Burnout in science

It has been a few months since I have contributed an Editorial, although not for lack of trying. But if I'm being honest (and I always try to be honest), I reached a point last year of complete burnout, a state of terminal differentiation. Like so many other scientists in various stages of their career, I was so overscheduled, overcommitted, overwhelmed, that I could not put pen to paper. I thought about sharing my midcareer experience with the readers of Immunology in the hope, not unlike my prior discussion (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35851473/) of the dearth of postdoctoral researchers in academia, of igniting some conversation and thoughts around this important topic. In 2022, I entered into my eighth year of being an independent principal investigator. We had several manuscripts out for review, grants submitted and a looming move of our lab to an updated new facility down the street. I was enjoying my new gig as EIC of Immunology, and I had numerous extramural engagements: sitting on study section, advisory boards and even founding companies. Also in 2022 we learned of the upcoming arrival of our second child, which required a move to a bigger home. So, we had a lot on our plate; even writing this paragraph stresses me out. But my partner and I looked at each other, shrugged and said, ‘well, if we can make it through 2022, we can make it through anything’. By the end of the year, the lab and home moves occurred uneventfully, the grants got funded, the papers got accepted and my daughter arrived healthy, happy and a great sleeper. But I was not relieved, I was not back to normal. I was exhausted. This was burnout. Fast forward a few months, and I have hummed back to mostly normal. Therapy helped, and being home with the newborn for several weeks certainly did not hurt. But there has been a lot of introspection, and a lot of thoughts: none of the things that happened in 2022 were bad. In fact all of them were good! So, why was I despondent? How many other scientists, physicians, engineers and humans out there also have an embarrassment of riches in their field/life but cannot seem to get themselves get out of bed? Having mentored individuals along the spectrum of career paths, you see symptoms of burnout in various ways. It could be an excited graduate student who goes all in their project right off the bat, but cannot sustain that devotion to their lab. It could be a postdoc who just cannot get a lentiviral construct to high enough titre. It could be a junior faculty member submitting grant after grant only to get a dreaded ‘ND’ weeks later, time and time again. But, bad or good, our devotions to understanding one of the last frontiers, how our own body works at a mechanistic level, seem to get all of us into a scary place at some point in our lives. I have also thought about if ‘science burnout’ is distinct from that experienced in other life paths. All of the things that caused my issues were things I was excited to do: sharing our research with the world, editing a journal, giving my opinions on others' science, trying to translate bench science into therapeutics: these were not ‘assigned’ to me by a higher-up, some boss. I put all of those items on my plate, even when that plate was already buckling from the load. I'm not sure how common it is in other career paths, but it has stayed in my mind. Peter Medawar, Nobel laureate and immunologist, argued ‘scientist’ is not a career path but rather a phenotype of human, and one of many and varied permutations (collectors, classifiers, explorers and artists). But many of us are explorers by nature: we do this job because it is our chance to discover something. And I would argue that it is that quest for discovery that gets us into trouble. ‘Why not run yet another experiment? More data may help tell me the answer’. ‘Maybe if I clone it this way I'll get better titers’. ‘Perhaps I should write a grant on this new direction I've been thinking about, that could be exciting’. I do not have a lot of answers today, other than it is important for us to realize when enough is enough. Our work, our passion for discovery or modelling or solving a problem, is never finished. We have to be kind to ourselves, and be ready to put our tools down at the end of the day and rest, recuperate, and, I would argue, socialize. To go back to Peter Medawar, he said in Advice to a Young Scientist, ‘To be creative, scientists need libraries and laboratories and the company of other scientists…a scientist's work is no way deepened or made more cogent by privation, anxiety, stress, or emotional harassment’. Talking about my issues helped a lot, especially with other investigators with a lot on their plate. We are not lone individuals staring into our microscopes, but rather social beings whose ideas and even well-being rely on conversations with our colleagues. When things get rough, leaning on the teams and networks that we have built may be the best way to achieve that rest period instead of going into burnout mode. Finally, to bring it back to an editorial perspective, there is one final burnout I would like to bring up. With the rampant proliferation of academic journals, it seems like every day we are all getting multiple requests to review, sometimes from journals we have never heard of. Indeed, we can simply get burned out as peer reviewers, even if we are excited about taking on a manuscript in our field of interest. Given that, as academics, we do this important work for free, it can add to the stress, especially with automated messaging and editors constantly emailing you asking for your review. At Immunology, we have been working to improve turnaround times, both in the editorial office and in peer review, and I appreciate that everyone is dealing with stressors across the board impacting your ability to provide your comments on a manuscript. I would ask that as a community, please review how you would like to be reviewed: professional, prompt, concise and with improving our understanding of immunity in mind.