of remaining in academia, and outdated university curricula do them a disservice by not offering training for careers in industry, argues Kyle Isaacson, a PhD student in biomedical engineering.

PhD students and early career researchers are severely underfunded, explains Yuki Yamada, an Associate Professor in Psychology. Paired with biased selection criteria and unreasonable demands, this not only harms Japan’s young scientists, but presents a threat to academia itself.

The Max Planck Society represents a unique place for principal investigators, but its benefits are not necessarily reaped by the students, argue the Max Planck PhDnet Survey Group. Policy changes, however, could alleviate publication and other pressures for students.

The need to publish should not lead to despair. Based on her personal experiences of great mentorship, bioethicist Anke Snoek argues that early, supervised involvement in the publication process can spark a love for publishing that alleviates its pressures.

Based on her interviews with senior academics, Taya Collyer, a PhD student in health research, reflects on how academic evaluation that values quantity over quality pervasively harms the scientific endeavour, leading even successful academics to retrospectively question research decisions.