By Julie Donnelly

Some of the best places for scientists to work for no money are here in Massachusetts. The Scientist magazine has put out its yearly “Best Places to Work” list for post-docs, and three of the top ten are located in Massachusetts. For the uninitiated, post-docs are the low men and women on the scientific totem pole. They toil for long hours in the bowels of Harvard and MIT buildings with no one to talk to but transgenic mice. They get paid something like $40,000, even though they all have Ph.D.s already. They do it because it helps enhance their resumes or, in this economy, because it’s a good alternative to the frosty job search process.

Post-docs are the lifeblood of early stage research, and although most of that research ultimately fails, there would be far fewer drugs on the market today if the post-doc system did not exist. Treating them well would seem to be a societal good.

The most fulfilled post-docs in Massachusetts work at the Whitehead Institute at MIT, according to The Scientist. The survey ranked the institute the third best place to work, out of the top 40 listed in the survey. Workers there said they benefited from exemplary facilities, infrastructure and funding to support their research. However, they gave the Whitehead low marks for communication and being conducive to family and personal life.

The fourth favorite research institution in the national survey wasn’t at Harvard — it was at Swiss drug maker Novartis’ Institutes for Biomedical Research in Cambridge. There, workers extolled Novartis’ equitable workplace and the benefits. But there too, post-docs complained their personal lives had to suffer.

Coming in at number nine on the list was Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Here, the workers surveyed said their jobs allowed for family and personal life and offered great opportunities for career development. Woods-Hole post docs said the drawbacks were the facilities and infrastructure, as well as the benefits.