主题：推荐一篇文章给想要献身科学事业，或者正在献身的人们 -- fengshui

More good news: for individuals with a hunger for knowledge and an insatiable curiosity about how things work, science offers a constant challenge and, best of all, the intense thrill of discovery. What can match being the first person who has ever lived to know something new about nature? And not just the big, infrequent, paradigm-making (or breaking) discoveries, but the small, incremental discoveries that occur on a daily or weekly basis too. If this doesn't give you goosebumps and if you are not in a rush to get to the laboratory in the morning to find the results of yesterday's experiment, then you should seriously consider a non-laboratory career. Making discoveries is the core reward for the myriad of difficulties you will face in your scientific career (see Part II, in which I discuss making discoveries1). Although it is possible to succeed in science even if you lack this passion for discovery, you will almost certainly be miserable and make your colleagues, friends and family wretched too.

Science has other perks. Contemporary science is one of the most communal activities ever pursued by humanity, and is among the most international careers possible. You will probably be interacting on a daily basis with scientists from all over the world, both in your laboratory and over the internet. Once established in your career, you can fly to dozens of cities across the globe and be greeted by a colleague that you either know personally or through reading each other's publications. You might even train a generation of researchers in your laboratory who will disperse around the globe to pass the torch of the scientific method to the next generation of their nation.

This generational transfer of Scientific Methodism is, in fact, the most important and tangible achievement of a scientist. Discoveries are the joy and stock of our trade, but when your career is over (and probably well before this moment), few people will remember your brilliant papers. If you are successful (and lucky), you will have contributed a few lines to text books that future students will resent having to memorize. Through no fault of your own, and for reasons that you could not have anticipated, your discoveries might prove to be the artefacts that led your field in the completely wrong direction. You will be happiest in science if you are content with pursuing the truth to the best of your abilities and in passing the skills and insights you have developed to the next generation. Scientists who pursue fame are destined to be forgotten and forever dissatisfied with their achievements. In practical terms, peer recognition is needed only to maintain funding and to attract talented individuals to your laboratory who will make your daily laboratory life more productive and enjoyable. Beyond this, chasing fame is a waste of time that could be better spent on science itself, or on enjoying life outside the laboratory.

Getting started: graduate school

Choosing a graduate programme. Choosing a graduate school in which to pursue your Ph.D. should be largely based on the field that you would like to enter. Obviously, you should choose a programme that has a well-respected faculty. Size provides a large number of advantages, including a larger number of potential mentors to choose from, more students and postdoctoral fellows who can become lifelong friends and colleagues, better chances for collaboration, greater access to reagents, techniques and specialist equipment, and a more exciting intellectual environment. To minimize the insanely long 'training' period of your career, you should find a programme that takes pride in expeditiously awarding Ph.D. degrees. It should take 4 or 5 years for a decent student to finish a Ph.D., with an absolute upper limit of 6 years. Any longer than this and the student is either not suited for science or is being exploited by the mentor. Also, choose a department where the current Ph.D. students are treated as junior colleagues, with an eye towards their career development, and are not just exploited as inexpensive labour (small departments can be better in this respect).

Choosing a laboratory. Once you have chosen a school (or vice versa) to work in, your most important decision will be to choose a laboratory. The decision can be based either on the topic of research or on the mentor. I would strongly recommend the latter (Box 1). Good scientists work on interesting and important topics, so a good mentor has this covered. Your goal as a graduate student is to become an expert in wielding the scientific method, and this can be achieved pursuing any project. The topic matters most in the types of experiments it entails. A good project will enable you to design, perform and analyse experiments on a routine basis, ideally several per week, if not daily. This provides the best training and, importantly, is also the most fun. This will also develop your abilities to conceive the crucial controls that are needed to interpret the data in a meaningful way. 'Control creativity' is a central part of your scientific IQ; it comes only from the experience of designing and interpreting experiments. You should avoid projects that are largely based on using a single technique to develop a reagent or collect data (for example, generating a transgenic mouse).

Box 1 | On the innate superiority of rabbits over wolves

Choosing a mentor. Although there is tremendous subjectivity in choosing a compatible mentor, there are a number of objective criteria (Fig. 2). Are the people in the laboratory happy and enthusiastic about their research? Have former students gone on to productive careers? Does the mentor treat students as junior colleagues and not as employees? Generally speaking, you should run from laboratories where a PI is referred to as Doctor X and not by his or her first name.

Figure 2 | The nine types of principal investigator.

Frequently, you will have to choose between a small laboratory with a new investigator versus a large laboratory with a well-established scientist. Newly minted assistant professors will not have much of a track record as mentors; you might even be the first student they train. Still, you should seriously consider joining such a laboratory if the chemistry seems right. Although this has its obvious risks, you are a much more valuable commodity to a small laboratory, the survival of which could well depend on your personal success. Consequently, you will get more intense mentoring and will probably be working side-by-side with the PI. The best situation is to be the first Ph.D. student of a rising star, for you will be maximally productive, will generate well-developed ties to your field and will have an influential champion for years to come (although because academic 'star' formation is an inexact science, this often takes some luck).

Skills, not papers. Contrary to what you might have heard, it is not critical to have a spectacular publication record from your Ph.D. When the time comes to apply for a tenure-track job, the selection committee will focus on the productivity and promise you displayed during your postdoctoral fellowship. Furthermore, a solid Ph.D. with one good first-author paper that is based largely on your own work is all that is usually required to obtain the postdoctoral position of your dreams, particularly for citizens of the United States, who are in short supply at this level. Your focus as a graduate student should be to develop all of the skills you will need to be an independent scientist.