Are you sure you want to be a professor?

Saw this article by Kerry Ann Rockquemore in my Monday Motivator feed this morning.

I learned of Kerry Ann Rockquemore at one of those so-called "diversity workshops" where she was one of the few speakers who even MENTIONED sexism as a factor. The actual purpose of the workshop was unclear, since it seemed to be chock-full of general career advice that I'd already heard, none of which had helped me at all.

She was probably the best speaker there, because she really gave concrete advice. So I have to laugh a little at getting her stuff in my feed. It's intended for people who are already tenured or tenure-track faculty.

I probably should unsubscribe.

She's the kind of person I desperately want to ask for help, except that by the time I found out about her I realized it was a) too late and that she was b) too busy to help someone like me c) unless I could pay her workshop fee. And even then, like for most things designated for faculty, as a postdoc I wouldn't have been considered eligible. Probably.

Anyway the part that struck me in this column was where she wrote

The trick is to determine the difference between escape fantasies that result from feeling overwhelmed and the genuine, gut-level resistance that occurs when you REALLY know you're on the wrong path. Below I'm going to suggest a few things you might try as ways to differentiate between momentary frustration and the need to create an exit strategy.

Yes, that really is the trick, isn't it? My therapist seemed to think I was on the wrong path, that I was exhibiting signs of gut-level resistance to the career in general.

In truth, I thought then and I still think now that I was experiencing gut-level resistance to my advisor, maybe, but not necessarily to the career itself.

Some days, I still have trouble extrapolating the concept that my evil advisor represents the evil inherent in the entire profession. And yet, clearly I think that all of our horror story examples are representative. Blogging has certainly taught me that. You can run, but you can't hide forever.

Still, I went with the exit strategy only moments before I might have made it, finally, or been kicked out anyway. Was it self-sabotage? Was I delusional? I still don't know. Maybe I couldn't have survived another year of that, but why did I stick around that long in the first place? Could I have just taken a left turn instead of jumping off?

Had an interesting chat with a religious friend the other day about knowing whether you're on the right path. I told him I'm not sure I believe in the concept of having a path. He said something vague like you'll know you're on the right path when you're on it.

Uh, ok. Thanks.

There's that and then I saw this article in the Chronicle written by a guy who left academia for 20 years, and then came back, only to find it had gotten even worse.

He tells a particularly familiar story about advising a grad student on just how impossibly dismal her career chances are.

And how she ignores him.

****

Elsewhere on the internets, people are talking about this article in the NY Times about med schools who allow some students to major in the humanities and still become MDs.

Oh, the horror! MDs are not scientists? They don't have to be?

And this is news?

And yet, the fact that it is news has some interesting implications. Maybe not yet, but for the future. For whole generations of patients and students.

One friend remarked to me that it's too bad they weren't doing this when we were in college, how I probably should have majored in English and gone to med school, instead of majoring in science and going to grad school.

It occurred to me that this may be one of the unique facets of our transitional generation. We may be among the few whose doctors who lack creativity for the simple reason that they had it beaten or selected out of them earlier on in their education.

****
I was also reading about how our generation is composed of control-freaks who are ruining our children, while the generation after us is full of the new flower-kids, who will certainly use creativity to change the world.

What does it matter if I change the world at all?

Sometimes I feel like i was born just a few years too early. Maybe this is why I like Futurama so much.

And just think, if I were a professor right now, I wouldn't have time to sleep or eat, much less watch several episodes of animated sarcasm.

Oh where is that cryogenic accident when I need one? Perhaps my path lies in delivering pizza. Pretty sure somebody is actually hiring people to do that.

How to fix your advisor

I would suggest the solution proposed in this post and/or let them eat oxytocin.

Eventually, we will have a protocol.

Scientiae: inspiration or desperation?

I'm going to paraphrase this title because the dichotomy reminded me of this, one of my all-time favorite scenes in a movie. From the trailer scene in Kill Bill (dialogue helpfully provided by this site).

Budd: So, which "R" you filled with?

Elle Driver: What?

Budd: They say the number one killer of old people is retirement. People got 'em a job to do, they tend to live a little longer so they can do it. I've always figured warriors and their enemies share the same relationship. So, now you ain't gonna hafta face your enemy on the battlefield no more, which "R" are you filled with: Relief or Regret?

Elle Driver: A little bit of both.

Budd: Bullshit. I'm sure you do feel a little bit of both. But I know damn well you feel one more than you feel the other. The question was, which one?

Elle Driver: Regret.

...and then later, she says:

Elle Driver: [to Budd, as he is dying] Now in these last agonizing minutes of life you have left, let me answer the question you asked earlier more thoroughly. Right at this moment, the biggest "R" I feel is Regret. Regret that maybe the greatest warrior I have ever known, met her end at the hands of a bushwhackin, scrub, alky piece of shit like you. That woman deserved better.

.....

I am definitely feeling a little bit of both.

.....

I definitely have a tendency to self-sabotage, so when I am particularly stressed out I am always looking for escape routes. Lately I feel anxious in the mornings, but if I keep busy I feel pretty good during the day, and I have been getting enough sleep most nights.

I am aware that I tend to always want to have one foot in the career grave, as it were, because I do have a fear of committing to this all-or-nothing lifestyle that seems to be required for junior faculty. So whenever I hear something awful from my now mostly-faculty friends about how stressful their jobs are, or how their personal lives are suffering because they work so much, I think "Well at least I'm glad I won't be dealing with that." Totally unhealthy, but it's how I'm coping right now.

Part of me still wants to run away, and that part is sending off for catalogs related to things I would do if/when. That part gets really excited about envisioning all the other things I could do now that I couldn't do when I was younger.

.....

And of course there is still the little voice that says, "Well even if you did that now, don't you think it will just turn out to be the same as what you've already done? Won't you just end up in the same place, having the same problems with political bullshit, several more years down the road?"

And I try to tell the voice, "Maybe, but it might also be more fun?"

And then, laughter.

.....

At the end of Buffy, there is that scene where they are standing on the edge of the cliff, and talking about how Buffy will finally get to have a normal life. It's like that. Almost impossible to imagine, but very tempting to imagine nonetheless.

And on the other hand, I am still doing experiments and printing out articles to read and pretending like everything is going along just fine. And in a way, it is. But it can't go on like this forever.

Attention deficit

Haven't been writing much lately; haven't been reading too many other blogs, either.

Don't have the attention span to slog through other people's long, un-paragraphed posts.

Generally feel better on the days when, if I write in my journal at night before I go to bed, I can list off having done lots of different kinds of things, some for work and some for fun. Usually that correlates with satisfying both parts of my brain, being physically tired, and feeling general progress.

Somehow doing one thing, even one long arduous thing, doesn't seem as satisfying. I end up feeling like I didn't get anything done at all.

Had a couple of good, variety-filled days this week, and couple of frustrating sucky ones.

Some of the things I did in lab actually worked, but mostly I feel indecisive about what I should be doing next, scientifically speaking.

I have things I want to start, and things that I should finish that I don't feel like working on. Where I'm just stuck and trying to figure out how to go around the giant pothole that was the experiment I was planning to insert into Figure X part f.

Usually when this happens, I start throwing darts. I do the equivalent of poking around, scientifically speaking, with a bunch of pilot experiments aimed at asking about the underlying assumption that was Figure X - what created the pothole in the first place.

This really appeals to my attention deficit self. The trick is to get in and out as quickly as possible, or it's easy to hang around and spin my wheels just for fun. Doing lots of one-off experiments = fun, but not necessarily productive.

Eventually I will have to hunker down and be "focused". But when things are not working as expected, banging away at it as if it's my fault usually just leads to headache. If it were something I was doing wrong, I would have figured it out with a reasonable amount of banging. Anything beyond that means I'm banging on the wrong wall.

So I feel a little guilty about throwing darts, but I don't know where to go from here without doing that step first.

If there's anything I've learned in all the time I've been doing science, it's that when I'm stuck it's because the assumptions are wrong, not because I'm technically inept. I've also learned that I can't ask my advisers what they think I should do next. Asking my advisers always leads to suggestions, but following up on the suggestions never gets me where I want to go.

The best solution is to figure it out for myself. I just need to feel a little less guilty about doing the part of my job that I actually like best- the creative, investigative part. Even if that's not the part that gets you fame, fortune, or a job anytime in the near future.

Shut up, subconscious!

Been doing okay with the whole work-stress thing lately. At least, when I'm fully awake.

When I am angry or anxious, I go to the gym.

Switched to a new Omega-3-6-9 supplement and that is helping a lot with the apparently mild depression that seems to have gone away almost completely.

Calling a ridiculous and stressful situation at work "major depressive disorder" made even less sense to me after I met with the psychiatrist my now-former therapist recommended. When the doctor is hawking drugs like a street seller (Don't you want it? Come on, you know you want it! Take the drugs!), my answer is the same as it is on the street: uh, NO. Keep walking. Always feel better as soon as I turn the corner and get away from people shoving things in my face that I don't need or want to buy. And I really do feel very confident about that decision. There is no doubt in my mind.

The only lingering problem is the early morning hours when I'm not quite awake, but not entirely asleep.

At night, I have real dreams. Some of them are interesting, some are about food or vacations, but they are mostly not about work.

Sometimes I wake up very early, anywhere from 3-6 AM. Sometimes, just before I wake up I figure something out that has been puzzling me with science-related issues like what experiment to do next. That is always satisfying, and I say, Thank you, subconscious! I knew you would solve that for me!

But sometimes it's not productive, and I'd rather not be waking up at 3 AM at all. Exercising to exhaustion usually helps me sleep through the night, but it's not always practical to be tired and sore every day of the week.

Even if it only happens rarely, it's still kind of annoying because I'm more tired the rest of the day than I should be.

I usually try to go back to sleep, and sometimes it works better than others.

Those early-morning hours are the time of day when my brain insists on processing and reminding me of all the things that people have said that had implied meanings; things my adviser should have done but didn't; things that I have no control over; and worrying about the future. Etc.

For example, when some of the students or postdocs in the lab want to complain to me, I'm supposed to be sympathetic, but if I say anything in return about being frustrated with our adviser, they jump all over me like I'm the one who started complaining in the first place.

And I know they aren't sympathetic because they just don't understand. I know they're either too clueless or too terrified to admit that if it's happening to me, it will probably happen to them eventually, maybe already has and they've been trying to pretend like it hasn't. Or they've swallowed their pride or integrity or both, and tried to tell themselves that it will all be worth it.

I know it doesn't occur to them that I feel really isolated and let down by their complete lack of empathy or respect. I know all of that. But it's all I can do to politely listen and just say, "Yeah, that sucks" and stop myself from actually sharing, because I know they'll hold it against me.

So when I wake up at 3 AM, part of my brain is pointing out that I really just want to
say to them: please quit whining to me, I do not want to be your friend
because you're incredibly two-faced, self-centered and insensitive!

About half the time, I get up for a little while and do some yoga or writing or even watching tv, and when I go back to bed half an hour or an hour later, it's fine.

The rest of the time, I just can't make myself get up because I'm very tired, and then I end up having these little episodes of replaying irritating situations in my head and wondering whether I could have handled them differently.

My theory is that if I write about these things in a journal or blog before I go to bed, that might help avoid them popping up on their own and wrecking my sleep. I think it helps.

The thing is, when I'm awake I'm pretty good at noticing my thoughts and identifying them and saying, Okay, yes, that was annoying, but I need to let that go now. It's a conscious effort, though, and when I'm half-asleep apparently I can't quite pull it off.

So this is my message to myself via the internet. Shut up, subconscious! You can talk during the day if you want, but you have to let me sleep! The hours of 11 pm to 7 am are OFF-LIMITS! I will write to get you out of my system if I have to, but then you have got to shut up! Got it? Good.

Creative Solutions.

Argh, someone just sent a really clever comment, and as usual I can't figure out which post it was in response to or find it easily until Google visits my page again.

I am too tired to be clever about this right now.

Basically the take-home point was that yes, postdocs are all deluded in thinking they're in the top 25% (we can't all be equally good) and most just aren't creative enough to come up with something better to do.

I do think, based on empirical evidence like comparing how many papers people have published, how much experience I have, etc, that I'm in the top 25%, but so what? In my field we're talking about the top 1% who get Research 1 faculty positions.

So, okay. I know I am not in the top 1%. I don't have the High Impact Publication Record. I might be in the top 10% of eligible postdocs in my field, or I might not.

But who knows. A fellow scientist said something funny to me recently about how people who argue or care about statistics are making decisions based on all the wrong things (sorry I can't remember the pithy phrasing). I thought it was hilarious since as scientists, we really should know enough about statistics to evaluate when and if they are relevant and useful... but anyway. I do think it's a good point. Should we allow ourselves to be discouraged by the odds against us?

Hasn't stopped me so far.

However, I like the way this commenter put it, the gist of which was that if you're staying only because you're not creative enough to come up with something better, that's just pathetic.

I hereby challenge myself and my readers to come up with creative career solutions for a) me and b) everyone in a similar quandary.

I'm drawing a blank though, so if you have some great suggestions, do send them!

I'm not feeling very creative today. I am feeling like I work with a bunch of people, most of whom I do not

a) like
b) respect
c) trust
d) admire.

But mostly I'm thinking about (c) and (d) today.

I always prefer to be around people who have at least some qualities I admire. I try to practice compassion of the Eastern sort, and count my blessings and open my heart and all that good stuff... I did a meditation specifically for this yesterday.

But lately I am really having a hard time scrounging up reasons to admire most of my colleagues.

I guess staying in a field because you think you can do better than the people who are currently doing it... means you're choosing to surround yourself with people you believe to be fundamentally lacking.

Ultimately this is why one of my very best friends left research. She looked at these people and said:

"Not only are they all sexist assholes who treat me like dirt, but they're also morons."

And that was the end of that.

I wish I could feel as certain about quitting as she did when she left. I don't think she's ever given it a second thought.

I swear I'm good at making big decisions, I really am. But only when I'm sure how I feel, and have obvious, finite, options that are clear to me.

In fact, I am getting sick of hearing myself hem and haw about what to do with my career.

Get a life already, sheesh!

The big problem and sticking point for me personally is that I still really like coming up with things I want to test.

And these are not- before people write in to lecture me again!- anything anyone wants to test in industry.

So that option is really not in the running if I want to do the one part of science I really like, which is actually the most creative part for me.

It could be argued that figuring out how to best present your work and persuade your audience of even controversial points also requires a lot of creativity, but thus far I still struggle with that and have not learned to love it.

Sometimes I really do wish there were think tanks in my field, where people could sit around identifying longstanding problems, or old problems that need to be revisited with new technology. Then these people would write up what they think the salient questions are and publish reports other people (with fewer ideas, more patience for tedium, and better political connections in academia) would refer to for research guidance.

The people in the think tank could do it in groups, or they could each have their own private tank, or do some of both. But I think I have most of my best ideas when I'm alone.

But doesn't that sound like fun? It's the ultimate ivory tower!

(I'll let down my hair so they can send up baskets of protein bars and energy drinks. It'll be great, I promise.)

Anyway my point is, I'm still devoted to Sartre. Science, by itself, would be great if I could do it in my kitchen. But research science is expensive, so it's corrupt and we have to share everything with everybody.

Hell is still, as we already knew, other people.

Analyze This

Has anyone actually done a study correlating the "1 high impact paper" status of faculty candidates with their subsequent success/failure at achieving funding and tenure?

I'm guessing not.

Fact-checking and Freedom of Speech

Had an interesting chat yesterday with a friend who heard a recent NPR report on how- i.e. the mechanism of - journalism has degraded to the point of widespread inaccuracy.

This is third-hand, but apparently many media sources are now requiring 'story quotas' from journalists, which creates pressure to 'produce'. I'm not sure if there's any metric for quality of these stories- it would appear not.

This got me thinking about how public media is not that different from scientific media, and how some of the changes proposed recently would make scientific publishing more like public media sources.

We've discussed here on many occasions how arbitrary scientific peer-review can be. If you happen to get 3 reviewers who know your senior author, for example, and they all think he's a great guy, your paper- however stellar or crappy- is much more likely to get into Top Tier Journal than if your co-authors are all nobodies.

Similarly, it's much more difficult to get a High Impact paper if you're a nobody, or if everybody hates your boss, because the bias among all scientists seems to favor prior reputation over the current data at hand. Why reward someone you hate for a job well done?

It's probably a weakness inherently human and psychological that even scientists can't rise above in our supposed Supreme Objectiveness.

Having said that, what if we let everyone publish everything in One Big Journal, and then let everyone comment on everything, and posted all the comments for everyone to see? Kind of like One Big Science Blog (with the obligate filter for obscenities, a.k.a me, for this site).

If we assume that scientific discourse will follow a similar path to public media sources (and I'm including both mainstream and 'alternative' sources in that group), we can assume a few things will happen:

1. The amount of information available will skyrocket.
2. The amount of crappy information will also skyrocket.

Anybody want to come up with an equation to determine whether those two things are at all interdependent? That would make for an interesting math problem.

Anyway, the question on everyone's mind is, how are we going to sort through all of the crap to get to the good stuff?

I've seen the following three behavioral responses from scientists at all levels:

1. Scientist reads Almost Everything.
2. Scientist reads Almost Nothing.
3. Scientist reads only what's absolutely required- i.e. only what's directly related to their own area of research.

We've all been all three of these at various times, but I'm most concerned about #2. We really don't want very many - or any- scientists like that getting advanced degrees. Or, god help us all, their own labs.

But isn't that what the average American is doing these days? Most of us have stopped watching the news because it either

a) has no worthwhile content
b) is totally inaccurate
c) is too depressing.

And doesn't that also apply to most of the science publishing out there?

I've taken to watching Face the Nation and Meet the Press on Sundays, and listening to the occasional short burst of NPR or CNN when I'm lucky enough to flip by the station when they're actually reporting news. It's not enough, and if it were my job to be aware of wordly goings-ons I would be in big trouble.

But I'm also way behind on my reading for work. I'm too busy during the week and can't face doing it at night or on the weekend, the way I did in former years.

There are a variety of highly biased resources for keeping up with literature, like Faculty of 1000. Less biased tools have what I call a high 'clutter-factor' or CF, such as having journals email you the new table of contents (TOCs) every week or month when the new issue comes out. Another method with a high CF that hasn't worked well for me is having journals sent to my house ("I"ll read them on the toilet!") instead of to my lab.

The point of all this musing is the alarming conversations I've been having with people at all levels lately, wherein it becomes frighteningly obvious that most scientists don't read outside their immediate area at all. PIs are gifted at appearing to know all the latest research- because they go to meetings, but they don't know it in any depth.

The interesting side-effect of this is that most PIs don't know whether the correct controls have been done unless they're threatened enough to wait for the paper and examine it in detail. So PIs go around dropping names and results left and right, without ever bothering to verify the verity of their claims.

This feeds back into the media frenzy style of news communication- where word spreads like gossip, without any supporting evidence, and without any fact-checking.

So my question is, are we as scientists lacking the right to express our freedom to speechify? Shouldn't we be allowed to run off at the mouth like everyone else does?

Priority Number One: Avoid Irritation

Ugh. The Year of the Dog continues, and then some. I'm really hoping today can count as part of last week, and that the annoying streak will come to an end.

And sooner would be better.

Finally got the back-ordered shipment I was waiting for, but it took 2 weeks longer than it was supposed to, and now I have to thaw fresh cells. So I have to wait a few more days to even try the experiment.

Finally got the approval code I was waiting for- a week late. Not sure what kind of trouble that's going to cause, but I'm worried the whole thing I was trying to get approved will have to wait another month, since the committee that does the reviews doesn't meet very often.

Why, you ask, the snafu in the first place? Because the person left a message for me, and nobody gave me the message.

Went to a lab meeting today that basically consisted of evidence that an ongoing project (not anything I'm involved in, thank god!) has been complete crap for, at a minimum, years. Possibly longer. Possibly decades. All because of sloppiness. The poor person who figured this all out is wondering if they're now allowed to work on something else. I just sat there adding up all the tax dollars that went to this project.

Complete. Crap.

Meanwhile, I thought I made a new friend this month, but New Friend is having some personal issues that make me want to steer wide & clear for a while. There's only so much I can take of other people's bad moods when they won't even let you in far enough to at least explain what the hell is going on.

Was kind of hoping I had a new friend, though. Very sad. Got any suggestions for a nice platonic gift to get someone who is clearly having a rough time of indeterminate nature?

Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure WWIII is breaking out, between Lebanon, Korea, Iraq, and our impending economic doom.

Here's the new scenario I came up with:

I reach the brink of actually getting a faculty position, and then:

WWIII breaks out.

Most scientists will be out of work, because there will be no money. Since we don't believe in war and in particular find bio-weapons to be completely unethical, we refuse to use our scientific skills to develop weapons.

We sell all our stuff and move. We spend most of our time experimenting:

with new ways to cook beans.

The rest of our time we spend to collect ration cards. So we can buy beans.

Then, when the Men all come back from War, all the faculty positions go to Men.

Right?

On the bright side, I got a little zippy extension thing for my ID card, so that's kind of fun. You know, with the retractable stretchy cord so you can slide your card without having to actually take it off.

Yay, Zippy!

Yes, that was the absolute highlight of my day.

Advancing a diminishing payscale

Yesterday, someone told me about a new, old idea. I don't know whose idea it was, and I wasn't sure how to find it online, because I don't know what it's actually called. I'm calling it a 'diminishing payscale' for discussion purposes.

The idea is, pay assistant professors the most, and senior soon-to-be-emeritus professors the least.

Here's the logic:
1. Assistant professors are the most energetic and work the hardest. They also need money the most, so they can buy a home and start having kids (assuming we think increasing the next generation of scientists is a good thing!).

2. Instead of actually increasing in productivity as we get older, our peak is when we're postdocs/assistant professors, and after that it's all downhill.

3. Maybe we'd give people tenure right away, or they'd never agree to a system like this.

4. Older people have fewer expenses, and if they're making less and less each year, it would encourage them to retire rather than hang onto their positions.

I think it's a great idea, but as usual, it's not obvious how it could be implemented at this late date. I've met a few older professors and while some say "yeah, we need to get out of the way so you guys can have lab space", most are terrified of retiring and wouldn't rather work until they die than take up golfing. Personally I can't imagine our generation feeling that way, I think we'll be more than happy to retire if money is not an issue, but maybe that's just my own preference. I can't wait to retire!

Development Abstraction

An astute reader sent me this link and I thought it might be fun to do a spin-off for the biosciences.

Basically, this guy Joel talks about how the ideal infrastructure is one you don't have to even know about because it works so seamlessly. In his case, the ideal situation allows software programmers to just, you know, write programs.

In our case, what would we want?

1. Unlimited funding. 'Nuff said.
2. Unlimited instantaneous ordering, the sort of thing where you think of it and (some invisible and speed-of-light person orders it for you without asking you ten times exactly which thing you want because they already KNOW what you mean because they're ACTUALLY TRAINED TO DO THIS full-time) it's just THERE.
3. Unlimited instantaneous video conferencing from our laptops all around the world, so any time we wanted to ask our collaborators something, they would just be there and answer our questions.
4. Equipment that is always maintained and working and only replaced when the replacement is actually BETTER. If something gets broken WE NEVER KNOW ABOUT IT because it's someone else's job to order the replacement or better yet, they always make sure we have replacement parts on hand and keep up on whether the equipment is not longer being manufactured anymore...
5. Everything is up to code and stays that way and if it's not, WE NEVER KNOW ABOUT IT because it's someone else's job to make sure the biohazard waste and the radioactive waste and the chemical waste are all taken care of.
6. People who actually train students so we can work with them without having to teach them everything they SHOULD HAVE LEARNED IN SCHOOL.

Feel free to add to this list. What are the major sources of our headaches?

Gee, in the course of writing this, here is my thought: if Joel is right and the Roman army had a ratio of servants:soldiers that was 4:1, how would we be doing if for every actual bench researcher in the lab, we had that many people just doing support staff work (maintaining equipment, keeping things up to code, ordering) full-time?

Can you imagine how PRODUCTIVE we would be if we didn't have to do all this stuff ourselves?

And that's where we get back to the unlimited funding dream. Would we really need more money to do this? Or just allocate it differently by changing the career structure? The current academic system is set up this way for two main reasons I can think of (both valid):

1. Doing the maintenance and ordering yourself teaches you how it all works and gives you an appreciation for how much things cost.
2. It's cheaper than hiring people to do it, especially since theoretically there wouldn't be enough for them to do to keep them around full-time.

But what if neither of these things mattered because cost was irrelevant (say, if we could figure out how to make science fund itself instead of being a welfare state)?

Why ask why? Or, who wants raw knowledge?

Anonymous Coward, PhD (I love the PhD added on there) makes a great point by saying we're tapping into the money system too far down from the source.

Since everybody responded but nobody commented specifically on my little equation notation, here's a kind of flowchart of the money story the way I think about it:



person --> pays taxes --> government --> pays grants --> pays scientist --> finds stuff out --> publishes it

--> publishing company makes money --> drug company reads it --> gets grant from government -->

pays some MDs --> clinical trial --> good results --> publishes it --> publishing company makes money -->

doctors read the paper/salespeople show up at their office --> doctors prescribe the drugs -->

doctors get kickbacks --> patient pays for insurance -->

insurance company pays the drug company and the doctor and still makes a profit--> person is cured -->

person goes back to work --> person pays taxes and leftover hospital bills for the rest of their life. THE END



Not unlike my all-time favorite episode of Southpark, where the gnomes use the business plan:

Collect Underpants! -->???--> Profit!



The scientist only makes money if they get a patent on what they find out, and much of what we find out is not patentable (as far as I know?).

Meanwhile, the government is paying out, paying out. The publishing companies are raking it in. The MDs get paid by the government and the drug companies AND the insurance company and often also get paid directly by the patient when the insurance deductible kicks in.

What fun! (I'm rubbing my hands together like a rich, evil doctor!)

So actually from the way I told this story, our problem is that we tap into the money too early, and the amounts get larger as the process goes on, so it would be better to have multiple buckets at several branches downstream, rather than being too near the source (where it is most tightly regulated)?

But you asked, if we were going to tap into the system higher up, would anyone pay for the raw information?

Idea 1: What if there were companies that employed scientists to fill up giant databases?

Just databases. Not papers. Just data. Then drug companies and insurance companies would pay to use the databases. That might work. It's essentially how market research is done.

Does anybody really want to know anything badly enough to pay for it? Aren't book sales going down? Isn't the internet essentially free (so long as you don't mind Google adsense)?

On the one hand, it seems like the Information Age might work in our favor. Maybe the public really does just want to know. But who could afford to pay for all the equipment we'd need?

Idea 2: We could market ourselves out to do research on individual, disgustingly wealthy but inherently ill (inbred?) families. Each one of these bazillionaire families could have their own team of private scientist researchers working on their own private mix of Alzheimer's, anorexia, infertility, wrinkles and cancer. Or whatever it is that insanely rich people suffer from.

So privatization is always another option. It worked for artists in the Middle Ages.

I'm just saying. We need some concrete suggestions here, people. Get creative.

Fixing the System

I was doing some brainstorming today after talking to a non-science friend. She was asking me the obvious questions:

1. How did the system get so fucked up?
2. What could fix it at this point?

I wrote the following equations (this is how I think these days, rather than complete sentences):

science= technology + people

technology= people + training + resources

people= training + technical proficiency + creativity + communication skills + desire + rewards

training= books + lectures + experience + place to do it + toys to do it with + making mistakes + feedback

What's the goal?

- greater output (faster progress): cure disease, fix pollution, space travel, easier day-to-day, understand the meaning of life and how everything works. Fix the world.

- waste less money

- employ trained scientists instead of having them go to waste (and the money we spent training them)

Where does massive change come from?

from within: revolution of the proletariat

from without: government mandate (fascism?)

Better to do it fast or slow?

realistic: will be slow to implement even if it's easy to throw out the old system all at once.

idealistic: slow risks not going through with it or not making drastic enough changes.

Why would it be slow to implement?

Because it would involve bureaucrats, and they can't do anything quickly.

Why do we need bureaucrats? What do bureaucrats do? Why would it be so bad if we got rid of them all?

- handle money distribution and arrange for infrastructure (construction, cleaning, building maintenance); handle lawsuits from uneducated public/offended religiosers.

- push paper around.

- it's a self-renewing system: they're good at keeping themselves in business. formula: create rules --> hire people to enforce them --> create conflicts --> hire people to resolve them

Why do we need rules?

because people would kill each other without them. i get that.

Why do we need so many rules and bureaucrats?

Because nobody can know it all in detail and they need something to help guide their decision-making (or prevent them from having to make decisions based on all the information at any given juncture).

Who should be in charge?

- not the bureaucrats!
- not the politicians!
- not solely the old established scientists
- input from young scientists is critical.

Shorter Postdocs Would Be Better for Scientific Progress

I've been going to a lot of seminars lately. Since the trend of scientific training these days is:

grad school 5-7 years
postdoc 5-9 years

I've noticed this has a severe effect on the way we think.

We need new blood.

For a while, there was a lot of emphasis on making sure that graduate students switched fields for postdoc, to 'get exposure' and 'broaden their training.'

In reality, these people take longer to get jobs, because they either

a) have to spend the time to get a footing in the new field
or
b) have to spend time at the end of their postdoc going back to their original field.

So here's a thought. In the 'old days', postdoc 'training' was only 1-3 years long. This had some interesting consequences.

First, let's think about how labs are structured.

1.You have the lifers: lab managers, technicians, and PIs.
2. You have the long-termers: grad students.
3. You have the fast-moving component: postdocs.

Oops, except now the last two catgeories have kind of blended into one long, slogging pile of people who are in no hurry to go anywhere, and who get entrenched in thinking, more and more like the lifers.

I've noticed that many advisors thrive on having new people in the lab: it's like a new toy. Everyone I've worked for was excited about me at the beginning, but after a while they lose interest. And it's not just me, I've seen this happen to everyone.

So here's an idea. Maybe if we went back to shorter postdocs, it would help invigorate science more. Speed up the mixing process and encourage more cross-discipline collaboration.

Let's just leave the job thing out of it for a minute.

Okay, minute's over. I still have no solution for that.

Rebuttal Letter

Dear Editor and Reviewers,

I do not know if you are well-meaning, but I invite you to re-read what you write before you send it to me, the author of the paper you were ostensibly reviewing oh-so-conscientiously.

Do not send me reviews with a plethora of typos and grammatical mistakes. Please use a spellchecker!

Do not send me something you obviously dashed off in half an hour after skimming my paper. I spent years writing the paper, I don't think it's asking too much for you to spend an afternoon reading it carefully, and god forbid, maybe even re-reading it before you write the review!

Do please consider, and I cannot reiterate this enough, that I spent years writing and rewriting and revising, rather laboriously, the experiments, data, and text of this manuscript. It just might be too much more work for me to now throw in an additional, pointless 'control' just because you think it would make the data set more complete, or something.

Do not use this as an opportunity to inform me that another paper has come out since I submitted my paper for your review, and then ask me to address this other paper. It is irrelevant what is in that other paper since we are contemporaneous, and it is only a fluke of our current internet-based system that you can even ask such a thing! Haven't you ever heard of Heisenberg?

Do not betray that you are my competitor by asking for the tiniest, most petty changes to figures and legends (and references to your own work).

Please, have an ounce of self-respect and respect for the system. I know you won't, but I'm asking anyway. This is supposed to be an objective, disinterested review. Recuse yourself if you know I'm your competitor!

And as I've mentioned before and will mention again, please let's consider standardizing the format of scientific papers. Chemistry already does it, quite well I might add. Furthermore, let's get rid of papers altogether and go to a pure database format, where we just submit one figure with a legend and a method. Then we can blog day and night to discuss what it might all mean. What do you think about that, huh?

Finally, let's kill this ridiculous argument about whether funding a free database of research would take away from funding (research dollars). We're already spending god knows how much research money to pay for journal subscriptions and publishing fees. Why NIH has to support scientific journals, I will never understand. It's not like we make up such a huge chunk of the economy that the value of the US dollar would crash if we suddenly put all the scientific journals out of business. Would it? Seems unlikely to me.

To hell with it. I just hope that journals go the way of the dodo and I won't need the skill of writing sufficiently slimy, suck-ass rebuttal letters thanking the reviewers for their 'thoughtful' comments. It's a bunch of bullshit.

Sincerely,

Yours Truly, Dr. Sick-of-this system