of youth.” - Pearl S. Buck
“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.” - Bertrand Russell
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” - Thomas A. Edison
“Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” - Theodore Roosevelt
“Going to work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going sixty miles an hour or is the train going sixty miles an hour and you’re just sitting still?” - J. Paul Getty
“The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.” - Robert Frost
“So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work.” - Peter Drucker
”Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.” - James M. Barrie
”I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” - Thomas Jefferson
“Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.” - David Rockefeller
Pharmacologists FACTS:
Summary, What Pharmacologists do, Work Environment, How to become one, Pay, Job Outlook, Similar Occupations and Contacts for More Information.
Medical Scientists
Summary
Medical scientists conduct research with the goal of improving overall human health.
Quick Facts: Medical Scientists
2010 Median Pay $76,700 per year
$36.87 per hour
Entry-Level Education Doctoral or professional degree
Work Experience in a Related Occupation None
On-the-job Training None
Number of Jobs, 2010 100,000
Job Outlook, 2010-20 36% (Much faster than average)
Employment Change, 2010-20 36,400
What Medical Scientists Do
Medical scientists conduct research aimed at improving overall human health. They often use clinical trials and other investigative methods to reach their findings.
Work Environment
Medical scientists work in offices and laboratories. Most work full time.
How to Become a Medical Scientist
Medical scientists typically need a Ph.D., usually in biology or a related life science, from an accredited postsecondary institution. Some also have a medical degree.
Pay
The median annual wage of medical scientists except epidemiologists was $76,700 in May 2010.
Job Outlook
Employment of medical scientists is expected to increase by 36 percent between 2010 and 2020, much faster than the average for all occupations.
Similar Occupations
Compare the job duties, education, job growth, and pay of medical scientists with similar occupations.
O*NET
O*NET provides comprehensive information on key characteristics of workers and occupations.
Contacts for More Information
Learn more about medical scientists by contacting these additional resources.
What Medical Scientists Do
Medical scientists plan and direct studies to investigate human diseases, and methods to prevent and treat them.
Medical scientists conduct research aimed at improving overall human health. They often use clinical trials and other investigative methods to reach their findings.
Duties
Medical scientists typically do the following:
Plan and direct studies to investigate human diseases, preventive methods, and the treatment of disease
Develop methods, instruments, and procedures for medical applications and data analysis
Prepare and analyze medical samples to identify toxicity, bacteria, or microorganisms or to study cell structure
Standardize drug doses and immunization methods for manufacturing drugs and other medicinal compounds
Work with health departments, industry personnel, and physicians to develop programs that improve health safety standards
Prepare research grant proposals to get funding from government agencies
Follow safety procedures to avoid contamination
Many medical scientists, especially in universities, work with little supervision, forming their own hypotheses and developing experiments accordingly. In addition, they often lead teams, technicians, and, sometimes, students who do support tasks. For example, a medical scientist working in a university laboratory may have undergraduate assistants take measurements and observations for the scientist’s research.
Medical scientists study biological systems to understand the causes of diseases and other health problems. For example, medical scientists who do cancer research might put together a combination of drugs that could slow the progress of the disease. They would then study that combination in a clinical trial. Physicians may work with the medical scientists to try the new combination with patients who are willing to participate in the study.
In a clinical trial, patients agree to help find out if a particular drug, or combination of drugs, or other medical intervention works. Without knowing which group they are in, patients in a drug-related clinical trial either receive the trial drug or receive a placebo, a drug that looks like the trial drug but does not have the special ingredients.
Medical scientists analyze the data from all the patients in the clinical trial to see if the trial drug did better than the placebo, for whom it worked better, and to answer other research questions. They then write up and report their findings.
Medical scientists do research both to develop new treatments and to try to prevent health problems. For example, they may study the link between smoking and lung cancer or between alcoholism and
