A look back at TIR’s 9^th year of operations.

The year in retrospect
After my resignation from academia in 2023 and subsequent switch to MedComms, 2024 marked my first full year in full-time employment as a medical writer. Spoiler: it’s been great; really, really great. 

As I’ve been saying over and over again this year, it has been consistently humbling and inspiring (and embarrassing) to discover how much nicer an employer the private sector is compared to academia. To be part of an institution that truly values individuals has been a transformative and galvanising experience, and as I noted in one posting, the evidence for such a commitment can be found even in the driest and blandest of documents. 

At the end of February, I completed my 6-month probation and was given – at the age of 44 and for the first time in my professional life – a permanent contract. Perhaps it’s just as well that this happened when it did, as by common acknowledgement 2024 was an exceptionally difficult year for the biotech/pharma sector, with belt-tightenings galore and a general sense of unease and gloom. That said, it felt more like the sector hunkering down and waiting for the storm to pass, rather than sinking into the kind of miasma that descends when bad times are set to linger. The sheer size and the amount of money in the biotech/pharma sector means that the good times are bound to return before long.

For me personally it’s been a year of learning and adjustment, and at around the one-year mark in September it really felt as though things were starting to click. I’m not a fully-fledged medical writer yet, but I’m getting there. I’m now firm in my conviction that MedComms is the best private sector career option for scientists who enjoying the writing/communicating/organising aspects of the job the most, and I’ll continue to document my experiences as I progress.

Postings…or lack of them
Unfortunately, postings were very rarely sighted in 2024, as my ongoing disentanglement from university life and parenting duties continued to consume much of the time I would otherwise use for writing. In 2023 I was bemoaning a total of only 20 postings, but that total was again halved in 2024 for the lowest number since TIR began. 

Bear with me, friends! The impulse to write is as strong as ever, so normal service will eventually be resumed. Beating the miserable total number of postings from 2024 seems like a minimal and very achievable goal for 2025, but with so much going on behind the scenes even that feels ambitious at the moment.

As always, I owe a huge, huge thanks to all of YOU out there who have been reading/liking/sharing the postings on TIR. It’s a one-person show here, and I’d far prefer to spend my time writing new content instead of promoting old postings, so I’m very grateful to all readers who take the time to spread the word.

Unsocial media
In 2023 traffic to TIR had stayed very high despite the relative lack of new material, but that was largely due to social media – particularly Twitter – being so effective at directing people to the blog and enabling older postings to continue to reach new readers.

My own social media usage tends to be in proportion to posting frequency, so as I’ve posted less, I’ve also been less present on those networks; again, I hope that’ll change in 2025. 

Twitter was arguably the story of the year in this section. In the past it’s been remarkable in its ability to connect TIR to readers, but from around mid-2024 it was noticeable that the number of referrals from the site was dropping precipitously, and there was news later that the algorithm is now choking posts that link to external sites (not great for anyone wishing to promote papers/postings/programmes/whatever).

My main rationale for using scientific social media is to promote the content on the blog and contribute to related discussions, but it’s clear that Twitter is no longer the optimal vehicle for that kind of approach…and that’s leaving aside any discussion of politics and the caprice of multi-billionaire owners. 

I’ve now belatedly joined BlueSky (TIRscienceblog@bsky.social) and as of January 2025 am also on LinkedIn. Getting establishing on those platforms and exploring them are two big goals for the year ahead.

From bioscience to medical science
As already noted, the switch from cell biology to MedComms has been a delight, and it seem set to be a super-interesting way to spend the second half of my working life. I do and will always miss academia, but only, it seems, in the abstract. 

Given the paucity of permanent positions (aka “jobs”) in academia, I strongly believe that the routes out need to be better signposted, and I very much hope TIR can contribute productively to that goal. MedComms is a career that most people stumble into (as indeed I did), and I will be doing my best to help highlight what it has to offer. I was also really happy to participate in a PhD programme retreat and an EMBL Careers webinar in 2024; hopefully there’s more to come from that direction.

Looking further ahead, the shift from fundamental biological science in academia to applied medical science in the biotech/pharma sector is bound to produce a slow shift in TIR’s focus. It’s always going to be about the science though, whether in academia or in industry! Best wishes to all for the year ahead, and let’s see what 2025 brings…

You keep reading, I’ll keep reflecting.

Brooke Morriswood
January 2025

TIR’s top5 postings in 2024:
Follow the money
The devil in the details (a short guide to writing figure legends)
Seeing triple (a short guide to experiment reproducibility)
Please allow me to introduce myself (a short guide to writing approach emails)
Great scientists, great moustaches (a Movember posting)