[geoalchimista]

Second this. I read a few chapters of the book and put it down. I was quite disappointed by its irrelevancy to the current state of the academia. Nothing against his time. It's just that the world has changed dramatically.

[mnky9800n]

Did you read a PhD is not enough! I found the level of cynicism in that book to be much more relevant to being a scientist today.

[stanford_labrat]

Really? What made you think that? For example, the first “lesson” is to find a scientific niche early that will be hot in 5-10 years.

This seems like decent enough advice to a young scientist.

[warlog]

My advice is to only buy the winning lottery tickets and to stop wasting it on the losing tickets.

[croissants]

I think his advice is a little more valuable than that. I've seen plenty of grad students who just work on whatever their advisor is interested in and don't think about the future. Periodically re-assessing to figure out what will be important in the near future could be helpful to them.