Stick it up your nose!

This week in "Old Pills for Odd Ills", we take a closer look at an old nasal douche on display in the Museum of Human Disease. Read the article by guest blogger Ruth Miller here

Old Pills for Odd Ills - Pinkettes

Try Pinkettes for laxative perfection!

Read the next installment of our "Old pills for odd ills" series here

Australians confused by antibiotics

Let's say you're sick. Runny nose, cough, sore throat, fever, headache - the works. You've got a cold. Not a mild one, but not as bad as the flu.

Do you need antibiotics? Would you ask your doctor for a script for them? A recent survey by the National Prescribing Service reveals that many Australians misuse antibiotics because they don't understand how they work. Not only that, our ignorance is contributing to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria. Read my full article here.

"Have a cup of tea, a Bex, and a good lie down"

Read the first installment of our "Old pills for odd ills" series at the Museum of Human Disease. This article about Bex powders was written by guest blogger Ruth Miller.

TB or not TB

Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria that cause tuberculosis (TB), live in approximately one in three people worldwide. The bacteria can lie latent inside the body for decades until it becomes active in 10% of infected people. Active TB kills one person every 20 seconds.


Efforts to control the spread of TB received a much-needed boost last Tuesday when Sydney's Centenary Institute opened a new $1.2 million high biosecurity lab for tuberculosis research.

The new laboratory is fitted with airlocks and researchers must wear full biocontainment suits when handling and culturing the deadly bacteria.

Read more about the new laboratory and about tuberculosis in my recent article here

New job, new material

As part of my new job as an education officer at the Museum of Human Disease at the University of New South Wales, I'll be writing about current research and news about health and disease.

These articles will be posted on the Museum's website and are intended for a general audience as well as a resource for teachers and high school students.

The first article discusses two recent cases of typhoid at the Christmas Island detention centre. While the risk of the disease spreading was very small, these cases caused panic within the detention centre and in the residential areas of the island.



Interesting fact: People can carry and spread the bacteria (Salmonella typhi) that causes typhoid without displaying symptoms. One of the most notorious asymptomatic carriers of typhoid was Mary Mallon, known as Typhoid Mary.

During her career as a cook in the United States between 1900 and 1915, Mary is thought to have infected 53 people, three of whom died of the disease. She spent the last 23 years of her life quarantined in isolation to prevent her from spreading the disease to others.

The great career juggle – can science research do it?

Phew! I’ve finally submitted my PhD thesis and I now have some time to get back to the blog.

After months and years of avoiding the question: “When are you going to hand it?”, I’m now trying to duck everyone’s next question: “What are you going to do now?” So much for basking in the glory and the relief that you’re meant to feel after handing in three and a half years of work – that seemed to last no more than the time it took me to walk from the science faculty back to my desk!

It’s not that I don’t know what I want to do, it’s just that other PhD students and academics make some really confused facial expressions when I tell them about my career plans. At the moment, I’m working a few part-time jobs in different areas of science teaching and science communication and I’m really enjoying it so far. That said, I’d really like to continue doing some research on the side as well, but is that possible? If not, why not?

It seems that the only way to do science research is to make it a full-time career. The traditional career trajectory of a successful researcher is from PhD to a post-doc position, and then perhaps another post-doc, and then a lecturing job, and then, if you’re really good, a professorship. Post-docs, lecturers and professors are generally full-time academics; part-time academic positions are few and far between. Unfortunately, those lucky enough to land these jobs may find themselves struggling to be taken seriously by their full-time peers.

Are part-time academics being left at the bottom of the pile when it comes to winning grant money?

The Australian workforce is undergoing a process of casualization, where more and more jobs are being made into part-time and casual positions rather than full-time ones. I understand that part-time and casual positions may offer less job security, which is a real problem for some people, but I can see some definite advantages of this type of employment.

Part-time and casual roles allow greater career flexibility, provide work opportunities for parents with young families, and encourage young people to gain a wide set of skills while working in different and varied roles. With young people now expected to change jobs and careers more often than members of previous generations, job security will come from being employable, adaptable and flexible, rather than simply being employed.

So, will science research roles follow suit as other careers embrace part-time and casual employment? Interestingly, the University of Melbourne’s Human Resources website encourages their staff to improve their employability by engaging in different types of work arrangements, including full-time, part-time, contract and self employment. Whether this advice really applies to academics and researchers is another story.

Some scientists may lack the transferrable skills required to make a career change

Given that a large part of being a researcher is competing with other researchers for grant money, I can completely understand why the default career in science research involves a full-time position. Full-time academics can devote more time to writing grants and papers, and their career, therefore, progresses faster than that of someone dedicating only part of their time and mind space to the job.

However, there are signs that things are changing. Many funding bodies, including the Australian Research Council (ARC), are now assessing the track record of academics “relative to opportunity”, which takes into account how an academic’s research and publication record may be affected by changes from full-time to part-time work. After browsing the ARC’s consultation paper on the peer review process for grants, I can see how concessions for “track record relative to opportunity” certainly apply to researchers who are forced to move to part-time work, due to situations such as family or carer responsibilities or illness. It isn’t clear, however, how this concession would apply to people who are able to work full-time but choose not to.

It will certainly be interesting to watch whether careers in science research and academia will become more flexible in the future. Given my pipe-dreams of continuing to do research on a part-time basis, I just hope that I won’t be watching from the sidelines.