Actu­ally, not demo­graph­ics so much as cul­tural dynamics.

How has it come to pass that I can name two or three hand­fuls of peo­ple in my cohort (35−45) who started off as lab mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gists in the early 90s, and ended up say­ing “fuck this,” and wan­der­ing off into some other line of work?

And at the same time, I can name two or three hand­fuls of peo­ple younger than that, who are not lab mol­e­c­u­lar biol­o­gists but who now want to become one, or at least “get in on this bio­engi­neer­ing and structural/​systems biol­ogy stuff?”

But the ques­tion is not why there are two groups. The ques­tion is, assum­ing they rep­re­sent a sam­ple of a larger cul­tural dynam­i­cal process, will this accel­er­ate the attri­tion of the gen­er­a­tion of fac­ulty who cre­ated the first group, and who are unaware of the sec­ond group?

Please?