Six out of ten postdoctoral researchers they think the pandemic has worsened their career prospects, and one in four feel their supervisors have not done enough to support them during the pandemic.

Besides, 23% of respondents said they have sought help for anxiety or depression caused by their job, and another 26% would like that help but has not yet sought it.

Survey in 96 countries

These are the data that reflects a survey carried out by the magazine Nature to postdoc, already in a precarious and stressful situation.

Even, 51% of respondents in the latest survey have considered leaving active research due to work-related mental health issues.

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The survey was conducted in June and July, and More than 7,600 people responded from 19 different disciplines. The sample, a self-selected group spread across 93 countries, is not completely representative globally, because the vast majority of respondents are in Europe and North America. All in all, the panorama that emerges is undoubtedly worrying.

Postdoctoral or postdoctoral research is academic or scientific research carried out by a person who has completed their doctoral studies, usually within the years following their degree, so, to cushion these effects, some institutions have carried out different strategies . For example, the US National Science Foundation (NSF) has extended project deadlines and ordered universities to continue paying the salaries of NSF-funded postdocs,although the investigation had to be suspended.

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However, this situation will not be sustainable for long, as the costs are high and overall student mobility will be much lower than usual in the next academic year, so some institutions will lose a good fraction of their fee income.

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The news

The professional and mental problems of postdoctoral researchers due to the pandemic

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

.

Since everything around us is governed by inflexible laws, where there is a complex (and sometimes inextricable) chain of causes and effects, introducing free will is, from a scientific point of view, almost a fantasy.

But we continue to do it because accepting that everything is written, that all the fish is sold, that we will never be able to decide what to do, is incompatible with our vision of the world. To the point that accepting such a thing, that free will is a cognitive illusion, Could it lead us to more erratic moral behavior?.

Determinism VS freedom

Eliminating the notion of free will could undermine moral behavior, increasing dishonest behavior. In it present study, several attempts to replicate this hypothesis are reported. In a series of five studies, the relationship between indications against free will and immoral behavior was tested..

The main purpose of the study was to closely replicate the findings of Vohs and Schooler (2008) using the same manipulations and measures or very similar to those used in their original studies.

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The efforts were largely unsuccessful, because manipulating beliefs about free will in a robust way is more difficult than has been implied in previous work, and the proposed link to immoral behavior may not be as consistent as the work suggests. former.

In other words: We are so programmed to believe in free will that pretending not to believe in it to see that immoral behavior increases is difficult..

For now, we can only speculate about it, as does the science fiction novelist Ted Chiang In one of the stories included in his new anthology, Exhalation, titled: What is expected of us. It describes how a large part of the population reacts when it is scientifically discovered, in an unquestionable way, that free will does not exist and everything is determined: adopting a akinetic mutism, a kind of deep apathy, because everything makes no sense.

That is to say, rather than acting badly, it seems that people simply do not act, which is why the text proposes perpetuating the collective deception of free will (although this is also somewhat determined):

And yet I know that since free will is an illusion, it is already predetermined who will fall into akinetic mutism and who will not. There is nothing to do about it; You cannot choose the effect that the Pronostic has on you. Some will succumb and others will not, and my sending this message will not change these proportions. So why am I sending it? Because I have no choice.

If you want to delve deeper into strong determinism, the possibility of free will, and the philosophical ramifications that all of this entails, you can do so in the following video:

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The news

We are in a deterministic universe where freedom does not exist: could accepting it be dangerous on a moral level?

was originally published in

Xataka Science

by
Sergio Parra

.