Roots or Wings?

Over at Benchfly, Alan Marnett contemplates whether a PhD is better off taking a postdoc position in his or her graduate lab or moving to train elsewhere. "Do we stay in the same field? Should we consider working for a competitor?" he asks. When deciding where to take on a postdoc, Marnett says it's best to create a comprehensive list of potential labs. Having been advised to both stay and go — people have told him "'it's not where you perform your postdoc, but what you accomplish in it that matters' to 'you need to go to a lab on the opposite coast so that you’ve experienced both east- and west-coast research.'" Marnett says that, in the end, "there may not be a single right answer." At present, 85 percent of respondents to Marnett's poll on this issue say it's best to "move on to a new environment."