Why I Stopped Pursuing Gut Microbiota Research As An Academic

Though I was just a master’s student, I’ve published <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0g318kcAAAAJ&hl=en" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">over 10 papers</a> in reputable scientific journals, mainly as the first author. Neuroscience, infectious diseases, and vaccines are my research interests. Looking back, <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.01361/full" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">the first paper</a> I published was a research review on the potential of different probiotic bacterial strains to treat major depressive disorder in the journal Frontiers of Neuroscience in 2020 (Figure 1). As with any excited newbie tackling a tough project, I put a lot of effort into this paper, to the point of obsession, honestly. I believe I spent at least 6 hours on this paper every day during the semester break — trying to comprehend the entire literature on the relationship between gut microbiota and the brain and between probiotics and depression. <img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*a_hZgwrPKZqb941L0T83CA.png" style="height:316px; width:700px" /> Figure 1. My first published scientific paper. <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2019.01361/full" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Source</a>: Yong et al. (2020). My first scientific paper has over 300 citations — too many for a paper. Whereas <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=0g318kcAAAAJ&hl=en" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">my following 10 papers</a> typically have fewer than 150 citations, but none were about gut microbiota anymore. I stopped doing research about gut microbiota as I realized it’s not the holy grail of medicine like what the media and scientists have implied. <a href="https://medium.com/microbial-instincts/why-i-stopped-pursuing-gut-microbiota-research-as-an-academic-9c9d4bb570ef">Learn More</a>