A few years ago, a physics professor from Washington University in St Louis published a rant online about how it doesn’t pay to be an academic scientist anymore, not just in pay, but career prospects as well.

Today, it’s still touching off some pretty interesting discussions in the science blogosphere, the latest one being here from a blog by a postdoc from Harvard Medical School (one of my favorite local science blogs so far). Lots of debate in the last week about what type of person should pursue academic science, whether young scientists whine too much about how hard their job/life is, and whether “big biology” is a useful area of research.

The question to you: would you advise a young student to get a PhD in science and pursue academia as a career?