nodalpoint.org - The end of scientific reputation ? - Comments

Time allocation

chris — Sun, 10 Apr 2005 07:18:05 -0400

I believe it's also quite common to formally allocate a certain percentage of your time to activities, particularly if you're a PI. Grant applications usually require not only a breakdown of who is providing what expertise, but how much time they are investing in the project, which tends to formalise the process further.

So here is my mental list of what to haggle over for my impending postdoc interviews (in no particular order):

1) Resources available to me - in terms of access to equipment, external subs for eg large clusters, money to start up prior to grants, access to boss etc.

2) Students - am I expected to teach/supervise? How many? Do I have discretion in selecting potential students? Can I exersize my minimalist style of supervision? And so on

3) Reasearch assistant(s). Am I to have some labour assistance in the form of an RA? Do I get certain hours a week or a dedicated person/team? Are they students (see 2)?

4) I am selling/pursuing my own project(s). Can I/do I have to participate in other group endeavours? Could this be through team leading whilst personally working on my own stuff?

5) What percentage of my time is free to allocate to other projects/collaborations? What are the constraints, if any on choice of same (eg can I attempt to decipher an extinct language based on fragments of writing, or does it all have to be genetics)?

6) What extra-research/admin duties will I have? Committees, selection panels, (internal) grant review etc

7) HOW LITTLE ARE YOU PAYING ME?

8) Does the prospective boss encourage collaboration or competition in the ranks? The latter is a deal breaker.

Others? [Maybe I should start this as a new thread.]

Thinking about my last commen

Spitshine — Sun, 10 Apr 2005 03:04:37 -0400

Thinking about my last comment (yeah, think after you write...) I recalled that a PI I had the pleasure to work in was making sure that people would work on more than one project at a time and that no project would be pursued be a single person only. This provides publications for several and your personal career as a Postdoc or PhD student is not dependent on one crazy idea. I am always surprised to see how many labs have one person per project (and are still successful in publishing). Another piece of advice if your unhappy about your work life as scientist: Share more work with the colleagues in the lab. Many people fear the conflict, mostly because we have to select a first author, from my point of view, there is real potential in many groups of people would really work towards common goals.

Don't get mad, get even

Neil — Sat, 09 Apr 2005 02:40:03 -0400

On the whole, I agree with previous comments. Whilst I sympathise with the blogger, she does come across as a naive young scientist who has a few things to learn about the workings of "the system".

First, I've read a lot of complaints similar to these and all that they illustrate is that scientists are human too - they have personalities, some of which clash, some of which mesh. Anyone who imagines that science is some utopian wonderland governed only by the spirit of rational inquiry is sorely mistaken. Perhaps one failing of science education is that this is not made clear to young scientists before they start - but it's one of those things that you realise with time...

Second, most of the time, senior scientists are senior with good reason. It may not be that they are good scientists, but they often have other strengths - business or administrative skills, networking, grant writing. At the end of the day, we need people to bring in the money. As another commenter suggested, if you think that you're better, prove it.

It is frustrating to be in a situation where you feel that you are being held back by the inadequacies of people in positions of more power than you. However, whinging on your blog is not going to fix it. If you have a real problem, talk to people - if not the boss, then colleagues or neutral individuals and try to work it out. If you can't resolve things, go elsewhere or do something else.

Research science is a tough, competitive business. About the greatest reward that you can hope for (aside from funding and perhaps peer recognition) is personal satisfaction from a job well done. If that's not enough for you, you're in the wrong game. It's not enough to do a good job, hope that the right people notice and start railing against the world when they don't.

There are two reasons for th

chris — Sat, 09 Apr 2005 01:03:32 -0400

There are two reasons for this[...]
a)[...]
b)[...]

c) Something they thought about earlier in their careers (when they weren't dissing PIs) but didn't have the resources/experience/profile to attempt properly, or the field was not mature enough to support that level of experimentation.

UniCellulars may abound, but I suggest that (i) 'good' scientists tend to keep generating interesting ideas, even if they are farmed out to underlings later, and (ii) the ghosts of old projects tend to linger, so there are many, many loose ends to tie up into a coherent whole. Although this may not be the most riveting work, it's still good practice - and the occasional surprise pops out, too.

No win situation !!

jaws — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 17:02:09 -0400

So, if you are a young Postdoc or a PhD student, here's a piece of advice: Shut yer trap and don't critize your PI openly (in conversations or in your private blog) - for you can't win. If you think you can do it better, do so in the lab or in the office.

This is what is so sad about science.. I think we've all tried ranting against our PIs and failed miserably, for at the end of the day, they hold the strings to your career, your funding, and pretty much all your life !!

It is not always true that senior research scientists do not have the courage to get back into a challenging subject after achieving a certain stage in their careers. You will find that the more senior the scientist, the more likely are they to jump into something totally new. There are two reasons for this

a) They have well established reputations already.
b) They are more likely to get funds based on their reputation for a piece of research that may not necessarily pass muster for other, more average researchers.

The latter point brings us into a totally different subject, the murky world of grant reviewing and how agencies tend to be biased. This is similar to the rather dodgy world of peer-reviewed publications !!

Uh oh, dangerous terrain - yo

Spitshine — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 05:03:52 -0400

Uh oh, dangerous terrain - young scientists go through this stage of scientific puberty in their career (or the end thereof). It is very easy to critize every senior scientist. Understand that they have achieved something important to actually become a PI (e.g. papers in Cell). Now they must either decide to play the game again - jumping into murky, high profile subject with competition, which will result in at least some unsuccesful projects (and hence PhD students and Postdocs).
Or they start milking their, possibly few, discoveries (I call them UniCellular organisms...), which they won't be able to publish in great journals, which will result in frustated Postdocs and PhD students.

So, if you are a young Postdoc or a PhD student, here's a piece of advice: Shut yer trap and don't critize your PI openly (in conversations or in your private blog) - for you can't win. If you think you can do it better, do so in the lab or in the office.
Work harder or find a job outside of academia. Remember that you are in a field with way too many motivated people. Make sure you pick up skills broader skills outside of your prime area.

By the way, do your statistics: How many labs do you know well at what stage of your career? You have too few samples to make any such statements in the first place.

Anyway, if you succeed in setting up your own lab, you'll face the same gambit. Try petting the PhD student, who critizes your decisions in his or her blog.

The end of scientific reputation ?

Greg — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 04:16:55 -0400

Recently I have noticed more and more scientists creating weblogs (more on this later), for now I thought I'd point out a particularly interesting post from Young female scientist weblog which I'm sure will resonate with many nodalpoint regulars:

"What I take from all this frustrating stupidity is that senior scientists, and most distressingly, senior women scientists, want to sit on their laurels. They don't want to go back in the pack with everyone else. If we removed reputation from the variables of evaluation, they would have to work a lot harder. And nobody in a senior position wants to do that."

Indeed...