No one ought to work for 12 hours a day
Group leader Laurel Raffington would like to protect researchers from unrealistic, harmful expectations.
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“Academia is just a job”
says Laurel Raffington, a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. In an article published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour in January 2026, she criticised current expectations about just how devoted researchers are supposed to be to their work. “Stress is not fun; it diminishes cognitive performance and creativity”, she wrote. Just because you love your job, she says, doesn’t mean you should be working 12 hours a day, constantly available or willing to move on a regular basis. ff
