Carl J. Sindermann

Maintaining Professional Competence

The scientific consultant is unquestionably a businessperson whose company products and services are technical information and science-based advice. The reality of this statement has to be accepted by every practitioner. Once accepted, then the logical sequence that follows is (1) the science on which the business depends must be current and (2) to ensure that currency, the consultant must maintain his technical competence. These dicta are easy to state but extraordinarily difficult to achieve. Just reflect for a minute on the chapter about marketing and selling, or the one on managing. How can any scientific consultant, whose workday must include attention to and sometimes hours devoted to such business-related responsibilities, be expected to maintain professional competence? Potential clients can and do expect it and it is one of the core requirements for longterm success in technical consulting. Regardless of how routine some procedures become in satisfying the “boiler-plate” specifications of a contract, there must always exist in the consulting organization a nucleus of cutting-edge expertise and familiarity with all aspects of the specialty area of consultation.

Perceptions and Realities

Our perceptions influence our attitudes and actions, and nowhere in human history is this more evident than in how men view and treat women. Aristotle wrote in the fourth century Bc that “the female condition must be looked upon as a deformity....” Pericles’ ideal woman was “... she who is least talked of among men, whether for good or bad.” What has happened in the intervening centuries? Has some evolution in thinking taken place?

Employment, Underemployment, and Unemployment

The range of issues to be addressed in a chapter concerned with “employment” is extensive enough to warrant an entire book just on this topic. For the present, though, we have selected some areas that are of particular significance to women scientists. They are: Relative numbers of women scientists in academic, governmental, and industrial research organizations Part-time scientists Kinds of underemployment Unemployment

The Transition from Solo Practitioner to Business Executive

We began outlining the evolution of a scientific consultant in Chapter One, examining questions such as “Why (and when) do scientists become consultants?” and “What are the uncertainties that prospective consultants face?” Then in Chapter Two we picked out the future consultants from a lineup of graduate students whose mentors were often part-time consultants as well as full-time university faculty members. We gave them, after they received their Ph.D/s, further training as part-time consultants while simultaneously establishing reputations in a scientific discipline, and we then traced them through the first difficult year following a decision to become full-time consultants. In Chapter Three we provided a long list of criteria by which new consultants could measure their success (or lack of it).

Early Phases in the Evolution of a Scientific Consultant

This chapter continues our exploration of the early life histories of scientific consultants. We are now ready to move beyond the doubts and uncertainties of Chapter One and closer to some decision-making activities before and after full-time consulting has become a career choice. We will examine some aspects of the graduate training of consultants, and then tout part-time consulting as a favored entry to full-time practice. Once the part-timer has taken the bait and made a decision to go full time, we will follow him through that always difficult but sometimes rewarding first year, and then, with the new practitioner in mind, we will propose an early assessment of success or failure, and recommend timely responses to the results of that assessment in terms of subsequent career orientation.

Ethics for Scientific Consultants

There has been much discussion and some publicity, especially during the past decade, about ethical practices in science, and about individual violations of a “code of ethics” that has the dictionary definition of “the system or code of morals of a particular person, religion, group, or profession.” Public scrutiny has focused (at times gleefully) on cases of professional malfeasance among academic and industry scientists in particular. One positive effect of the media attention has been to make it clear to the public that most professionals and professional organizations adhere to codes of ethical practices that have been formulated, debated, accepted, and published. Scientific consultants find themselves in the somewhat unique position of being expected to subscribe, in their professional behavior, to three interacting codes of ethical practices: that related to science per se, that related to scientific consulting as a science-based business, and that related to business practices in general, whatever their form. The body of rules that describes each of these codes of practice can be visualized as a circle (or at least as an irregularly circular and easily punctured membrane) encompassing acceptable ethical behavior. Acceptability is strongest at the center of the enclosure, but is never universal, and decreases rapidly to zero as the margins of the circle are reached (Figure Three).

The Future of Scientific Consulting

The study of economics has long been referred to as “the dismal science,” and that designation certainly applies to some assessments of today’s business climate. A recent and somewhat gloomy economic forecast for the United States25 included statements that have great relevance to the future of consulting: “[M]any leading companies are shedding [highly skilled workers] in a downsizing frenzy.” “There is a malaise affecting professionals. Middle managers are hurting.” “Manufacturing jobs [value added jobs] are losing ground throughout America.” “A concern is that the future economic foundation [laid by federal spending programs] will be cut in the name of deficit reduction. This will include areas of crucial importance such as environmental protection.”

Junior Professional Members of Scientific Consulting Organizations

The professional staffs of all but the smallest scientific consulting organizations usually consist of technically trained people in two broad categories: the senior members, with experience, credibility, and advanced degrees in their areas of specialization, and the junior members, with less experience and with little if any graduate training. The senior staff does the client contact work, the proposal drafting, the technical planning, the data analyses, the project supervision, and the report writing; the junior staff does the data collection and collation, the literature reviews, the field surveys, and the lab analyses.

The Legal Side of a Scientific Consulting Practice

The professional existence of most academic scientists is remarkably free from any contact with the legal universe of lawyers, legal documents, courtrooms, or hearing rooms. Some brief interactions may be necessary for patent applications, for a rare appearance as an expert witness, or in equally rare disputes over perceived abuses of intellectual property (claims of copyright infringement, or plagiarism), but otherwise academic scientists are largely untroubled by legal matters in the pursuit of their career.

Retirees as Scientific Consultants

The immediate preretirement period is for many scientists a time of introspection, occasional melancholy, and planning for a postretirement career—preferably in some science-related activity, and preferably with pay. The authors of this book have both been down that path, so we can write about it as certified experts—or at least as professionals who have considered the available options and who have made choices about how to invest our time for the foreseeable future. We have both elected involvement in consulting activities, either intermittently (C.S.) or full-time (T.S.). We both have other science-related projects (such as writing this book on scientific consulting), and we both encounter scientists, active or retired, every day In addition to focused and structured interviews with consultants for the purposes of the book, we have talked with professionals of all ages about attitudes and options related to retirement. Once we got beyond the stock responses of “I’ m never going to retire” or “I’ m getting out just as soon as “I’m eligible,” we began to appreciate the true range of options available to the retiring scientist. We felt that a reasonable way to begin a chapter on retirees as consultants would be to position the consulting options within the larger spectrum of postretirement occupations.