Customer Reviews

Survival Skills for Scientists

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book contains pretty much nothing beyond common sense truths that are obvious to any graduate student who has thought about becoming a researcher and who has been part of a lab. For example, if you have written and succeeded in publishing at least one paper, you know everything that is written in this book about writing papers.

Perhaps, I bought this book with the wrong expectation that the authors would uncover some things about being a scientists that are not obvious but nevertheless important. At least this was the impression that I got from reading a positive review of this book in Nature. This is not the case: they discuss things that are important but obvious. So, in my opinion this book may be good for undergraduate or 1st year graduate students who have just begun thinking about a scientific career and have not yet been exposed to the research environment at all.

This a great, short read for graduate students trying to decide what comes after the dissertation. The book does a good job of comparing North America to Europe in terms of job opportunities and academic structures for scientists. As another reviewer mentioned, much of the information is common sense, but it never hurts to have something things repeated.

I found this book to be very easy to read, written as a nice informal conversation between the two authors (one a young scientist, the other more experienced). I particularly find the following quote (from memory, not literal) very enlightening: "life is unpredictable, this does not mean one should not plan for it". I urge any graduate student or postdoc to read it, it contains many many valuable lessons.

This is an excellent easy-to-read book which goes over essential knowledge (although often obvious) to start a career in science. I would especially recommend this book to every Master and Ph.D. students in science to guide them towards achieving a successful career path.

A very educational book, enjoyed every page.