In my field (another type of research) a lot of people "want" to be professors, but when I talk to them there's no interest in teaching or doing administrative work, they just want job stability. If research jobs were stable they would happily spend the rest of their lives doing research.
> It’s also not even remotely true that being an MD is the first choice for researchers
You should try talking to some actual graduates in the life sciences department at your local state school, and not just MD-PHDs. I am willing to bet money that the number of non-medical biology researchers whose number one choice is medicine outnumbers wannabe researchers.
Another approach would have been to say, "interesting, my experience differs," and then to compare notes.
For instance, is it the case that you're a software engineer who occasionally meets people who've pivoted into software engineering from life sciences? That could be a very different sample than someone who's spouse has successfully gained traction in the field. Seems likely to me that there's something to be learned from both perspectives here.
I want to credit your point and believe what you're saying, but the burden of proof is on you to give evidence that most Biology researchers want to be in medicine.
As a biochem PhD holder, you're really gonna have to back this up.
That's me, graduate of a life science department at MD, microbiology not medical biology. Guess what, I always wanted to do research. Definitely didn't want to be a doctor, especially if a someone like, well, you, ended up being my patient.
That makes three anecdotes to counter your assertion. You gonna pay up or move the goalposts a little more?
There are many viable alternatives for these researchers. For starters, all the other academic institutions! Which have their own problems, but have been increasing salaries for graduate students and post docs in response to organization (eg Penn just raised biomedical postdoc salaries in large part because of the threat of unionization, and in large part because of the competitive threat of other institutions who’ve increased salaries).
But beyond that, private sector is absolutely a viable alternative. People don’t make their choices in a vacuum, they choose the academia path because it fits their long term goal and it’s worth the short term costs.
It’s also not even remotely true that being an MD is the first choice for researchers: of the people I know in research at prestigious institutions, it is a mix of MD-PhDs and people who only ever wanted to do research. There’s absolutely not some huge population of thwarted doctors getting prestigious postdoc positions.