You've been on the academic conveyor belt for as long as you can remember: a seamless journey from messing with insects and test tubes as a child, to years of earnest undergraduate biology courses, through the financial deprivations of your PhD and a postdoc or two. You've done all the right things--dissected those fetal pigs, sat through numerous exams, published a number of papers--and have hur...
Editor's note: The predicament of female scientists in the Netherlands is so critical that the European Community even gave it a special name: "The Dutch Case." But is affirmative action really working? And what other measures can women scientists take to break through "the glass ceiling"? A ripple of uneasy laughter passed through the hall. Yvette van Kooyk's last slide showed a newspaper articl...
The principles of the scientific method may be constant, but much diversity can be found worldwide in how scientists are perceived--by themselves as well as by the general public--and how science is practiced as a craft. As a foreign scientist working in the Netherlands, I was certainly struck by a few of these differences. Scientists are considered to be in the upper echelon of society in many c...
Public distrust of scientists may lead to a tightening of animal experimentation regulations in the Netherlands and across Europe. Is animal experimentation universally frowned upon by the general public? If so, why? Is it because antivivisectionist groups have run a long-standing propaganda campaign? Is it because scientists don't bother to justify themselves, or because scientific bodies are af...
The Netherlands is a popular work destination for scientists for any number of reasons. Although the country is small, it harbors a variety of decent research institutes and universities, and Dutch scientists, being a familiar and amiable presence in the labs of many other countries, serve as an advertisement. The Netherlands is well situated for access to the rest of the continent, meaning that ...
Having got to grips with the language and culture of the Netherlands (see Part 1), you will be able to focus more thoroughly on your scientific pursuits. Broadly speaking, research is the same everywhere, and this universality is reassuring. However, here, as in other lands, local "dialects" of scientific practice and mentality will be encountered, which I will explore here in Part 2 and later in...
