on doing a phd

recently I have finished my phd in cognitive and computational neuroscience at the universiteit van amsterdam, in holland. as most “i have just finished x” things are, this got me meditating about the title and, most importantly, about the whole cycle. thoughts which are heavily connected with “what got me there in the first place”

in a brief recap, academically I went from Science and Technology, a bachelor’s degree dedicated to cover physics, maths and programming which is common to most engineering courses in Brazil: calculus I, II, III; classical mechanics, oscillatory mechanics & thermodynamics, c++ and algorithms.

once the basics are done, you can choose a follow-up course from a list mostly involving engineering, but not limited to it. in my second semester i was accepted into an internship position in an electrophysiology lab at the brain institute, which involved both dealing with equipment - fitting my a priori interest in biomedical engineering - and participating in the actual experiments (wet lab experience, which was completely new to me).

lab life quickly became my #1 interest. there is an appeal in reading papers, thinking about the next move and actually getting the hands dirty in order to find the source of truth, that cannot be found anywhere else.

afterwards I pursued a masters degree in the same lab and continuing the overarching project of how does the visual system work, but this time I was more focused in developing methods for data analysis to bridge spiking activity to anatomical expectations of function. my work eventually got me as an author in a paper (due to minor contributions to someone's main project) which was an amazing feeling of "doing something real*".

i do understand that research, at least in systems neuroscience/psychology, way too often is not reproducible and poorly designed. which does put an asterisk in something real. regardless, it felt like it. and that's what mattered.

i am yet to find an occupation which so steadily attracts talent like academia does. this becomes more visible when you face the fact that two very basic components are absent: 1) financially incentives are squalid. most phd student positions pay poorly; 2) career continuity is not foreseen. it is a pretty weird angle having a constant stream of already relatively successful overachievers seeking to work a job that has implied that the next 4 years will be incredibly hard AND that the continuity of your career is rarely a concern.

however, it feels somewhat privileged to be in the center of this venn diagram. with the skills, willpower and the right amount of naiveté to get into a long, uncertain project. which most likely will be longer and more uncertain. besides, the numbers point to job insecurity, high burnout, depression and dropout rates.

but of course, it does not matter since I am different. or so basically all phd students at some point thought to themselves.

this stance most likely won't prove correct as chances are all others who got to be affected by mental conditions are as brilliant as you are. however, this is the spirit which, to me, makes a complete difference in how you navigate the phd (and life, if you will). sometimes we gotta try.

in the field of cognitive and systems neuroscience, if one would try and draw a "typical" academic path it would require a phd and a couple of post docs done in some parts of europe, usa or japan.

let it be clear: i do not believe that good science is inherent to these places. but from my experience (as well as observing the cvs of the labs that get papers into neuron, nature/science and keynotes of the main conferences) that likely seems to be the "typical path of success". there is a degree of self fulfilling prophecy, and the dynamics of scientific production are tightly correlated with politics and its deep roots, but lets set that aside.

when looking for a position, I sought projects which were engineering + data heavy and mostly within europe. this brought me to the netherlands, amsterdam, for a "4" year project - a translational study involving closed-loop neurostimulation. a really good fit to my skills and interests. this amazing alignment did not stop me from taking 6 years to finish it all.

as most things are, the project did not progress linearly.

which brings us to the first big lesson i learned: there really isnt a set structure. I had resources (money, supervisors) and several rituals (checkpoints, goals, typical planning. but see: the myth of the objective) that while positive in spirit, none of the set goals considered that research questions often are not aligned with the ipsis litteris hypothesis. surprisingly, many projects start with an ill-defined hypothesis and are not prepared to get a solid material out of the process in case, well, everything else fails. in this scenario, exploratory data analysis is greatly overestimated. the underlying assumption is that something publishable must be there. this type of "silver bullet" science is indeed very high risk high reward. for the first 75% of the project it feels like it does not really matter. get your design, get your subjects, do your analysis. rinse and repeat. I can pull this off, of course.

I guess the usual view is that the phd as something awarded to someone with an idea (research angle), who designed and executed an experiment (or any kind of data collection), put it under some analysis and voilà, p<0.05, publication, graduation, degree. nowadays, my understanding is that the title is conferred to people who did all of the above and despite no crystal-clear outcome (or even expectations) of the experiment, despite unpredictable results from projects which did not care to properly prepare for the very normal "not meeting" a priori assumptions, despite this lack of control (+ financial uncertainty, career uncertainty, even doubts about the usefulness of the research itself), still manage to put some coherent, patched, rough around the edges book. very unique in the sense that few people (no one?) would do something just like that.

it is not necessarily about a clean-cut research outcome or about single-handedly moving the tides of science, but rather calling this question "mine", without dropping the high-quality-high-impact aegis. putting it under your belt and covering distances that literally no one else would be willing to. supervisors, co-supervisors, mentors, committees etc etc especially included.

naturally this all feels very overwhelming and the legend goes no one thinks their own piece of work is as useless as an angry phd student. and, somehow, we do not let it go. it feels sunk cost fallacy-ish, but part of me (with the title) believes there is (was?) more to it. perhaps it is the past getting brighter.

techno-utopians from the silicon valley (musk, thiel, zuckerberg and so on) mostly argue that a phd project isnt worth it due to the lack of clear outcome or industrial advancement when compared to the overall effort. while it is tediously short-sighted to say so, I would argue that a phd is worth pursuing >exactly< due to the lack of clear outcome. naturally, i cannot relate to the american experience at all and i do not know what is required of them in graduate school. however, to me, there is an intrinsic value when, given proper resources, a person can successfully pull the reigns of this. such person should be ready to go beyond academic research, and diligently navigate uncertainties in other contexts as well.

my phd trajectory was particularly bumpy, with several delays, unpaid periods (or self-funded as universities prefer to say) and some disconnection with superiors that had other plans. due to this, once it was done and dusted, many colleagues and friends asked me if I regretted undergoing the via crucis. for all the aforementioned, I do not. also, while on the road, it is thrilling to share so much with likeminded people (which i must say is a very specific group). i was lucky enough to be inserted in a large lab of about 15 phd students, which brought the best of times in a wonderful city like amsterdam. it is very interesting to learn how high-level science works and, perhaps on the lucky side, to be able to discuss closely with a supervisor that slowly progressed into a friend.

so all in all, I do not regret it. the system is deeply flawed, and people are literally getting sick. this is not a brainless decision. structurally it is not ok at all.

however, to me, the journey, the skills, the challenge were all too appealing. high cost, yes, but its such an unique thing to do that it would feel weird arguing that it was regrettable.