I am a UK based researcher in life sciences. My research is in neuroscience, mainly involving in vivo electrophysiology. My PhD project was a disaster for a number of reasons (technical difficulties, difficult supervisor etc) and so I finished with very few results. Through a side project I got a middle authorship on a paper in a respectable but not outstanding journal (impact factor ~5-6). Despite all the difficulties I endured during my PhD I still wanted to be an academic researcher and decided to take a 3 year postdoc position at another UK university.
The postdoc project seemed promising and the lab had a track record of publishing decent papers. Unfortunately disaster has struck again, and none of my experiments have worked or produced anything publishable. I only have 6 months left on my contract and the odds of me getting a paper in that time are pretty much zero.
I know I need to think about what my next step is career-wise but I feel so stressed and demotivated that I worry I'm not thinking clearly. Plus my confidence is rock bottom from feeling like everything I touch in the lab falls apart. Part of me thinks it's time to cut my losses and try a different career path, however the thought of giving up on my long held dream of being a researcher is heartbreaking, and I then start to wonder if I'm quitting too easily. When I tell my science friends how I feel they all tell me that I'm not a bad scientist, that I've just been unlucky and that they're sure the next project (whatever it is) will go better. Are they right? Do I still have a chance? If I took another postdoc and got a paper from it, would that ever be enough to make up for the long gap in my publication record? Or would it be a case of too little too late?
Any advice would be much appreciated!
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