Necessity of a Post-Doc Posted on October 19, 2007 Harold Pincus (bio) emphasizes the importance of post-doctoral fellowships.

It is rare for somebody to be successful in biomedical and behavioral research without a post-doctoral fellowship. Basically, you could find some examples of people that are successful that have kind of been self-taught or bootstrap themselves up, or have been able to somehow figure out a way to develop research skills and background, and some initial work, in the midst of a faculty appointment having had no research training before. But it is very rare, and so the expectation is that if you're going to be successful, you want to be successful in research, that a two to three year research training experience is essential. And in fact, we've done studies empirically looking at the predictors of success of people in research careers and have found that the criteria or the predictors of research success include number one, early exposure to research, often in medical school. Number two, a two to three year mentored research training experience, and number three, a period of again two to three years of protected faculty time to begin to further develop your research career.

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