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Clinical or lab research?
- Thread starter Gladiolus23
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Lab
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Could you please tell me your reasons for why lab research is better?
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Clinical - more likely to publish/get work done faster
Basic science- a pub is more "prestigious" but much harder to get and longer process
Also do you want to do basic science in your future? If so that lab experience could be invaluable. Simply looking to be a clinician or do clinical research? I would probably favor the clinical project in that scenario. Of course the specifics of each project (PI, lab environment, authorship, flexibility, compensation, etc) should also influence your decision.
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Both are excellent, as long as you have a bigger role in the project than cleaning glassware or doing something similarly mindless. Decide which opportunity seems the most interesting and gives you the most real, hands-on experience (admittedly difficult at times to decide in advance) and go with that. The goal is to be exposed to the scientific process/research process in action, and be able to intelligently discuss what you have done and what you have learned from it.
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Just my opinion, but I've been involved in both and I must say that running experiments in a school lab can be very frustrating at times and it really offers room for self-growth in a variety of ways. Given the frustrating nature, you are given a lot more room to think critically when troubleshooting why your experiment went wrong (was it communication? Did you forget to add something? etc) or what you could do to improve the efficiency of an experiment. Additionally, it shows your capacity to perform an experiment and yield meaningful results, which sounds a LOT easier than it actually is. Not getting the results you want is frustrating, but it is one of the common aspects of life we will probably see throughout our careers as physicians. Example: doing a chromatin immunoprecipitation on specific isoforms took me 2 months of troubleshooting to finally achieve constant successful results, and we can finally begin running our experiment for paper data. In my opinion, it takes a lot more out of you to keep adapting and pushing forward after repetitive failures than clinical research typically exposes you to (unless you are running your own clinical experiments or you are established in the field, which is probably pretty uncommon in regards to medical school applicants). Just my two cents! 🙂
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Who cares which one is better? Look at the projects for both and see which one you LIKE more. I personally went with basic science and had no intentions of getting published (even though it happened anyways..) but I loved what I did/do and that's what matters. Which do you know more about? Which one do you think you would be interested to know more about? Once you figure these questions out, everything else will fall into place.
They're very different. Try both if possible and see what you like
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You want prestige? Lab bench research
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i prefer clinical research
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Pick the type of research that best captures your intellectual curiosity and will allow you to learn about applying the scientific method. Fit is incredibly important. With that said, productivity in bench research tends to be more impressive.
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where are we getting this impression that lab research is linked to more prestige...
what I see in wet lab research is constant stress to keep getting funded, to publish fast, to outdo your peers in your field, to use undergrads or younger students shamelessly at your disposal...
physicians in general are more likely to do clinical research than lab research because very few continue on with lab research unless they're invested scientists (md phds) that keep their projects funded. Physicians who work in bench labs are a small subset of all physicians
However basic research labs are easier to get into as an undergrad because of professors actually teaching you in classes and looking for help with their research projects on campus. I would try bench research first unless you know of physicians (family, friends, connections) who are doing clinical research that would be glad to take you on.
what I see in wet lab research is constant stress to keep getting funded, to publish fast, to outdo your peers in your field, to use undergrads or younger students shamelessly at your disposal...
physicians in general are more likely to do clinical research than lab research because very few continue on with lab research unless they're invested scientists (md phds) that keep their projects funded. Physicians who work in bench labs are a small subset of all physicians
However basic research labs are easier to get into as an undergrad because of professors actually teaching you in classes and looking for help with their research projects on campus. I would try bench research first unless you know of physicians (family, friends, connections) who are doing clinical research that would be glad to take you on.
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Because basic science pubs are harder to get, in that the work often takes much longer and actual wet lab science has to be done. You can't just do a quick literature review or case report and publish in a few months. Therefore, because each basic science pub is "harder" they are held in higher regard than a similar number of clinical pubs. This is just the impression I have picked up from residents and attendings in this forum, and I suspect that it isn't a huge difference come residency app time, although the bias is there. For med school apps, I imagine it matters even less, as a pub in any field sets you above so many other applicants.
