[iamwizard]

As someone who recently left the field of experimental neuroscience, anecdotes like this hit at why media coverage of neuroscience is so sensationalized and reductive: it takes a lot of nuance and background to convey the impact of any given finding.

In a lot of cases being even slightly reductive of EXACTLY what was reported immediately destroys the meaning and context of a finding. It's a field that actively resists compression of information and is so heterogeneously interdisciplinary that having the correct context to interpret a finding even within the field is often difficult.

[afpx]

Why did you leave the field? The compensation?

[iamwizard]

That was certainly part of it. The structure of neuro academia meant that I would be stuck in a postdoc position for 3-10 years paying, likely, around the NIH minimum of around $55k. Which goes along with more responsibility and drastically less job security than a graduate student without any better chances of actually getting a faculty position.

Combine that with the fact that I didn't have the drive or disposition that the field selects for and I was out of there immediately after I got my degree for a more lucrative, more interesting (to me) job with a better work-life balance.