One Degree of Separation

Abstract

Unlike driving a car, flying a plane, or practicing law or medicine, you don’t actually need a degree to pursue biomedical research. There is no governing body that will only issue a license to conduct biomedical research to card-carrying PhDs or MDs from an accredited program in the United States. In fact, there are, technically, no restrictions whatsoever, and strictly speaking you don’t need even need any kind of degree to pursue clinical research on human subjects, although you may need to work with a licensed medical doctor. You don’t even need a graduate degree or for that matter an undergraduate degree. It is worthwhile to consider that some of the greatest researchers of the nineteenth centuries never even finished college (e.g., Michael Faraday of electricity fame and Gregor Mendel of basic genetics), though admittedly that would be pretty tough today given the huge amount of scientific knowledge out there. So if the research bug has bitten you, you shouldn’t necessarily restrict yourself to any one type of degree. And if you have already finished your training, there is no need to go back and get another degree—you simply don’t need it. And yet these stamps of approval, offered by venerable institutions, seem to hold a special power over us.