Is the Debate and “Pause” on Experiments That Alter Pathogens with Pandemic Potential Influencing Future Plans of Graduate Students and Postdoctoral Fellows?

Pfeiffer, Julie K.

Trainees were asked to complete a SurveyMonkey poll. As a "reward," I included a link to my "How To Find a Postdoctoral Fellowship" tutorial, which students at UT Southwestern have found helpful (http://bit.ly/1GsK7X5). The poll was advertised via Twitter (http://bit.ly/1BYCIMF and http://bit.ly/1qZYyya), the American Society for Virology Facebook page (http://on.fb.me/ 16tkKaU), and forwarded e-mails. The Twitter announcement reached up to 13,651 people, counting followers of the 16 people who retweeted the advertisement, making it reasonably publicly available. The poll (https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/B3XJP5B) had five questions about the respondent's background and research interests, with one question assessing knowledge level/ awareness about the debate. A paragraph (reproduced below) summarized the debate, and links to four articles (1-4) were given for additional information, followed by two questions assessing the potential impact of the debate and the research pause on future plans.