Nobelists divided over ‘sink or swim’ mentorship in science

In my experience only a small fraction of postdocs have problem solving abilities, the majority don't. As a postdoc I found myself burdened by having to solve everyone's else's problems and nor was I acknowledged on the manuscripts for doing this. As a PI, I've been even more burdened by having to solve the team's problems. Many PhD students don't like being challenged and never go onto develop critical thinking and problem solving characteristics, through their training. If you set them challenges, they complain against you. These very same people then take postdoc positions and latch onto either a capable postdoc or the PI to steer them through. Eventually, the capable sinks under the weight of the dependents. Far too many PI's have had their careers prematurely terminated as a result of bad postdocs. The problem starts at school level.

"The natural selection of bad science" – https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsos.160384