Research fellows aiming to obtain a PhD or MD/PhD degree face many hazards at work, including exposure to toxic substances and harassment by reviewers of their papers. However, few data exist on the sociocultural risk factors encountered at work-eg, their risk of marriage.Therefore, between 1993 and 2008, we entered all our 13 research fellows (12 men, one woman; median age 29 years [range 26-32] at study entry; median length of stay in the laboratory 36 months [18-42]) into this prospective, observational, happily-matched-pair cohort analysis. The primary study endpoint was the date of marriage of a research fellow recorded by the respective Swiss Departments of Administrative Affairs and Marital Matters. We took great care not to influence the partner choice of our fellows. Quality-of-life assessment was deemed to be superfluous given the happy faces of study participants recorded when they reached the trial endpoint.
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