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Is 6 Years Too Long to Get a Ph.D. in Biomedical Science?
Author(s) -
Bourne Henry R.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fj.15-0201ufm
Subject(s) - citation , library science , world wide web , computer science
BACK IN THE 1960S, I USED my MD degree to sneak into experimental biology laboratories and spent 4 decades learning how to perform and think about experiments under the guidance of scientists with Ph.D. degrees, sometimes helping Ph.D. students to learn the same skills. Those experiments prompted me to ask 2 questions. First, must the average biomedical Ph.D. student take more than 6 years to get her degree? Second, what must a Ph.D. student learn? In this essay, I propose an experiment to answer the first question and attempt to answer the second.