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Early-career issues for postdocs and other researchers who deserve better.

"I think it becomes more difficult [to cheat] when the student knows what the professor knows and the professor knows what the student knows." --Adil Shamoo

"We hear persistent reports of postdocs and other folks working on grants who are either forbidden to take maternity leave or told that if they do, they'll be fired." --Joan Williams

"If, in the course of the day, faculty spend some time talking about their career and careers in general, it wouldn’t be something they would have to keep a note of in a logbook and say, ‘Oh, this isn’t research-related.’ ”--Joseph Ellis

"Substantially more scientists and engineers graduate from U.S. universities than can find attractive career openings in the U.S. workforce, [and] the postdoc population, which has grown very rapidly in U.S. universities and is recruited increasingly from abroad, looks more like a pool of low-cost research lab workers with limited career prospects than a high-quality training program for soon-to-be academic researchers." --Michael Teitelbaum

What does the tale of Douglas Prasher, the protein, and the Nobel Prize reveal about the scientific labor market?

As science-funding agencies begin to dispense the huge stimulus appropriation, opinions about its ultimate impact on early-career scientists are mixed.

State OSHA investigations of a fatal fire at UCLA point to changes needed to make academic labs safer.

Two new initiatives seek to prepare postdocs for off-campus careers.

A postdoc's new company wins one the 37 coveted first-round ARPA-E grants.

Scientists' strong propensity to pair up romantically, research shows, can either help or hurt their careers.

Based in Alaska, a nonprofit research institute founded and run by a group of independent researchers has permitted decades of scientific work.

Research suggests that many able women view careers in hard science as inimical to important values.

Recent reports from the National Academies see no break in the clouds over the scientific labor market.

The vast wealth of the oil-rich Arab states is creating opportunities for scientists who can stand the heat.

By admitting responsibility for the conditions that caused Sheri Sangji’s death, the University of California takes a step toward better lab safety.

The glue holding together the two parts of the increasingly creaky system—and the rationale for thousands of men and women with a decade or more of university study to accept salaries that according to the Sigma Xi data average $38,000 ($7000 less than the average earnings of a similarly aged college graduate)—is the widespread but usually futile hope of becoming an independent university researcher.

"The number one thing that every postdoc needs to think about is what they want to do when they grow up." - Ida Chow, executive officer of the Society of Developmental Biology

According to NSF statistics, doctoral scientists' median income rises with each year of experience until late middle age, peaking 25 to 29 years after the Ph.D. at just under $100,000.

"The NIH funding crisis is chronic, systemic, and much worse than reported." --Peter Cariani