Sir

Your News story “Young, gifted ... and spurned” on the French postdoctoral system (Nature 414, 145; 2001) portrays a one-sided view of the French system. Although your report makes some valid points, it fails to acknowledge that the UK and US systems have many disadvantages, in the light of which it is not clear that the French system is worse.

In France, scientists gain tenure much earlier than their counterparts in Britain and the United States, which means that the former have more time and opportunity to formulate long-term research plans. Not every piece of research can generate several papers a year. Many topics, such as child development or ecology, need to be followed for years before a conclusion can be reached.

British and US postdocs generally waste a lot of potential research time writing proposals for renewal of short-term contracts. In the French system, postdocs are civil servants, so are less susceptible to having their research directed and can more easily conduct 'unfashionable' research without fear of losing next year's support.

The temporary contracts used in the UK and US systems mean that people can be forced to do 'trendy' research, or the research that one's professor or head of department wants done, to safeguard funding. This is not conducive to originality — it takes time to tell whether a piece of research is of fundamental importance. Bibliometric measures only tell us which topics are popular, but we could all be wrong, as history has often shown.

The deluge of postdoctoral workers in British and US universities stems from the often indiscriminate recruitment of PhD students essentially to do technicians' work but more cheaply and more disposably. Hence, after obtaining a PhD and holding a postdoctoral post or two, it becomes difficult to continue, because a disproportionately large number of qualified candidates are chasing a smaller number of vacancies. In France, it is difficult to find a job immediately after obtaining a PhD. So the difference between the two systems is that reality hits the researcher earlier in France.

There are more postdocs for each tenured post in the British system than in the French system. Even if there were not, it could be argued that the French system is fairer, as researchers know early on in their career if they can continue in scientific research, and are likely to be able to change careers more effectively than they can when they are older.