Students are more likely to exhibit risk-taking behaviors if their supervisors have a penchant for risky projects. Credit: Getty
Researchers’ penchant for risky projects is passed on to doctoral students, and stays with trainees after they leave the lab, according to one analysis1 Thousands of current and former doctoral students and their mentors.
Science involves risk, and some of the most impactful discoveries require big bets. However, scholars and policymakers have raised concerns that the current academic system’s focus on short-term outcomes encourages researchers to play it safe. Studies have shown, for example, that risky research is less likely to be funded2,3. Anders Broström, an economist who studies science policy at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and his colleagues decided to study the role of doctoral education in shaping risk-related behavior — an area that Broström says has been largely ignored.
“We often focus on thinking about how to change finance systems to make people more risk-taking, but that’s not the only lever we have,” says Chiara Franzoni, an economist at the Polytechnic University of Milan, Italy. She adds that this study is “refreshing” because “we discussed policy interventions a lot, but we didn’t discuss training.”
Jump into the unknown
Brostrom and his colleagues first looked at the impact of supervision on current students. They received responses to a survey designed to measure risk from 1,223 doctoral students enrolled in medical sciences programs at seven universities in Sweden. For example, participants were asked to report how likely they were to participate in a safe project—defined as one that guaranteed publication in a mid-level journal—compared to a risky project, which was less likely to succeed, but more likely to end up in a high-level publication.
The researchers also examined the publication histories of the students and their supervisors. To calculate the level of risk involved in a given study, they used a machine learning algorithm that predicted the probability of successfully combining ideas from other studies (determined by the number of times pairs of citations appear together in other publications). Papers that combined pairs of references with a high chance of not successfully integrating them were considered more risky than those that did not.
The team found that the students’ risk-taking behaviors matched those of their supervisors. This link was stronger when students and their supervisors communicated frequently, and weaker when students were also mentored by scientists outside their laboratory.
The influence of supervisors also continued after graduation. When the team analyzed bibliometric data from 2,400 former doctoral students and their supervisors, they found that the influence of supervisors on their students’ approach to risk persisted for a decade after leaving the lab, even if the former trainees changed research topics.