I wish to first thank Dr Lawrence for raising such important matters, I believe these issues should be discussed at higher platforms for some serious retrospection.

As a Ph.D Scholar I can only say a little about how the present scenario affects us.

1) The outward appearance of science is very different then what it actually is, fresh Ph.D approach there respective bosses with high ideas which are turned down because either they dont fit the data required for XYZ grant or would require a big funding to sustain. This kills the enthusiasm of a student as he ends up with projects he dislikes.

2) The PI are more involved in writing projects to sustain the day to day lab functions and given the '24 hr in a day limitation' they can barely look into the day to day experiments. We should consider them to be human beings with family lives, and any way an exhausted PI is no good for a student even if he works 24 hrs a day. We are just learning and a lot gets missed from the untrained eyes. I keeping reading in articles that many scientific discoveries were serendipitous, are we missing these?

3) Failure of challenging projects is a nightmare for who wishes to take a Ph. D scholar without publications for a Post Doc? So should a wise Ph.D scholar take risky project?

4) If the 'do good for humanity' factor still takes over the Ph.D scholar, he is left in a mess unless his luck is really strong. Look at the requirments posted for a Post doc position, it makes publication not apptitude, honesty and dedication towards science as a basic criteria for application consideration.

After a post doc I guess all issued mention in this article come into play. If you now ask the question "would a sane man who has dedicated 25 yrs of his valuable life as being exceptional student would like to pursue a career in science?"

The answer for me and I believe many of us would be a definitive "Yes". We still wish to do good for people, we wish to contribute to society, to people who cannot contribute to themselves, it is not about being a scientist I guess its about being a human being after all we cant ask a cancer patient to find a cure for himself. It not a job for us its a passion.

Now the final question I would like to state,
" Are the funding agencies doing the job properly?", there is no answer for this from my side, its the people up there whom we trust and look upto that have to decide what they want to leave us with. They are more intelligent, experienced and powerful to make a change and only they can do it. We can just tell them what we feel.

These are personal feelings and experiences gathered from friends, I have no intentions to blame any one for any thing but just wish to raise the opinion of a Ph.D Scholar.