Not good enough.

Is it just me? How come, in some fields, it's perfectly acceptable to put out absolute garbage?

I'm talking about everything from poorly formatted files, complete lack of replicates or error bars, ugly raw excel plots, to absolutely fabricated data visualizations with way too many variables and complicated crap thrown in just to look artistic.

If I brought anything remotely like that to my advisors at any time from grad school through postdoc, I would've been shot on sight.

I keep thinking about how my advisors had no fucking clue what to do with data in unusable file formats. Even if it was the default output from equipment we used all the time. And how come the companies that made that equipment somehow managed to stay in business, in spite of their complete lack of understanding of what their customers actually needed.

And if someone showed up to lab meeting with a graph of n=1 attempt with no replicates, any of my advisors would have just laughed and tell them to do it again in triplicate.

How, if I tried to make a figure with a different kind of graph, as a clever way to represent trends in the data, they would simply refuse to even try to understand what was going on.

But I see people doing this all the time in other fields, and when I point out how uninterpretable and useless it is, everyone looks at me like I'm the one who's being "too demanding".

I don't get why it's good enough for everyone else.

I can only assume that most people don't know any better, which means they don't appreciate that it's worth taking the time to develop tools to convert data into usable formats. Or to do an experiment correctly. Or to figure out how to represent data clearly and simply.

The other thing I keep thinking about is how, when I was struggling to do all of these things at an exceptional level to please my impossible advisors, they were rarely any help. But because of the way most people interpret authorship, they still get all the credit.

advisor horror stories re: publishing

As per the latest post over at FSP, here are some relevant posts re: publishing troubles with unreasonable advisers.

Publishing Overview

Slightly less amusing version of publishing overview

Before submitting:

Who did the work?

Writing nonsense

Fun with formatting

Babysitting

Extreme cases

Bias

Credit where credit is due

Emphasis

After you get the reviews:

Rebuttal Letter

Minor Adjustments

Your work is not your own

Dear NIH,

It is your party line that postdocs do not write RO1s.

This is completely false, and you must know it. However, no actions have been taken to officially recognize or correct the problem.

I am writing today to say that several times in the last month or so, I have heard this advice given to postdocs as if it is a respectable way to stay employed:

Offer to write an R01 in some PI's name, and in exchange if it gets funded, they will pay you off that R01.

But we have fellowships, you say? Let's be honest here. NRSA and K mechanisms are widely and inaccurately advertised. Most postdocs are not eligible for them, and they are in no case sufficient to cover the entire span of postdoctoral experience.

Instead, increasingly many postdocs are buying into this completely unethical approach as a way to continue doing science when their attempts at getting fellowships have failed, or when their fellowships have run out before they achieve job security.

What none of these often desperate postdocs seem to understand is that their participation in these kinds of schemes is not a guarantee of job security or advancement.

If anything, it undermines the whole concept of independent research in this country.

Furthermore, it strongly suggests that many PIs who are currently running labs perhaps do not fit their job description, and have no qualms about breaching ethics to continue the charade that they can fulfill their responsibilities.

And, these same PIs are encouraging others to pursue unethical behavior that fundamentally undermines what still passes for being a "system" of funding scientific research based on "merit".

Perhaps most importantly, it is generally not recognized that this is also evidence that postdocs do not need more "training".

In fact, in some ways it is the best evidence that postdocs are already independent enough to write entire R01s. It calls into question all the arbitrary distinctions between postdocs and junior PIs.

It demonstrates, in fact, that neither ability nor achievement earn advancement in this "system", since these ghost-author postdocs cannot list these R01s as their own achievements and instead they are credited to their PI's account!

Even in the cases where they are successful at getting funded, these postdoc ghost-authors remain vastly underpaid and abused, as they serve out their time being paid by these R01s.

And the cycle will perpetuate itself, because the more postdocs agree to do this, the more it will become expected.

Perhaps most frightening is the twisted thinking that follows from this kind of reward system. Some of these postdocs actually believe that their ideas are only reviewed fairly when they propose them under their PIs name, rather than their own.

In fact, I'm sure you know that the truth is probably the opposite, that bad ideas are seen for what they are when proposed by a junior person, but taken on faith when proposed by someone with an "established track record".

Do you understand what that shows about the peer review system? Do you understand what this kind of thinking does to our future scientists, who should be objective about their work and whose work should be reviewed objectively?

NIH, you must change your policies on who can write grants and require promotions to go along with them. You must overhaul current granting mechanisms. You must work with universities to develop reasonable job titles and advancement policies for scientists in this country, and you must to enforce them at the university and funding award levels.

Sincerely,

MsPhD

Your work is not your own.

Anthony Bourdain is riding a horse in a fox hunt on tv in the background as I write this, and it seems very appropriate for this post. Anthony basically says that the idea of an old-fashioned fox hunt is to chase the fox around until it's cornered into a hole, and then leave it completely freaked out.

-----

So today I went to see my new therapist.

I gave her the short (less than 1 hour) version of some of the things that have happened leading up to my current crisis of wondering just how much soul I have to sell to get a job around here.

In short: some of the things I told her made her look like the back of her head was going to blow off.

As in, if forced to deal with some of the things I've dealt with, her head would literally explode.

At the end of our session, she said she learned a few things from me about how science really works.

Really? I guess if I leave science having educated a few people about the reality of scientific research, that's a contribution to society... of some sort.

[Still thinking about writing that tell-all book, when all else fails. It would include edited versions of blog posts. If nothing else, I might get some, I don't know, revenge?

Damn that would be a fun way to burn bridges. ]

Interestingly, she said that much of what I've experienced from my "colleagues" both in my own lab and when trying to publish my work "could be considered hazing".

Hazing. Well yeah that does describe it pretty well. Good to have a word for it, I guess, and some validation of my perception that it was, you know, unnecessary and brutal.

It calls to mind that quote from someone about how senior scientists are "eating their young."

You biologists out there know that this happens. Rats and mice eat their offspring quite often in the lab; frogs eat their own fertilized eggs, etc. So you might not think about how fucked up it is.

Just think about that analogy in all its grisly glory for a moment. Parents picking their children's cartilage out of their teeth.

That's what PIs do to their postdocs.

Just think, why do we let them do this to us?

That's your cartilage. Those are my bones they're using to pick their teeth.

Speaking of young, my new therapist was also surprised to hear about this concept that postdocs nowadays are usually accused of not having our own ideas or enough independence from their advisors, but especially women postdocs.

She was trying to suggest that I should try to be my advisor's best collaborator, instead of viewing it as a soon-to-be competitive relationship. I was explaining that I still don't trust my advisor, that I really think my advisor would like nothing more than for me to quit science, because then my project ... is no longer my project.

Then I explained that, even if that weren't a major concern, if I did get a job I wouldn't want to collaborate with my manipulative, dishonest boss... also because continuing to publish with one's former advisor doesn't really count towards helping you get tenure since it makes you look anything but independent.

But I was thinking again about this idea of owning your work.

My project was my idea. My advisor not only did not come up with it, my advisor did not support it. Did not believe it. Has fought me every step of the way... until now. Now my advisor believes me.

Know what that means? Say it with me, kids:

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you...
... then they say it was their idea."

The idea of other people working on it, and of my advisor getting credit for it, makes me want to shoot myself in the head.

(I'm in favor of gun laws, because if I had a gun I would have shot myself a long time ago.)

Today I also happened to get confirmation that my paranoias are, so far as I've been able to learn, right on target. Totally unprompted, one of the postdocs volunteered to me that our advisor basically planned to have him work on ... aspects of my project when I leave.

Yep. I knew that. But I was kind of hoping I was just being paranoid.

So I'm feeling like the whole "crazy like a fox" thing is really not a good state of mind to be in. Or else I'm doing it wrong. Is there a better way to hide in a hole and freak out than I'm doing right now?

Hunker down.

It's funny how these things happen all at once.

I had some major shit going on when 9/11 happened. It lent an even stranger perspective to the already-nightmarish quality of my life at the time.

Now I'm seriously wondering about switching careers and how I'll make a living, not to mention giving up on what I've been working so hard for, and look what happens to the stock market.

My timing, as usual, is perfect.

So I woke up this morning with the clock-radio blaring about the latest drop, and I find myself grateful that I have, at least for the moment, even a piddily salary coming in. At least for a few more months, anyway.

Then I was thinking about some of my friends and other people in my lab.

And I realized, it could be a lot worse for me. I should be grateful.

I could have a mortgage or a house that I needed to sell. Thankfully, I don't.

I could be leaving now, instead of later. At least I have a little hope that things with the market might get better (?) before the shit really hits the fan in terms of my employment options.

I could be one of the grad students who is about to defend, but has not yet found a postdoc position (or an industry position, good luck with that).

I could be my friend who is already unemployed (whether I helped her with her interview or not was, as I suspected, irrelevant).

I could be my friend clutching a Canadian passport and talking about how her industry job is in such a specialized niche, she's going to have to get out soon before her company goes under. She's ready to run in a split second if McCain gets elected.

At least what I have on my side right now is: uncertainty.

Which in some ways, means I still have lots of possibilities. At least my fate is, at least not yet decided.

It's not clear what I should do, and that was kind of driving me crazy. So it actually makes me feel a little better than the rest of the country is also in a panic!

More consolation: if I fail now, I can blame it on the circumstances. Who's to say that, even if I had done everything perfectly, this same series of events wouldn't still have torpedoed my chances?

So I find it oddly comforting that the world is slipping on its axis.

It's hard not to picture the doomsday scenarios. The ones where our landlord suddenly decides to kick us out, but we can't sell any of the stuff we thought was at least worth a little money, because nobody is buying anything, so we have to leave it out on the street. What a waste that would be. Then we would have to leave, with nothing more than we can carry.

In these scenarios, the world turns black and white, like old movies.

Or as a friend put it, in the worst possible case, we're a whole generation of people who will have to move back into our parents' basements.

We'll have to do this either because we have no savings and lost our jobs, or because our parents' retirement savings are worthless, or both.

Won't it be fun, to hunker down with our families? You know how I love my family!

So I've got that "waiting for the other shoe to drop" feeling, which is kind of silly since I think I've been kicked in the head enough lately.

Now I'm expecting that any one of the following would really seal our fate:

a) a pandemic, like the bird flu in Germany jumping from chickens and ducks to humans

b) another hurricane or other natural disaster that costs the country a fortune and sends more people scrambling for a place to live

c) someone to attack the US while we're clearly not ready to respond

In that last scenario, I picture myself and mrphd having to join the Army.

Do you think they'd give me lasik surgery? That would make me so much more useful, at least in a military capacity.

Another shitty day, and I still want to quit.

This morning in the shower I had all kinds of ideas for things to blog about, but now I can't remember what they were.

But here I am at work and I'm really tempted to just grab my purse, get in my car, and never come back. I don't care about abandoning my computer or all the hard work I've done here. I want to go somewhere tropical, assume a new identity, and work as a bartender. Nothing that has to do with science whatsoever.

I have lists of things I "should" be doing, but again today I'm flattened by the cumulative effect of feeling - nay, knowing - that nobody notices or cares what I do, that none of this suffering seems to add up to anything, that it has been getting worse and not better for a while now, and I can only expect more of the same with a very small chance of future improvement.

Nevermind that I actually made some progress on writing yesterday. Nevermind that I'm supposed to get excited about results, about reading other people's publications, about new ideas. It's not enough when it's in a vacuum.

It's definitely sucking the life out of me.

Except for one or two people, at this point my family and even my friends would rather see me quit. I love that they care more about me as a person than about, you know, anything I might contribute to science, but in a way that's like a vote of no confidence.

All I really need is someone who actually cares about my results to say, "But you can't quit now! We really need your contributions!"

I definitely don't hear that often enough.

You're never too old to be greedy for credit.

Email on Mondays always sucks.

People who said they'd do certain things didn't do them, or in some cases completely canceled their plans to do them at all, ever.

Other people are emailing to ask why certain things haven't gotten done yet, but you know damn well it's because of the other people who just emailed to say they can't/won't follow through on what they promised.

Meanwhile I'm getting emails asking for volunteers to do things I've already done, so I have to re-send old emails reminding everyone that I've done them and that we need to move on and do all the other things on our lists.

You know, the usual.

But the crowning moment of the day was this:

In editing a very rough draft of a manuscript, my advisor noted where I had put "Schmo, J. 200x" as the reference instead of "Schmo, J and Advisor, Greedy 200x".

Joe Schmo had not published any other manuscripts that year, so I thought this was kind of a moot point, and instead a rather hilarious show of what sorts of things Advisor actually notices.

Nevermind that Advisor is incredibly accomplished, tenured, very well respected and not hurting for funding or papers.

I found this especially funny since the correct citation is actually "Schmo, J. et al. 200x" and Advisor's name would not appear at all when it is listed as such.