Sarah Hörst Creates Exoplanet Atmospheres in Her Lab | Hacker News Reader

Sarah Hörst Creates Exoplanet Atmospheres in Her Lab

quantamagazine.org

71 pointsfurcyd6 comments

It's refreshing to see a successful PI with such a strong focus on the well-being of her students and community, and yet I'm annoyed that I'm refreshed by this.

One day, when nobody wants to be a graduate student anymore and the academy is suffering, people will start to wonder whether they should start treating trainees like humans and expecting PIs to be competent managers.

My grad school experience was very positive wrt my PI, and the same was true for the vast majority of my peers with whom I interacted. That's not to minimize the problem of PI's who mistreat their underlings, but to point out that in internet discussions, mostly it's unhappy people who are motivated to share their experiences, and that can create a distorted perception of [insert topic] as a whole.

Certainly, I’m glad to hear of the positive experience of you and your colleagues. But, isn’t there something to be said for the call-out of the topic in the article? If the issue of work-life balance and quality mentorship wasn’t an issue, it seems to me that this article would stop short of asking Dr Hörst about it.

Oh yeah, absolutely! No question that it's still an issue: the vast majority of my peers had great experiences with their PI's, but I'd say 10-20% were less happy at times. Even within my department, we all knew of at least a few professors who should be avoided as advisers because of how they treated their students. So if that's anything close to a representative sample, a problem for 10-20% of people is a big problem that needs to be addressed, but that still leaves 80-90% of people pretty happy.

Well, it’s comforting to hear about those low percentages (10-20%, as you mention) in your experience. However, empirical results [0] have demonstrated percentages of mental illness among PhD students more in the range of 43-46%. Lest we assign some sort of “well, it’s better here” thinking, those results are from Berkeley.

I remain pedantic about this only because, despite some anectodal experiences, there’s a serious problem in academic training which is having strongly detrimental effects on student development, quality of life, and retention.

[0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4089

oh wow, I took her class at JHU. she's awesome!

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