Medical Writing and the Pay Gap

Science Careers takes a look at medical writing as alternative career for people with science PhDs. It's a potentially interesting career for those who are interested in science and writing, but not interested in performing experiments or running a lab.

"Critical-thinking skills, project-management skills, independence, and the ability to clearly communicate complex topics are key assets for succeeding in this type of position as well as in research," she says. And all those skills are nurtured, if not always systematically and intentionally, by graduate science training. Companies often look for writers with an expertise in a particular medical area. So although an advanced degree in a relevant field isn't required for work as a medical writer, it's a distinct advantage.

Five scientists who took the writing path are profiled - all women, giving the impression that medical writing is dominated by women. Whether that's the case or not, as in many other fields the average pay is significantly higher for men: $94,000 vs. $83,000 a year. The article doesn't go into why that is the case, but I suspect it may be because women don't ask.

Tags: medical writing, pay gap

In and Out of Science

CAD at VWXYNot? has two great posts that talk about why she got into science and, after getting a PhD, why she got out of research. (Also see R. Ford Denison's response "Who should consider grad school in science?")

CAD didn't have a single reason: it was the long hours, it was the low pay, it was the lack of job security, it was because she enjoyed writing more than doing experiments. There was nothing in her post that I found particularly surprising, because those are all reasons that I dropped out of research a decade ago. And, like CAD, I still love science, and still think (I think) like a scientist. There is a heated discussion going on over on ScienceBlogs about scientist-journalist interactions (see Cotournix's roundup and Janet Stemwedel's subsequent post. It seems to me that more people with science backgrounds going into science communication (as CAD plans to) can only improve the situation. Does working as a science communicator rather than a experimentalist mean that one is no longer a scientist? I'd like to think not.

ETA: CAD would like everyone to know that the her research on endogenous retroviruses (ERVs) does not support creationism, despite the claims of Reasons to Believe.

Tags: science communication, endogenous retroviruses, leaky pipeline

Felice Frankel, science photographer

Last week the New York Times had an interesting article about science photographer Felice Frankel.

For Ms. Frankel, 62, this work is a return to a major interest of her youth, when she studied science and aspired to a career as a chemist. Born Felice Oringel in Brooklyn, she attended Midwood High School and Brooklyn College, where she majored in biology. After graduation, she worked in a cancer research lab at Columbia. “Science has always been in my soul,” she said.

But life intervened. She married Kenneth Frankel. He was sent to Vietnam. When he returned, they moved to western Massachusetts, where he worked as a chest surgeon and they raised two sons.

But when Dr. Frankel returned from Vietnam, he brought a gift. “It was a very good camera,” Ms. Frankel said. “And that’s not trivial, that it was good.”

She started taking photographs. “Probably I was good,” she said, but because the camera was good, too.

It turned out that Frankel has a keen eye for the creation of images that both please the eye and convey the science.

Frankel is currently a Senior Research Fellow at Harvard, where she heads the Envisioning Science program and is also an appointed M.I.T. research scientist, where she works with scientists and engineers to photograph their experiments.

More about Frankel:

• Felice Frankel at M.I.T
• Apple Science Profiles: Felice Frankel
• Video of lecture: Envisioning Science: The Design and Craft of the Science Image

Tags: Felice Frankel, photography