Building confidence

In response to a comment from 2nd year physics grad student Becky:

Random question - You have very good confidence in your abilities. Some of your commenters seem to take offense at this, but I think it's a highly useful trait to have as a scientist.

I, on the other hand, feel like a moron everyday. How did you develop such a positive attitude about yourself?

Here are my thoughts on this. But I'm going to start with instructions to mentors, and then move onto instructions for students.

3 things for mentors to do:

1. Encourage small accomplishments early and often

The people who trained me early on showed me how to do everything. They were patient with letting me practice until I got things right, but they supervised me until that happened. And then they said, "Just like that. Good job."

Ahh.

It doesn't take that much to see if the student is following directions and executing steps correctly, but it really helps to give that confirmation and validation that the effort is appreciated and noticed.

2. Give independence in gradually increasing amounts

I was allowed to be pretty independent in the lab pretty early on. I loved this about lab.

I grew up with very little personal freedom and really controlling parents. According to my parents, I was Stupid, I was Lazy, I was Ugly, I was Fat, etc. I was always scrambling trying to please them, which I would later realize was impossible anyway.

In school, I was Student. It was a role we all played. Show up, take notes, maybe ask a question if you're feeling brave. Go home, do homework, pass tests. Check.

In lab, I was suddenly Person. I was treated more like an adult than ever before, and I was amazed. I could come in, do my thing, maybe show someone my results before I left, maybe even get a "Good job!" and then go home. Eventually I would finish whatever I was doing and be taught a new task.

I liked the idea that eventually I would learn enough tasks to be able to work longer and longer without having to ask anyone anything.

I realized later that this was probably pretty unusual. I worked in small labs and big labs, but the people who trained me were, with no exceptions I can think of, both remarkably rigorous and extremely generous with their time.

Nowadays, I don't see this very often. I regularly see poorly trained postdocs training students poorly; I regularly see grad students flailing in the wind because they have no one to ask and no idea what they're doing. It's no wonder grad students lack confidence in that kind of environment.

Trust me when I tell you, the good labs are NOT like that. They're hard to find, though.

3. Quit biting their heads off

Recently, I've been involved in mentoring students in other labs. These students find me, and maybe they don't even tell their advisor I've been helping them out. In every single case, at some point their advisor blows up at them.

The reasons an advisor might yell at a student include but are not limited to:

-advisor is crazy/stressed out and it has nothing to do with the student

-advisor made a mistake but would rather lash out than admit it

-student was flaky (irresponsible and/or passive-aggressive rebellion)

-student was willfully disobedient (some PIs can deal with this when it is justified; some can't no matter what the reason)

-student made a mistake on something important

But it's really only the last one that I want to talk about today.

Students often make one major mistake: they don't always ask for help. This pisses us older folks off, because we interpret it as meaning any or all of the following:

-student is arrogant and doesn't think we know anything worthwhile

-student is embarrassed to be asking, which means we're too intimidating (not a good thing, we blame ourselves when this happens)

-student is so clueless that they don't even know to ask, which means we've been sucky mentors (not a good thing, we blame ourselves when this happens)

Sometimes it's really really hard to keep your calm when a student makes an otherwise totally avoidable mistake. Especially if they could have asked you and didn't, and you're not sure why.

However. In our role as mentors, we have to recognize that Every. Single. Time. you blow up at a student, especially a new student, it is probably our own fault.

I'll say that again. It's YOUR fault, mentors. YOU NEED TO KEEP YOUR CALM. They're just students, they can't really be expected to know as much as you. Get it?

Now, having said that, I've had students who were such bleeping hothouse flowers they couldn't take any kind of criticism. No matter how gently put, if I told them they did something wrong or needed to do something over again, they would just freeze up.

I've tried "Here, you want to avoid that because of XYZ, try it this way." Nope, too sensitive for that.

Or, "Okay, so that's not quite right, next time I'll show you what I want you to do differently." Nope, too sensitive for that too.

You know, they tend to be the straight-A types. I don't know what to do with them. I tend to think science is not the place for people who can't deal with making mistakes and getting honest feedback on their performance.

3 things for students to do:

1. Buck up, cowgirl

If you're not used to criticism, get used to it. Those of us who played on sports teams or did any kind of competitive performing arts are used to being given feedback with few frills attached.

The trick is, and I'm going to say this in all caps, IT'S NOT PERSONAL.

Okay? Get it? It's about your work, it's not about you. We're not saying you're not good enough, we're saying "Here's how you do it."

It's instruction, it's feedback, it's not that we think you're stupid or incapable.

The good mentors know that you can't possibly know these things unless we teach you, show you, and let you practice and ask questions. That's our job. Your job is to keep trying until you get it right. Even if we tell you over and over all the little ways you can improve. We really do want to see you succeed at everything you do. But we understand that research involves an awful lot of falling on your face. All of us were grad students once, too.

2. If you're not sure, Look it up, and Then Ask

Eventually, we want you to get to the point where you can look things up and then decide for yourself whether the answers you find in the literature or via google make any sense or not. Half the time, they're probably wrong. But by the time you're 2 years into grad school, you should be able to look things up on your own without too much effort (thank you, internet).

If for some reason you can't find what you need in the lab protocol book or on the internet, or if what you find there makes no sense, then ask us.

If you don't take notes, or don't try to look things up, or don't ask in an intelligent way ("Hey, I'm trying to do X, I'm not sure how to do Y, would you have time to show me? When would be a good time?") eventually we will get annoyed with your laziness and disrespect and we will treat you the same way in return.

Some of us will give you references instead of helping you because we can't stand talking to disrespectful, ungrateful students.

Others will just plain talk down to you. There are two ways of dealing with those types.

1) Look things up on your own (and find other people to ask)
2) Get upset.

I recommend choice #1. People still talk to me like I'm an idiot on a regular basis. And eventually I realized that those types talk to everyone that way. I realized it's not me, it's them. Use this as your mantra when you're being treated like a moron.

Note: students usually feel like morons when they're treated like morons. It may have nothing whatsoever to do with your actual abilities and everything to do with the people around you being jerks.

3. Whatever you do, don't guess

Nothing pisses us off more than when students are too lazy to either look things up or ask.

The central principle of research, as far as I can tell, is knowing what you know and what you don't knowm, and then figuring out how to fill in what you don't know.

This is true at all levels. PIs regularly make assumptions about what we know, and we're wrong All. The Time. The same is true for students. You might think you know more than you do, but more often than not, students think they know nothing. You are not alone in feeling that way.

I always say it's like learning a foreign language. At the beginning, you work on comprehension. You can read the words, you know what they mean. You hear the words, you know what they mean. But you're shy about speaking the language yourself. You don't have the accent. It's harder to use it than to understand it.

So yeah, it's rough at first, doing your own research independently. You will make mistakes. You will feel uncertain. Probably for a long time. That's OK. Your data should be telling you if you're on the right track.

If nothing is working, it helps to find people to mentor you (not in the vague MentorNet sense of the word). I mean people who are willing to answer your day-to-day questions about how to do things.

Later on, even if my questions were just, "I'm going to try this now, do you think it will work?" knowing full well that their answers might have no correlation with the outcome.

It still gave me more confidence, just to have said out loud "I'm going to try this now." And sometimes I got good advice that way before I made stupid mistakes. As you go along, you'll find the ratio of times they're right: times you're right shifts. At the beginning, they're usually right and you're usually wrong. By the end, you'll be right more often than they are.

I was lucky that I had people like this for most of my career, who were willing to let me bounce ideas off them, and willing to admit it when I was right (though not always).

When I reached the end of grad school and I didn't have anyone to help me in the lab, I realized I didn't need it anymore. Not in that lab, anyway, where I actually knew how to do everything our lab did (!). Sometimes you don't realize this until a new person joins and you start seeing them making all the same mistakes you made.

And if you become a postdoc, or start a new job, or a new project, the cycle starts over again. You ask stupid questions for a while, you feel bad having to ask but now you know it's part of the process. And then you go do some experiments on your own. Training wheels are off.

Eventually, you realize that when you're really doing research, NO ONE KNOWS THE RIGHT ANSWER. There an incredible freedom in that. All you can do, all anyone can do, is come up with a hypothesis, and then test it. But that's not the same as guessing.

You'll know you're there when you can design, execute and interpret experiments on your own. Even if someone tells you, before you even start doing it, that you're doing it all wrong. When you do it anyway, that's confidence. Even if you're not always right. Do the test.

Where's my whistle?

This has been a week of uh-ohs.

The refrain that makes me want to hurl, because I've heard it multiple times from different people:

Uh oh, that gel from your collaborator seems to be completely fake

Luckily, none of these cases have affected me directly (yet?), but I have been thinking again about this question of what do you do when you suspect dishonesty in science.

It also got me thinking about how this is probably also contributing to why I'm not appreciated.

Yes, I've said it before and I'll say it again: I really am that good. But I sometimes wonder if the reason most people don't know real expertise when they see it is because they're willing to cut corners and falsify results, so they just assume I'm doing it too?

I'm tired of being treated like I'm mediocre, when at least I know my results are real, and I've had to watch several cases of liars getting High Impact papers and faculty positions.

But there is nothing I can do about it in the absence of hard proof or a confession that they spiked their samples, that the PI pressured them into producing the expected answers, etc.

I don't know what to do in these situations. It's the rare PI who will not get defensive if you even hint that maybe they didn't notice something fishy about that paper their favorite postdoc published last year.

And yet, I'm watching generation after generation of grad students get completely screwed, being made to feel inept when they can't reproduce data that probably never existed in the first place.

So I have to wonder, seriously, if I know a handful of these phonies are now professors, how many are there total? Are there more now than there were before? Will they ever get caught? Why do we tolerate it? How come nobody seems to know??

I also know a few people who left science during or after grad school when their PIs refused to admit that their new data invalidated the old, obviously massaged evidence published by past postdocs. They said they couldn't win, research wasn't what they thought it was, and went off to do other things.

I worry that unless we come up with a mechanism, maybe some kind of anonymous hotline, all of us trusting, honest souls will end up leaving out of sheer disgust, and there won't be any real science left.

And yet, the idea of being able to report people anonymously means you open up the possibility for false accusations. It's too 1984 for me, kids reporting their parents during the Cultural Revolution in China. It could be a whole new form of nastiness. Would that really be worth it?

Obviously, this is why we don't have The Truthiness Police. But I'm worried that science is hemorrhaging from being undercut by those who make it a game of ambition, while laughing at the noble pursuit of excellence.

Stupidity vs. Dishonesty

Saw this as an interesting dichotomy posed by Janka over in the comments at a recent post by FSP.

It was posed in reference to a question about rules and regulations, and what's really unethical if the rules make no sense.

But it got me thinking about certain quandaries I have experienced in the lab, where I have to watch sloppy science going on all around me and I'm not always sure how much anyone is aware that they're juggling hand grenades.

I have made it my policy to steer clear, as much as possible, of things that I think are stupid, especially if I think they could lead me into scenarios where I would have to confront my PI about past published potential dishonesties.

In general, the scenario comes down like this:

PI suggests I try a procedure that Other Postdoc has used recently (Other Postdoc may be in my lab or in other lab, this has happened both ways).

I get the protocol and maybe ask Other Postdoc a few questions. I go off on my own and do a little reading and run a few controls to make sure things are working before I try the full-scale experiment.

Then things get hairy.

I get some results that are puzzling. They do not fit what Other Postdoc has published. I do some more reading and then I get really concerned.

In some cases, I have told PI and we have confronted Other Postdoc. Sometimes, the answers do not clearly distinguish between Stupidity vs. Dishonesty, and if anything only serve to make the whole incident more alarming.

Generally, if it were up to me, I would probably abandon said protocol at this point and do something else. I have fallen into this trap before of wasting time on uninterpretable methods, and I can usually smell them from far away.

However, sometimes I am forced to use said protocol, and PI has some long rationalization for why it's okay.

I usually go a little further and rationalize to myself that it's okay so long as we don't overstate our findings, and mention the caveats if/when we ever present this work in public.

But if I were the PI and I had published work like this, I would be losing sleep. A lot of it. I would be thinking hard about retracting papers and whether I would have to refuse to ever write another recommendation letter for this person in the future.

So I guess my question is this: isn't it always stupid to be dishonest? Or is it worth it in the long run to split hairs on hairy experiments?

Maybe I won't know if I never get to see what happens in the long run. Because when it comes to rules and regulations that make no sense, it's clear that it's often smarter to be dishonest, especially if you're smart enough to know which rules are enforced and which are not.

I feel like this dichotomy is one of the major weaknesses that will eventually bring science down if nothing changes.

Jump in the water*

Yesterday I was talking to someone about the Eureka! myth of doing science, and how most people seem to misunderstand where great scientific ideas actually come from.

The person I was talking to was a scientist and hadn't heard of Archimedes. And I thought if he didn't know the little story about the bathtub, I must have sounded like I was making it up. So if you don't know what I'm talking about, go click on the link and read the wikipedia entry first.

I've realized this particular myth, the idea that someone is just struck by a lightning bolt of an idea out of nowhere, is a major reason why students don't want to study science. Perhaps more relevant to this blog: it's a major reason why a lot of postdocs freak out and quit.

I was astonished the other day to notice how many women in science "alternative" careers cite this as their biggest reason for going into other kinds of jobs. And how these women are often pointed to as role models. Why? Because it's so empowering that they found something they love, and they've been successful doing these other kinds of things.

But their explanation for why they left leaves me feeling flat. They all say it was the fear that they could not come up with their own ideas out of thin air.

How many people go into science because they got good grades in science classes? Presumably somebody encouraged them. And yet, we must be teaching science all wrong if people are going into it thinking that eventually, if they just get good grades long enough, they'll have a Eureka moment.

Well dear readers, some of you know that this is not how it works, but I bet some of the rest of you are terrified that when it comes your turn to devise projects and write grants, you won't be creative enough. I say that because I've been hearing this refrain a lot lately as an excuse for leaving academic research. I'm just not creative enough.

What? Tell me you're sick of the poor salary, of being treated like dirt, of all the politics and the ethical lapses. Don't tell me you're beating up on yourself. That's a terrible thing for a role model to be doing!

So I'm writing this little post today about another way to come up with ideas. It's a huge secret, but I'm going to write it here on the internet where everything is true and widely believed. Right?

Ready? Here it is. The big secret to having ideas in science:

Do some experiments.

Yep, that's it.

Personally, most of my best ideas come while I'm doing experiments. Even if they're stupid experiments that were poorly conceived or poorly executed, usually in the course of a pilot run or a few, I will see things that give me ideas about what can be improved. Or I will see some weird thing that had nothing to do with the experiment I was working on, that will give me ideas for much better experiments, or even whole projects.

So when I'm really stuck, I do an experiment. Even if I think it won't work in a million years. I'm of the mind that the crazier the experiment, the more ideas you'll get along the way, but I'm sure there are people who meditate while doing the same old thing they've done before. Sometimes that works too. Sometimes I have ideas while I'm doing the boring part of making samples, maybe because my hands are busy and I'm usually talking to myself while I'm doing it.

Anyway, that is my little plug for a different way of coming up with ideas. You don't have to read a book, or smoke a pipe, and say Aha! I think I've got it!

That's for old guys with beards and beer bellies and British accents (because it just sounds better with a British accent).





*obscure reference: In this case, the idea for the title comes from a lyric in a Peter Gabriel song, which coincidentally you might know (if you saw the new Harry Potter film) is based on a fable that is being made into a Disney cartoon movie (there was a trailer for it at Harry Potter, is where I was going with that). Pretty far from the more vulgar analogy, if you know what I mean.

Response to comments on response to comments.

This is fun recursive... well anyway.

Alicia- Absolutely there are other problems besides the boys' club, but there are problems like that in most jobs, aren't there? And yet, most of my friends in other careers are shocked at how sexist science is. I was just talking to another person the other day who was having trouble wrapping their head around the idea that, while the experiments are hard already, there's all this other crap on top. Science has a reputation for being elite, but sexism and harassment are the stuff of other jobs, the kind of thing you see in movies like North Country. So it's hard for people to imagine that these things go on in science too.

Anon 2:30 said: Is this the problem, or is it academics? If the problem is self-sabotage, then that will follow you (I have a passing familiarity...). If it's the academics/science/the system of doing the science, then perhaps getting out and do something that doesn't make you miserable makes sense.

Does walking away from academia freak you out because it's losing who you are, or because the alternatives are scary? I just did this "exercise" recently in a fit of pique; the message clearly was I'd be losing an integral part of who I am if I walked away.

I guess that's the point. I really suspect it will follow me even if I left science.

Would I be losing who I am. Well yeah I guess it has become integral, even if it wasn't before. And yes the alternatives are scary. I think in some ways even if I stopped doing science, I would never stop thinking the way I think now, which is as a scientist. But I don't know.

Anon 4:43 said: Don't be hard on yourself for not having had a crystal ball.

Thanks. This is something I am trying to learn, how to not be kicking myself constantly. Especially with comments like the one above yours.

Thinkerbell,

Thanks for the advice. I took some personality tests and was really amused at the results. Scientist and Professor are listed as among the handful of most common preferred jobs for someone of my Type, but it also did a great job of profiling some of my problematic tendencies, like trying to please other people before myself (my parents, my advisers). Some of the other options made more sense to me than others (writer). I am still thinking about what this means. It does make me feel a little better about my choices thus far, or the other options I might choose instead, even if it's just a statistical probability that I'm not completely on the wrong track.

Helen,

I guess one of the things I expected was to have someone ask me questions in different ways... like my best friend used to do. The truth is, I'm sort of trying to replace her with therapy, which is ridiculous. But I'm so broken-hearted at how we've grown apart, I don't know what else to do. She's the one who got me through grad school, and now I just feel completely adrift, not having anyone like her to talk to.

Anon 3:59 AM,

Yeah, I guess if I really were absolutely miserable I would want to do that. Sometimes I am. Other times I get into what I'm doing and think, "You know, I really like this job." Starting something new really requires a lot of energy and commitment. I don't think a career counselor can give me that if I don't have it.

Anon 9:19,

You're suggesting on the one hand that there isn't a ladder and it's not due to experience, but then you compare it to quantum tunneling and "crashing through" by the number of times you crash into the barrier.

I liked the suggestion that there is no ladder, and I think that's partly true. But to imply that there's no information to convey, kind of makes no sense if as you say, it's due to banging your head against the wall enough times to eventually break through the "barrier"- which in many ways sounds a lot like the glass ceiling to me.

I like that your analogy includes the statistical component, that's very apt. But if nothing else, there should be something learned (at least the way I think about the world and life in general) from each and every bang on the head you receive.

One of the things that infuriates me sometimes about scientists is that we should be the MOST observant, the most thoughtful people. And sometimes we're the least, or at least the least able to communicate what we see.

I've been thinking a lot about our culture of secrecy. I had a long conversation with a friend the other day about sexism and how part of the problem is that most people don't really know how prevalent it is. They think it went away in the 60s with the miniskirts. But part of the reason everyone thinks that is because we act like it's uncouth to talk about the things that happen to us. And we do that because we're still always blaming the victims, saying she asked for it by the way she dresses or how she talks. And that's a bunch of bullshit.

The same is true for unethical shit in science. Most people do NOT want to talk about it in the open, it's gossipy water cooler talk that nobody wants to confirm or condemn, even when we should.

So I guess that's my complaint about the "ladder" business. Maybe there's not a ladder per se, but we have a hypothesis that there's a ladder and we should be willing to share our observations that support what the ladder might look like.

JaneB,

Yes, I did look into my alma mater's career site, but it wasn't very helpful. Most of the events they have that would be very useful are held near the school, which is not near where I live now. Some of the online resources are good, but they're mostly geared toward positions for people with a bachelor's degree, or people looking for their very first job straight out of college.

And most of them are making more money than me! Ha!

Re: the deadline idea, it just doesn't work for me. I keep setting deadlines and they keep getting pushed back. And in a way I'm glad for that, I guess, in the sense that this year I've finally made some noticeable progress where I hadn't before. If I had quit last year, I would have missed all of that.

I guess I hope when I'm really done, I'll know. I read this article by Ruth Ley this week in Science, and while I have a LOT of issues with using her as an example of success (followed her husband to do a second postdoc and thinks she's broken a lot of rules? HA!), one of the things she wrote that really rang true for me was this part:

This led to nagging self-doubt: Did I even want a tenure-track job? Given how much time I spent turning over that question in my mind and boring the people around me with my internal debate, I should have realized that I really did want it.

By that measure, given how much time, yes of course I really did want it. Moving on to not wanting it, however, vs. not being able to have it, is harder and taking longer than I thought. I guess if I got kicked out tomorrow, I would be fine. If I got kicked out in six months, is that any better or worse? I don't know. But my days are numbered, whether I want that or not. At the moment I'm just trying to do what Gnarls Barkley says, moving on, and I'm prepared to go it alone.

scicurious said: it was a HUGE comfort just to know that they were there

Absolutely. Just looking into other kinds of positions makes me feel less trapped and less out-on-a-dead-end-limb, which is really important right now for my state of mind. Great advice to anyone who is in the same boat- know what your options really are before you convince yourself you don't have any.

Memory tricks.

This morning I was thinking about what happened yesterday with Permadoc and how, when nothing is written down, everyone remembers events differently.

My PI has an interesting habit of memory, which I don't fully understand. My impression is that it's just more convenient to remember some things than others.

It's very convenient to blame having a poor memory when "I don't remember" actually means:

I disagreed/disapproved and therefore disregarded that [statement/event/publication/person].

I find myself wondering whether I should have been a journalist. I seem to have a better memory for things people say to me than they do themselves.

But my memory plays tricks on me, too.

Last week I busted my ass doing this one experiment a few times trying to improve the conditions.

While I was collecting the data I thought it didn't really work as well as I would have liked, and I might not be able to conclude much from it.

But then I forced myself, a few days later, to go over it and decide just how well it worked and what I should do differently next time.

And then I realized maybe it worked better than I thought. But part of me had trouble letting go of my earlier impression - my memory - that it looked awful.

The truth is, I was just in a bad mood while I was doing the experiment, and that carried over to my interpretation of it.

This doesn't happen to me all that often, and in fact more often it's the other way around. Sometimes I'm overjoyed because I thought an experiment worked really well, but when I go back to re-examine the data, I decide it's not that great and I was just happy that it worked at all, because my expectations were set low, and the overall effect is to elevate my impression of the outcome.

I see this all the time with supervisors, too. PI is in a bad mood, or doesn't like the person who did the experiment, and that carries over to a very subjective impression of the experiment itself.

And months later, what will PI remember about the result? Just that the feeling associated with it was "bad".

Conversely, crappy data presented by PI's favorite postdoc gets a thumbs-up, but if the rest of us did an experiment the same way, we're criticized for our sloppy methods and poor execution.

And years later, PI will think that anything this former postdoc did must be correct and very carefully done, when in fact past performance suggests that's probably not a fair assessment.

It makes me sad that scientists can't be more objective. Sort of like my friend whom I mentioned yesterday, who seems to think it's fine for people to discriminate against her but not me. What?? She can't be objective about what she deserves.

I have to keep my promise to myself, and to my data, that I will try not to be too hard on us.

Drinking to excess is frowned upon on Mondays.

But I might do it anyway.

What I need right now is a good, hard black out. I've never blacked out, ever, and I think I'm long overdue.

Sort of like a hard reboot. So what if some of the hard drive gets wiped? There are a few things in my memory banks that I could do without.

As justification for alcohol on a weekday, let's see, which was more annoying today?

1. Stupid comments from people saying that I'm too whiny.

Check.

Fuck off, people. It's a blog. How sad is your life that you're writing a comment here saying I sound whiny? Don't you have anything better to do?

2. Stupid questions at work.

Not too many of those today, actually. Phew. What a relief. Only one or two.

3. Stupid emails from people sending me shitty-ass data and saying it looks great.

Check. Haven't responded to those yet. Must drink first and get my Constructive Feedback hat on (aka beer goggles for data).

4. Not having enough time to deal with very basic things in my personal life.

Check.

Still need to figure out latest health insurance changes nonsense; still have not dealt with car (see several blog posts over the last several months, car will probably blow up before I do anything about it).

5. News that my 'peers' who lack even basic pipetting skills are somehow careening past me on the roller rink of jobs.

Check.

Yeah, that one really deserves a drink. I soooo wish I could blog more details about that, because it's a great testament to black comedy, the things I've seen these people do in lab and still get high impact papers. In-fucking-credible.

And with that happy thought, I'm outta here for the day. Fuck off, y'all.

Response to comment.

Two posts ago, Dr. Feelg00d writes:

Actually, I mean smarter than you as it relates to the technical aspects of getting your experiment to work. Not the actual idea. I am plenty smart for that, and I am sure you are too. But I hate re-inventing the wheel for technical hurdles. Often when you find someone who doesnt help, you just need to find someone better. Its tough, but its worth the legwork. Of course, you have to know enough to know what you dont know (that make sense?).

Dr.Feelg00d,

Yes, that's what I mean when I say I can sometimes get useful information from other people for technical aspects.

But usually it's a bit of a stretch, e.g. something they use for a totally different application.

It often takes explaining from me, for them to understand why I want to try what they're doing, because they can't see how I'm going to apply it.

It's pretty tiring. But I try to be patient about it.

The truth is, they don't need to know, and I don't really care if they understand. But sometimes they have a little extra insight that they wouldn't share unless I share what I'm doing...

But yes, I think the trick is to figure out where your weak spots are, figure out whose strength that is, and then get them to help you.

I'm reasonably good at that, but one of my biggest problems lately is taking no for an answer when I shouldn't.

This is a bit of a tangent but I swear it's relevant.

I have run into some problems where our lab has published things that I need. (That was part of why I joined the lab, natch.)

But when I ask for these things, I'm told someone has to help me find them (in the freezer, or the basement, or wherever).

And when I find that person who supposedly knows, they say

yeah, it doesn't really exist anymore

or worse (and never on the record): yeah, that never really worked the way we said it did.

It's not clear to me whether PI really knows this and wants to remain in denial, or just thinks I'm making it up, or both...

PI doesn't want to know.

I've tried confrontation, I've tried hinting and reminding, but mostly I just get disapproving looks from PI and the world, when I'm not doing the obvious experiments that our lab has published before.

Am I supposed to reinvent that particular wheel? (What if it can't ever exist and I already know that?)

So when the answer is some kind of hand-waving, I don't want to know, because PI doesn't want to know.

My strategy of late has been to avoid, wherever possible, wasting my time on these kinds of things.

For better or worse, I've also adopted this strategy with other people (outside our lab). If they don't respond, or send me something that doesn't work and THEN don't respond, I don't want to know.

Because the obvious corollary is, they've done all their experiments this way, and don't see anything wrong with it.

Oh, god. I really didn't want to know that!

I never used to think this way, so I'm trying to get over it and go back to my Innocent Hopeful act: ask dumb questions when things don't work (e.g. pretend I'm screwing it up even when I'm pretty sure I'm not).

This is a double-edged sword for everyone, but especially for women. But it often works (at least in the short term).

But one of the most popular methods (maybe even the Official University Policy?) is to just avoid answering questions, or blame someone above you for making equipment or facilities inaccessible because of security concerns, or whatever.

Yeah, we can't give you a key, because then we'd have to give everyone a key, so even though it's sitting unused all weekend and you know how to use it, we can't let you use it so you'll have to wait until during the week, when it's booked solid for months, because someone has to be here when you're here and everyone has to wait and make an appointment...

Yeah, I love this. Science at its fastest and most efficient!

Let's cure cancer and HIV and Alzheimer's and MS! But not yet. Maybe next week.

Other times they don't tell you this up front, they just stall by not returning email or phone calls.

Repeatedly.

I don't remember having this problem when I was a grad student. Maybe I was just more intrepid and wouldn't take no for an answer? I was pretty good at getting keys back then.

I think what sets the Successful (note that I didn't say "the best") apart from The Rest is the ability to get anyone and everyone to help you and be happy about it.

Where I did my PhD, most people were reasonably helpful when that was their job (and often, even when it wasn't).

I think it's fair to say I wasn't any cuter or nicer than I am now. So I doubt that's the main difference in why I got so much help then and have so much trouble getting help now.

Admittedly, my project now is a lot harder, so maybe I need more than I did then? Maybe not, since I also know a lot more now-?

Where I've been doing my postdoc, most people are resentful when I ask them, no matter how nicely, to do their jobs.

I often find myself getting told nastily

you're the only one who wants that

and

EVERYONE ELSE is content with the [inferior product, service or equipment].

I am SO tired of this.

I'm as cheap as the next person, but I've tried the cheapest thing and found it didn't work, and I've worked my way up the quality ladder until I found something that works consistently. I'd rather not waste my time.

Oddly, very few people seem to know this.

There is nothing for which I'd say "Let's just get the most expensive thing just because it's expensive!"

But I'd also NEVER say "Let's get the cheapest thing even though we know it only works half the time!"

WTF???

I am so tired of getting punished for having high standards.

One of my biggest fears lately is that I'm just working in a place that is not good enough in that regard.

I'd prefer to be the dumbest one in the room and just soak up information constantly.

Lately I feel like maybe I've gotten all I can out of my current situation, and at this point I'm just sucking air.

Punishment and reward.

Today, I am gearing up to do some painful science stuff.

It is going to suck, but I am going to make myself do it, because I can't put it off any longer.

It's not repetitive stress injury painful, it's mentally and emotionally painful.

It's philosophically, morally painful to be forced to slog through some incredibly horrible science and document everything that's wrong with it.

I didn't make it to the gym last night, but tonight I am going to need it because I will be royally pissed off by the time today is over.

Despite my best efforts, I will have a very hard time not noticing how much money and time has been wasted on this horrible example of how not to do science.

However, with the goal of good-attitude-yields-good-karma, I am trying to take a merciful approach.

I will choose to assume that these people just didn't know any better, and not just at the beginning when they clearly screwed up. I will also choose to assume that they didn't deliberately go out of their way to try to hide their screwup. They just really didn't know any better. Right?

Yes, I am trying to give them the benefit of the stupid-is-as-stupid-does kind of doubt.

Hmph.

I am ignoring that these people have labs, and grants, and faculty positions. I am ignoring that they probably should have none of those things if the system worked the way it should.

Ignoring is bliss.

***

In better news, I am really enjoying this book and will be rewarding myself later by reading some more of it.

In some ways, I find this book a lot more uplifting and empowering than some of the more angry books I've been reading lately on bias and how it holds us back.

Reading those other books was helpful in arming me with the studies showing that indeed, bias is a factor and we have to account for it and figure out how to work around it.

This book is different because it is FUNNY and the author gives some very specific advice on how to change your attitude, not in a pollyanna way but in a practical New Yorker no-bullshit kinda way.

Yup, this author is my kind of person. I would like to meet her someday.

Momentums lost.

Not so long ago, I wrote briefly that I had made some progress with my advisor. I knew it was a fragile momentum, but I thought it was at least a step in the right direction.

But as often happens with these things, before I could gain sufficient momentum in that way, we hit a roadblock and the momentum got lost.

It's frustrating because the roadblock is also a wake-up call for my advisor.

In a way, this was exactly what I needed: an outside Voice of Reason to say

"Hey, MsPhD wanted to do THIS and you told her to do THAT and she did because you're the PI, but you know what?

She should have followed her own instincts, and done THIS instead.

You should have listened to her."



[Those of you who have been reading this blog know that the subtext is

Since PI accused her of ignoring all PI's suggestions, MsPhD had to do THAT to show she can go with the flow (or whatever)]




The trouble now is, this wake-up call has already had a variety of undesirable consequences.

(1) PI feels doubtful.

1a. PI is self-doubtful (because THAT was not as good as THIS would have been)
1b. PI feels guilty about feeling doubtful.
1c. PI feels doubtful of MsPhD (even if that might be unfair, PI is human and that is how PI feels, and it shows)

(2) MsPhD is doubtful too.

2a. MsPhD is questioning her abilities and desire to keep on this path
2b. MsPhD is questioning whether she really has sufficient spine to stand up to PI as much as necessary
2c. MsPhD is doubtful of PI for pushing THAT when it wasn't the right thing
2d. MsPhD is also pissed off because she KNEW it wasn't the right thing but felt like she had to do it anyway, for the reason mentioned above (and previously on this blog*).
2e. MsPhD is doubtful that she can figure out how to get past this roadblock, and that it won't happen again, and that if it does it won't eventually push PI to conclude that MsPhD is not worth it.




*[The damned-if-you-do-or-don't reason, which has all along seemed like something of a sexist problem to begin with. The male postdocs who ignore everyone's suggestions somehow still manage to get jobs. A guy can be a Troubled Child and get away with it. They get to be Mavericks. When women do it, we're difficult, we're Bitch.

Yes, I am Bitch. But lately I am just Tired. It takes a lot of energy and confidence to be Bitch. Right now I am 'haggard', as someone said in a comment. I love that word. Somehow I always pictured haggard as a tall, skinny guy with stubble. See? I'm sexist! Can I be haggard too?]



So because of what should have been only a momentary loss of momentum, although we have a plan for what to do next, PI's current response, despite agreeing to this plan, is to stall everything.

In other words, PI has chosen to procrastinate.

Procrastinating is the WORST possible thing we could be doing right now.

But what can I do. PI is out of town again.

In the meantime I am trying to think.

Lately I have felt like I can't. Think.

The last couple of weeks I've been trying hard to clear my head enough to figure out what I want to do next. It hasn't been working. I make seemingly endless, nested lists of things I want to do... but lately there are too many things, and I can't prioritize them by the main criterion of Things I CAN and absolutely SHOULD do HERE AND NOW.

My favorite organization tool, Omnifocus, isn't helping, because the whole point of scheduling things is that you have to know how long things are going to take, and be able to break them down into predictable units of time. So it's kind of a joke for research anyway, but it can be helpful...

I guess I need to spend some time figuring out how many units and how long each one would take in the perfect world (multiplying by factors of 3-10x for conversion to the research world)...

At one point I was thinking of things I should do to get preliminary data for grant application(s). Then I was thinking maybe I should focus on things I can do while PI is paying for it (as most of the other postdocs who got jobs did before they left). Maybe some of those things are the same?

Maybe instead of making lists, I should be making Venn diagrams?

The wake-up call just reinforced once again how important it is for me to have my own agenda and push it hard, even if it means risking pissing off PI because really, what's the worst that could happen? I need to buy something to do the experiments I decide on, and PI says no? Not that that's ever stopped me, I can always go do it in someone else's lab...

Meanwhile, I've tried soliciting feedback from numerous people on the work I've done so far, and all the questions everyone would like to see answered. To try to figure out what to do first.

But beware this approach. Although it has helped in the past, this time it has not helped. The suggestions I've gotten are range from boring to bizarre to bewildering.

Most people, I've realized, only suggest what they know best, which tends to be whatever model organism or techniques they use in their own research.

I guess because I have so far been somewhat fearless about trying new things, people seem to assume they can suggest anything and I will try it. Which might be true, but, um, this is really not the kind of suggestion I'm looking for right now.

So the suggestions I've gotten range from testing my models in 3 different organisms (none of which I have worked with before, and all of which have their own set of methods and problems I only know about from a distance) .... to learning really cutting-edge new techniques, some of which can't be done at my university or even in my town ... to backtracking to methods I've used in the past but with a new twist ... to doing experiments completely in vitro with only purified components.

And it's not clear that any of these will work faster, be easier, or more informative than any of the others.

Or that any of these would be guaranteed crowd pleasers (where crowd = search committee and/or paper referees and/or study section).

So you can see how I'm feeling like gee, maybe input is not what I needed after all?

Maybe what I need is some time to decide for myself what I think is most interesting, and then do that.

Trouble is, I don't have a lot of time. Time is the one thing I do not have.

Here we are, it's almost July, and despite my gently reminding PI (which doesn't seem to be helping since guilt seems to feed the procrastination response)... for me to apply for jobs this year, we are already several months behind. Maybe already too far behind.

So I guess that's what I should be doing.

To do:

1. Build Time Machine.
2. Make all new mistakes this time around.

It's definitely not all sexism.

Was talking to a friend last night who has run into many of the same kinds of problems I've had.

We're in different fields, and opposite in many ways, including gender.

But we do share certain personality features, which I can only describe as lack of natural talent for academic politics.

The only friends I had in grad school whom I'd say are similarly handicapped have all ended up in industry. They couldn't, or wouldn't, play that part of the game.

Four out of six are women. Three realized early on they didn't have the patience or the stomach for it. One realized painfully this was a weakness, still isn't particularly happy in industry, and sometimes talks about coming back to do a postdoc (I keep telling her not to).

The two remaining who stuck with it AND got interviews for faculty positions are guys. (Coincidence?) But they apparently never understood why none of those visits yielded offers.

And who is still sticking with it? .... Yours truly.

...


On the one hand, my friend says I'd make a great investigator. He thinks I'd be good at running a lab, I would know how to set things up from scratch and manage people and so on.

And his perceptions of sexism are entirely different from mine (although he himself often makes what I'd consider highly offensive comments).

Most of the women from the last lab he worked in have gotten faculty positions, so he thinks things are improving. (Somehow he forgets about the lab he worked in before that, which is more like the kind that I've worked in, where the women all end up quitting.)

But to him it's much more universal than sexism, or at least, it's not sexism alone. Even he has to admit that sexism only makes it that much worse. But he has a much broader theory about what's wrong.

He thinks this is the worst possible time to get into science.

And I've been hearing that a lot lately. My own advisors seem to think it's a bad career choice for... just about anyone. Which is probably why they're not exactly overjoyed that it's what I want to do. They keep asking me if I'm sure.

The more they ask me that, the less sure I am.

If nothing else, writing this blog has made me realize all the times people tried to discourage me from a career in science. And that I stubbornly ignored all of them.

In college, my grad student friends told me not to go, that it's a miserable existence.

During grad school, the faculty told me I wouldn't make it.

And so on until now.

Now, my friends who are PIs are all saying it's not the great fun they thought it would be.

Aside from some few happy examples like FSP, most of them are not particularly happy at all.

Almost all the new PIs say - and this really makes me cringe - they wish they could go back to being postdocs.

...

My former-scientist friend is doing something else these days, but all he can talk about is science.

The people he worked with, the disagreements they had, how frustrating it all was. But I have to assume the real reason he can't just let it go and get on with his life is because he really loved it.

I don't know how I could live like that. To me, the worst thing would be to quit, but then never get over it.

I would not want to end up like my friend, who might never stop obsessing over the wonderful time he spent working in lab. That part just makes me really sad.

Pseudo-feminism

Don't remember how but I came across this recent really disturbing article entitled Why can't a woman be more like a man? by this pseudo-feminist (or anti-feminist) named Christina Hoff Sommers.

I had heard of her before because she's the author of that classic contribution "The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men".

UGH.

What's really scary is that if you didn't know anything about feminism, and read this article I linked to above, you'd think

a) feminism is crap
b) the author is a man.

Assuming you might not want to read the whole article, I want to highlight one major argument she makes and point out the flaw in it.

She cites numerous studies (well, actually doesn't cite all of them but talks vaguely about their existence) showing that girls play differently from boys, draw different pictures (people) than boys (houses). I'm well aware of these studies so it wasn't news to me.

But she keeps coming back to this point as if it explains everything. She claims that veterinary medicine is the dream job for women, since it combines both systematic thinking and empathy, and that this satisfies our (women's) inherent need to nurture.

As an aside, veterinary medicine, if she's right, is an interesting paradigm. They went from 8 percent women in the 1960s, she says, to 77 percent now, supposedly without any kind of role models or mentoring programs.

One has to wonder
a) is that true?
b) how did they do that?

But she doesn't offer any explanation, except to use it to buttress her argument that we shouldn't fund Title IX or similar equity-enhancing programs.

But let's get back to the point about little girls vs. little boys.

1. Hypothesis: What we might have played with as children could be irrelevant to our abilities and career aspirations later in life.

Experiment to test this: Hasn't anyone ever done a survey? Maybe we should. It could be as simple as asking women who are still in science vs. women who hated science vs. women who dropped out of science

whether they

a) played with dolls
b) felt that having a family was paramount
c) felt that having a family was incompatible with, or at least extremely difficult to achieve with, a career in science

Well, actually we already know the answer to c. Which leads me to my other point:

2. Culture is way more important than Hoff-Sommers allows.

She makes a point of saying that most people agree (74%) that women don't go into STEM disciplines because they choose not to.

As usual, the point that gets lost here is why women don't want to. She attributes it to our affinity for playing with dolls when we're little. I attribute it to a hostile climate both in and out of science.

If we had better childcare support (e.g. onsite facilities everywhere), science would just as attainable for women as for men.

Hoff-Sommers is probably one of these ones who buys into the idea that women should shoulder the majority of the child-rearing burden. I don't know. But I think it's a major flaw in her argument.

But pressure to raise a family aside. Let me tell you that I started out liking math, so I think it's culture and not nature that makes women choose not to go into STEM disciplines.

I liked math. I really did. Personally, I did not like dolls. But I didn't particularly like trucks, either.

I liked books. Still do. But gradually math class became less fun. Come to think of it, this started round about when we all hit puberty. Coincidence?

It wasn't until years later that I realized why I stopped enjoying it. I was certainly not aware of gender bias at the time.

Years later when I read studies about boys being called on more often in class (check) and girls losing confidence when they're in the minority (check), it started to dawn on me that this could have been a factor. Maybe the main factor.

I certainly did well enough on aptitude tests to suggest that my performance did not match my potential, but nobody at school seemed to be aware of that.

(It's ironic because the longer I stay in science, the more I notice that I'm being pushed harder to perform up to my supposed potential, which must be much higher than my male colleagues', since they seem to do less but get a lot more credit for it.)

----
She also quotes somebody as saying there's no objective evidence from the MIT report that women received less laboratory space (they did, measured in square feet how is that not objective??) salary (they did, but she claims the numbers were never released outside MIT, which I'm pretty sure is also not true) or other resources (which refers to what exactly?).

And one more gem, just because I get all warm and fuzzy reading it. She seems to think that equity will make everything worse and more "politicized".

"Departments of physics, math, chemis­try, engineering, and computer science have remained traditional, rigorous, competitive, relatively meritocratic, and under the control of no-nonsense professors dedicated to objec­tive standards. All that may be about to change."

Yup. After some of the comments I've seen in the past week where women were recounting the outrageously blatantly sexist treatment they've received from physics professors especially, not to mention all the sexual harassment lawsuits in computer science departments especially (which are apparently on the rise), I'd say that "relatively meritocratic" and "objective standards" are not descriptors reflecting reality. At all.

Here's hoping she's right that it's about to change. It's about time.

Accidental information

Hey! This is a pop quiz! Guess what I accidentally found out today?

a) My department is interviewing people with fewer first author papers than I have now. Fewer, in fact, than I had when I applied for jobs before and didn't get any interviews.

In one case where the candidate is very likely to be interviewed, the candidate has not published a single first author paper in several (>5) years, but has a couple of recent reviews in High Impact Journals and works for the very famous ex-spouse of someone in the department.

Hmmm.

b) The candidates' packages are each reviewed by no more than 4 faculty, but usually only 2 or 3 faculty, to determine whether they are worth interviewing.

You might get reviewed by two faculty, and get turned down because one of those hated everyone. Meanwhile someone else might get reviewed by two totally different people. Or maybe you could be the lucky one and get reviewed by the softie who wants to interview as many people as possible. But only if you pick a department where you know there's a softie who works on something related to what you do, or if you have a friend who will snatch your application out of the pile and insist on being the one to review it.

But I'm not saying this happens. Nope. I wouldn't say that. I wouldn't say it's a lot like the way NIH reviews grants, either, or how fucked up that is.

c) The administrative assistant gets the first run at the stack of applications, which means you could get cut by a non-scientist before a scientist ever sees your application.

You might have thought that was more common in places that have applications filtered by HR, like companies and places with staff. You'd be wrong.

This must be why buzzwords matter so much, eh?

d) There are no standout candidates on the list that everyone can even agree is worth interviewing, but they're going to interview some of the ones they have already looked at and deemed mediocre, rather than going back to the original pile of packages to see if the admin threw any good applications in the trash.

(I'll refrain from mentioning that this admin has a proven history of throwing out the best candidates for staff positions, since there's no chance that would be an issue here!)

e) all of the above

f) none of the above, I'm just making crazy shit up, nobody in their right mind would do it this way

g) why I am really glad I am not applying to this department, or anywhere else right now