Oliver Rosten believes the postdoctoral system played a role in his friend’s suicide. Disseminating that opinion in a scientific journal took perseverance.
This isn’t a research integrity story, it’s more about early career researcher surviving modern research culture – but we admired the actions of the author so much we felt we had to include it in the Resource Library. We hope you won’t mind.
.
Most study authors reserve their acknowledgments section for a laundry list of thank-yous to colleagues and reviewers. In his paper Rosten uses the section to issue a call for change. He dedicates the paper to his friend Francis Dolan, who died by suicide five years after the two started working together as postdoctoral researchers at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS) in Ireland. Troubled by the toll of those years on his friend, who suffered from severe depression, Rosten writes that he is “firmly of the conviction that the psychological brutality of the post-doctoral system played a strong underlying role in Francis’ death.” He then advocates reforms to protect researchers with mental health problems. It’s a remarkably candid piece of writing for a scientific paper—so candid, in fact, that two journals refused to include it.
.
Read the rest of this discussion piece
