15 years ago
Monday, August 11, 2008
Science Book meme
I enjoy reading the book memes (and will get around to the tag soon, AcmeGirl!) but they don't bear much relation to our lives. As a solution [pun!], Junction Potential has a great thread going about what works belong on a science book meme. Go suggest your own favorite classic science writing! We too can change the Interntez!
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Right back atcha
I totally get the rants from many of you professor-ish types about god-awful manuscript drafts from your trainees. I've looked back at my own cringe-worthy efforts, and I've blanched at equally bad writing from others.
But you're not off the hook either, you know. Based on my own experiences and what I hear from friends, here's my
List of Ridiculous Things Professors Do with Manuscripts.
1) Tell your trainee, "Well, I don't really think you have enough for a paper, but you can go ahead and write it up and we'll see."
WTF?? If you've somehow forgotten, it actually takes a lot of time to write up a manuscript. Even if the product is shoddy. The prospect of writing one only to have it treated as too pathetic to even consider revising? Nuh-uh.
2) Leave them on your desk for months on end.
I get it, I get it, you're so flabbergasted by the sheer stupidity of the manuscript that you ignore it rather than do anything about it. But see the complaint with #1 above. If you truly hate the ms., sit down with the student and explain why. Is it organized well but the writing's horrific? Is it illogical and incomprehensible to boot? Fine, but your sitting on it like it's a world-class egg is not going to help anybody. Also, on Dr Hyde's behalf: Totally uncool to sit on a draft you say is all but finished for Literally Four Months Despite Nudging.
3) Make illegible comments.
Sometimes I don't incorporate a comment from GradAdvisor into a draft, not because I disagree with it, but because I can't READ it. If your handwriting is illegible, and you know who you are, use the freakin' Word editor or whatever. Your chickenscratch makes me think you don't care about the paper enough to even form letters decently. Thanks.
4) Make inscrutable comments.
Gotta love it when you just circle a paragraph and write "?" You think my facts are wrong? You think this paragraph belongs elsewhere? You don't see the point in including this paragraph? Who knows? Next time I'm going to return the draft to you with your "?" circled in red and another "?" next to it.
5) "Fix" the manuscript back to the way I had it before.
I hear you, JP et al. Apparently this is just a habit you acquire when you become a professor, like tweed or Birkenstocks. But it is unbearably frustrating from the trainee's POV. What message are you sending? "Hmm, I read Draft 2 while (talking on the phone to my mother/changing my timing belt/playing Wii) and this sentence seemed out of place, but now when I read your correction in Draft 3, I realize it was ok after all." If you have to do this, for chrissakes explain why you're doing it. Explain why you changed it in the first place, and why you're changing it back now. Again, from the trainee's perspective it's as though you didn't care enough to think it through on the first read.
6) Promise you'll give it back to me with comments this week, and then don't.
We all have commitments. We're all overworked. If you pull this crap, and I know many of you do, have the basic decency to explain what's going on to your student and give a new date you can stick to. You hate it when trainees string you along like this; don't do it right back to them.
There's probably more I'm not thinking of right now. But here's the key thing:
Don't EVER forget that you hold total power over paper production, and we hold almost none. You get to decide what data goes in, what stays out; who's first author, who's stuck in acknowledgments; when to return drafts to us; when the paper is ready to get sent out; which journal it's going to; whether or not it ever sees the light of day. We can do lots of little things to nudge, but ultimately you're holding onto 1-5 years of our toil in that paper. That disparity between our raw need and your utter control makes us a wee bit nervous. Have a little compassion.
But you're not off the hook either, you know. Based on my own experiences and what I hear from friends, here's my
List of Ridiculous Things Professors Do with Manuscripts.
1) Tell your trainee, "Well, I don't really think you have enough for a paper, but you can go ahead and write it up and we'll see."
WTF?? If you've somehow forgotten, it actually takes a lot of time to write up a manuscript. Even if the product is shoddy. The prospect of writing one only to have it treated as too pathetic to even consider revising? Nuh-uh.
2) Leave them on your desk for months on end.
I get it, I get it, you're so flabbergasted by the sheer stupidity of the manuscript that you ignore it rather than do anything about it. But see the complaint with #1 above. If you truly hate the ms., sit down with the student and explain why. Is it organized well but the writing's horrific? Is it illogical and incomprehensible to boot? Fine, but your sitting on it like it's a world-class egg is not going to help anybody. Also, on Dr Hyde's behalf: Totally uncool to sit on a draft you say is all but finished for Literally Four Months Despite Nudging.
3) Make illegible comments.
Sometimes I don't incorporate a comment from GradAdvisor into a draft, not because I disagree with it, but because I can't READ it. If your handwriting is illegible, and you know who you are, use the freakin' Word editor or whatever. Your chickenscratch makes me think you don't care about the paper enough to even form letters decently. Thanks.
4) Make inscrutable comments.
Gotta love it when you just circle a paragraph and write "?" You think my facts are wrong? You think this paragraph belongs elsewhere? You don't see the point in including this paragraph? Who knows? Next time I'm going to return the draft to you with your "?" circled in red and another "?" next to it.
5) "Fix" the manuscript back to the way I had it before.
I hear you, JP et al. Apparently this is just a habit you acquire when you become a professor, like tweed or Birkenstocks. But it is unbearably frustrating from the trainee's POV. What message are you sending? "Hmm, I read Draft 2 while (talking on the phone to my mother/changing my timing belt/playing Wii) and this sentence seemed out of place, but now when I read your correction in Draft 3, I realize it was ok after all." If you have to do this, for chrissakes explain why you're doing it. Explain why you changed it in the first place, and why you're changing it back now. Again, from the trainee's perspective it's as though you didn't care enough to think it through on the first read.
6) Promise you'll give it back to me with comments this week, and then don't.
We all have commitments. We're all overworked. If you pull this crap, and I know many of you do, have the basic decency to explain what's going on to your student and give a new date you can stick to. You hate it when trainees string you along like this; don't do it right back to them.
There's probably more I'm not thinking of right now. But here's the key thing:
Don't EVER forget that you hold total power over paper production, and we hold almost none. You get to decide what data goes in, what stays out; who's first author, who's stuck in acknowledgments; when to return drafts to us; when the paper is ready to get sent out; which journal it's going to; whether or not it ever sees the light of day. We can do lots of little things to nudge, but ultimately you're holding onto 1-5 years of our toil in that paper. That disparity between our raw need and your utter control makes us a wee bit nervous. Have a little compassion.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Reviewing reviewers
Earlier this week, GradAdvisor and I sent a manuscript off to a FairlyGlamorousMag.
Of the many byzantine components to actually submitting a paper, suggesting candidate reviewers has to be the weirdest. You know that the editors will probably select one of your suggestions, plus one (or two) people you didn't suggest. You obviously want the ms. to go to scientists who are going to be judicious, fair, and--let's be honest--favorable.
It's sort of like ordering off a Chinese Menu A and Menu B, except that you can only define the options on Menu A, not pick an item off it; and you can't define Menu B at all--you can only try to guess which dishes are likely to be on it, and strategize accordingly with your suggestions for Menu A.
I ended up listing four suggested reviewers, two of whom are likely to be favorable but would not have necessarily sprung to the editor's mind; two of whom are likely to be a bit harsher, but are more obvious based on research similarity. I deliberately left OFF the list two people who I think would be favorable, but who will hopefully occur to the editor on his own.
I don't even know if this was the right way to go about it, but GradAdvisor was on vacation so I just plunged ahead. 24 hours later I was already second-guessing myself and agonizing that I should have done it differently. How, I'm not sure.
If people ran restaurants like this, they would go out of business. I'm going gray here.
Hey, only 4-6 more weeks to wait!
Of the many byzantine components to actually submitting a paper, suggesting candidate reviewers has to be the weirdest. You know that the editors will probably select one of your suggestions, plus one (or two) people you didn't suggest. You obviously want the ms. to go to scientists who are going to be judicious, fair, and--let's be honest--favorable.
It's sort of like ordering off a Chinese Menu A and Menu B, except that you can only define the options on Menu A, not pick an item off it; and you can't define Menu B at all--you can only try to guess which dishes are likely to be on it, and strategize accordingly with your suggestions for Menu A.
I ended up listing four suggested reviewers, two of whom are likely to be favorable but would not have necessarily sprung to the editor's mind; two of whom are likely to be a bit harsher, but are more obvious based on research similarity. I deliberately left OFF the list two people who I think would be favorable, but who will hopefully occur to the editor on his own.
I don't even know if this was the right way to go about it, but GradAdvisor was on vacation so I just plunged ahead. 24 hours later I was already second-guessing myself and agonizing that I should have done it differently. How, I'm not sure.
If people ran restaurants like this, they would go out of business. I'm going gray here.
Hey, only 4-6 more weeks to wait!
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Reflecting on reflections (so we get a real image?)
I am shameless about reading over other people's shoulders, particularly on public transit.
I take a bus to work, and as with most buses it contains a cast of regulars and assorted cameos. One of the regulars on this bus is a math professor, which I know because (a) she grades papers that I nosily read over her shoulder, and (b) she has a math symbol tattooed on her foot.
The papers that she grades are not usually math papers, per se. Instead, they are "Reflections" from the members of her class about their experience in the last week's lessons. Such as:
This sort of thing continues for a page, usually a page with wide margins and 11-pt Courier. The professor then writes something at the bottom, such as, "Sorry to hear about your life problems but I'm glad the math made sense to you! Checkmark" and moves onto the next Reflection.
I hardly need to say that this is a rather different type of math homework than any I ever had.
The calc geek inside me says, "This is the problem with education in America today. We're too wrapped up in how the student is reacting to the classroom rather than in whether or not they've learned the damn concepts."
The inner bleeding heart says, "This is clearly a math class for students who don't have a good background in math [a lot of the Reflections have mentioned learning about simple probability, like drawing a red card, or an ace, from a deck], and these students have maybe always been afraid of math because of their weakness in it. This provides an opportunity for the prof to find out what works and what doesn't in her teaching style, as well as to find out which students need more help."
Calc geek: "But wouldn't both the student and prof time spent on these Reflections be better spent, I don't know, doing math problems? Reinforcing concepts?"
Bleeding heart: "It doesn't do students any good to reinforce concepts if they're all at sea anyhow. This is where the professor gets to find out whether her teaching is getting through."
CG: "You know, this is what I really hate about you. All nicey nicey, no results."
BH: "I'm sympathetic to your feelings. Should we talk more about this?"
Ok, ok. Point being: I can see reasons to do this sort of thing, but really--wouldn't it be better to make the homework Math rather than Mathy Feelings?
Then again, I've never done any teaching, so maybe this is the new way to run lessons and I'm just ignorant.
Though not about the probability of drawing a red ace (1/26).
I take a bus to work, and as with most buses it contains a cast of regulars and assorted cameos. One of the regulars on this bus is a math professor, which I know because (a) she grades papers that I nosily read over her shoulder, and (b) she has a math symbol tattooed on her foot.
The papers that she grades are not usually math papers, per se. Instead, they are "Reflections" from the members of her class about their experience in the last week's lessons. Such as:
"I really enjoyed this week hearing about the Fibonacci series. For a long time I didn't understand how it related to what we were doing in class, but then Maria explained it and all of a sudden it clicked into place for me. It was really neat. Although I didn't participate in class much this week because of some other problems in my life right now, I still felt as though I learned a lot."
This sort of thing continues for a page, usually a page with wide margins and 11-pt Courier. The professor then writes something at the bottom, such as, "Sorry to hear about your life problems but I'm glad the math made sense to you! Checkmark" and moves onto the next Reflection.
I hardly need to say that this is a rather different type of math homework than any I ever had.
The calc geek inside me says, "This is the problem with education in America today. We're too wrapped up in how the student is reacting to the classroom rather than in whether or not they've learned the damn concepts."
The inner bleeding heart says, "This is clearly a math class for students who don't have a good background in math [a lot of the Reflections have mentioned learning about simple probability, like drawing a red card, or an ace, from a deck], and these students have maybe always been afraid of math because of their weakness in it. This provides an opportunity for the prof to find out what works and what doesn't in her teaching style, as well as to find out which students need more help."
Calc geek: "But wouldn't both the student and prof time spent on these Reflections be better spent, I don't know, doing math problems? Reinforcing concepts?"
Bleeding heart: "It doesn't do students any good to reinforce concepts if they're all at sea anyhow. This is where the professor gets to find out whether her teaching is getting through."
CG: "You know, this is what I really hate about you. All nicey nicey, no results."
BH: "I'm sympathetic to your feelings. Should we talk more about this?"
Ok, ok. Point being: I can see reasons to do this sort of thing, but really--wouldn't it be better to make the homework Math rather than Mathy Feelings?
Then again, I've never done any teaching, so maybe this is the new way to run lessons and I'm just ignorant.
Though not about the probability of drawing a red ace (1/26).
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Returned!
Dr Hyde and I are back from our long vaycay. It wasn't all fun and games--one week was spent at a conference, and since the other two weeks were spent (a) helping my brother+wife care for my 3-month old niece, (b) helping my parents, and (c) going to my grandfather's funeral, it was actually a rather busy and stressful time.
However, although we weren't sunning ourselves in the Mediterannean, I still feel refreshed. Three weeks away from the bench is a plenty long time, long enough that I now regard my experiments with a sort of hazy happy indifference. Much improved from prior to this trip, when I regarded them with fear and resentment. ("What, like it would have killed you to give me some publishable data?")
In fact, it is possible that my busy vacation actually helped me with re-entry. After last year's trip (which involved lots of sunning selves in the Med), I was almost too blissed out to return to the bench. After this trip, I'm just plain grateful to be doing benchwork rather than changing a diaper, coaxing a reluctant infant to sleep, or commiserating with my grieving family.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning had a few lines on this I always liked:
She didn't say "Flying Spaghetti Monster" but I'm totally sure that's what she meant.
However, although we weren't sunning ourselves in the Mediterannean, I still feel refreshed. Three weeks away from the bench is a plenty long time, long enough that I now regard my experiments with a sort of hazy happy indifference. Much improved from prior to this trip, when I regarded them with fear and resentment. ("What, like it would have killed you to give me some publishable data?")
In fact, it is possible that my busy vacation actually helped me with re-entry. After last year's trip (which involved lots of sunning selves in the Med), I was almost too blissed out to return to the bench. After this trip, I'm just plain grateful to be doing benchwork rather than changing a diaper, coaxing a reluctant infant to sleep, or commiserating with my grieving family.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning had a few lines on this I always liked:
Get leave to work--
In this world 'tis the best you get at all;
For God in cursing gives us better gifts
Than men in benediction.
She didn't say "Flying Spaghetti Monster" but I'm totally sure that's what she meant.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
No comment needed, but I will anyhow
During my blog-hiatus, I attended a conference. Now, my scientific turf is male-tilted, and this conference was, if anything, even more male-tilted, but whatever. That's just your garden-variety daily crap to live with.
HOWEVER, I was nonetheless (naively?) surprised to see the following announcement posted in giant letters on the blackboard in the conference room:
HOWEVER, I was nonetheless (naively?) surprised to see the following announcement posted in giant letters on the blackboard in the conference room:
Soccer- Team World vs Team EuropeFor fuck's sake, people. For fuck's sake.
Wednesday 2pm (Friendly) Girls and senior citizens welcome
Thursday 2pm (Intense)
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Down time
I'm on a couple weeks' vacation. Blogging will be highly sporadic, especially as I am making the acquaintance of my new niece.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Story hour
When I was a lab technician for a couple of years post-college, I spend my weekends volunteering at Habitat for Humanity. (I had oodles of free time then, with a 9-5 and no spouse. What happened? Oh, right.)
Anyhow, I enjoyed swinging a hammer, learning about house construction, and getting to know the other volunteers. After I'd been volunteering for a year, the founder of Habitat, Millard Fuller, came to town for some speechifying, and the local chapter head asked me to give one of the short intro speeches to his talk.
I was terrified. As you may have noticed, I am very anxious about public speaking, even of this 2-3 minute stint in front of a ~150 person group. However, I am also too proud to let fear stop me from getting up there. The big question was, what to talk about?
I had started to craft a rather generic, "Seeing smiles of happiness from new homeowners blah blah blah" speech when my mother called. I told her about this short speech I had to give, and how I was nervous, and she said something both wise and obvious (the way mothers do): "Tell a story. Everyone likes hearing stories."
Now, my mother is a librarian, for pete's sake (as well as an astute observer of human foibles), so this was not a quantum jump on her part. But it really helped me figure out what to talk about. I scrapped the pablum and instead spoke about my first day volunteering and being scared to walk on the "roof," which at that point consisted only of trusses. And the audience, to my total shock, liked it, laughed in the right places, and applauded.
Then Millard Fuller got up, found me in the audience, and said in a wonderful admiring Southern drawl, "Jekyll--you're something else." He then proceeded to give a really good speech whose contents I have forgotten, although I'm sure he told stories.
Complete side tangent:
Later, as I walked Millard to his car, he put his arm around my waist. I was a little surprised when his hand slipped to a location that I might have called grab-ass had he been a boy my own age, but I chalked it up to old men being careless, or forgetting where young ladies' waists ended, or something like that. A year or two later, this story helped me realize that old men do not, in fact, forget where young ladies' waists end.
Back to the point:
It's old news in science that our papers and talks succeed the most when we tell a story. Sometimes it's showmanship, in the best sense of the word--framing the work in logical, climactic fashion rather than in a chronological, meandering mess. Other times it's really about finding the common threads to a story to weave a larger scientific implication out of some disparate bits of data.
I was thinking about all this as I prepare a short conference speech to give to, oh, ~150 people. I'm nervous, of course, but I'm focusing on the story, on capturing my audience with my supercool data held together in clean narrative arc.
Thanks, Mom. And thanks readers for your suggestions about allaying fear by focusing on the data rather than on myself.
After all, I have a whole blog to focus on myself.
And on the age-old paradox that even a guy who dedicates his life to helping those the poor might nonetheless be prone to some grab-ass.
Anyhow, I enjoyed swinging a hammer, learning about house construction, and getting to know the other volunteers. After I'd been volunteering for a year, the founder of Habitat, Millard Fuller, came to town for some speechifying, and the local chapter head asked me to give one of the short intro speeches to his talk.
I was terrified. As you may have noticed, I am very anxious about public speaking, even of this 2-3 minute stint in front of a ~150 person group. However, I am also too proud to let fear stop me from getting up there. The big question was, what to talk about?
I had started to craft a rather generic, "Seeing smiles of happiness from new homeowners blah blah blah" speech when my mother called. I told her about this short speech I had to give, and how I was nervous, and she said something both wise and obvious (the way mothers do): "Tell a story. Everyone likes hearing stories."
Now, my mother is a librarian, for pete's sake (as well as an astute observer of human foibles), so this was not a quantum jump on her part. But it really helped me figure out what to talk about. I scrapped the pablum and instead spoke about my first day volunteering and being scared to walk on the "roof," which at that point consisted only of trusses. And the audience, to my total shock, liked it, laughed in the right places, and applauded.
Then Millard Fuller got up, found me in the audience, and said in a wonderful admiring Southern drawl, "Jekyll--you're something else." He then proceeded to give a really good speech whose contents I have forgotten, although I'm sure he told stories.
Complete side tangent:
Later, as I walked Millard to his car, he put his arm around my waist. I was a little surprised when his hand slipped to a location that I might have called grab-ass had he been a boy my own age, but I chalked it up to old men being careless, or forgetting where young ladies' waists ended, or something like that. A year or two later, this story helped me realize that old men do not, in fact, forget where young ladies' waists end.
Back to the point:
It's old news in science that our papers and talks succeed the most when we tell a story. Sometimes it's showmanship, in the best sense of the word--framing the work in logical, climactic fashion rather than in a chronological, meandering mess. Other times it's really about finding the common threads to a story to weave a larger scientific implication out of some disparate bits of data.
I was thinking about all this as I prepare a short conference speech to give to, oh, ~150 people. I'm nervous, of course, but I'm focusing on the story, on capturing my audience with my supercool data held together in clean narrative arc.
Thanks, Mom. And thanks readers for your suggestions about allaying fear by focusing on the data rather than on myself.
After all, I have a whole blog to focus on myself.
And on the age-old paradox that even a guy who dedicates his life to helping those the poor might nonetheless be prone to some grab-ass.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Imagining images
In honor of Iran's Exxxtra FREE Missile!!111!!!1! and discussions over at DrugMonkey's about prettifying your data, I send you all to photoshopdisasters if you haven't been there before. (Variably NSFW, some of the funniest are soft-core porn with misplaced shadows etc.)
And, like, remember not to do the scientific equivalent (cut-and-pasted Western blot bands?) with your own data.
And, like, remember not to do the scientific equivalent (cut-and-pasted Western blot bands?) with your own data.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Trends in Book Reading (TiBR)
Looking over a bookshelf in our lab yesterday, I came to a realization: I don't read very many scientific books.
I dip into an occasional college/grad-level textbook if I have a two-minute question. But I don't read the books authored by senior scientists on (as drdrA says) "Poogly-plugs," although there are certainly a host of good ones. I'm worried about shelf life (literally!) of the science therein. Is it really better to read a book than to read five or six reviews in Trends or Current Opinion or whatever? By the time a book has been edited and published and distributed and purchased and read, isn't it scientific light-years out of date?
At the same time, I wonder if I'm missing something. If people are taking the time to synthesize the past, present, and future of their lifelong field into a (dense) volume, shouldn't I take a few days and read it, if I have more than a passing interest in the topic?
Also, these books are too heavy to take along on plane flights, so I can't bring them on vacation and ignore them the way I do with papers.
It's hard to carve out time to make a book a priority. But maybe I should?
I dip into an occasional college/grad-level textbook if I have a two-minute question. But I don't read the books authored by senior scientists on (as drdrA says) "Poogly-plugs," although there are certainly a host of good ones. I'm worried about shelf life (literally!) of the science therein. Is it really better to read a book than to read five or six reviews in Trends or Current Opinion or whatever? By the time a book has been edited and published and distributed and purchased and read, isn't it scientific light-years out of date?
At the same time, I wonder if I'm missing something. If people are taking the time to synthesize the past, present, and future of their lifelong field into a (dense) volume, shouldn't I take a few days and read it, if I have more than a passing interest in the topic?
Also, these books are too heavy to take along on plane flights, so I can't bring them on vacation and ignore them the way I do with papers.
It's hard to carve out time to make a book a priority. But maybe I should?
Monday, July 7, 2008
Why do we say "Pee-yew"?
Last night, a skunk burrowed past some chickenwire to get into the crawl space underneath the place we are renting (or so we hypothesize). First there was a musky waft from the kitchen, the sort of nose-wrinkling but not unpleasant odor you associate with highways at night.
It was soon followed by a truly lip-curling stench unlike any I have known before. Dr Hyde and I variously identified it as rotting onions, burning plastic, and smoldering insulation before our landlord dropped by and assured us that this was Skunk.
We spent the evening turning on fans, opening doors, etc, and we slept in the guestroom, which was fortunately less pungent than our own bedroom. We don't know if the skunk(s???) is still in the crawl space, or for that matter what will happen if our semi-outdoors cat should encounter him.
Anyhow, the point of this post is that my jeans, which had been hanging in the bathroom to dry after laundering, have taken on the Eau de LePew. I spent today in lab, emanating odor. While this was distressing to me and, one may presume, to my colleagues, I must say that things could be worse.
Reasons to be Glad I Have a Lab Job When I Reek
a list I never thought I'd make
** Labs are well ventilated, with something like 8 full air changes per day. Thus my wafting skunkness is not encouraged to linger.
** While the lab has an open floor plan, we're not sharing office cubicles. The nearest person sits about 12 feet from me and is often not at his desk. So I have some space to fumigate.
** There are many smells in lab that compete with, if not dominate, my own. Mouse cages, bacterial growths, chemicals--heck, even Advisor's dog, in a show of solidarity, peed on a desk today. Malodorousness loves company!
If you're wondering, Dr Hyde gave me a useful idea that markedly improved my experimental setup, and that's why I am so cheerful in the face of our odoriferous misfortune.
It was soon followed by a truly lip-curling stench unlike any I have known before. Dr Hyde and I variously identified it as rotting onions, burning plastic, and smoldering insulation before our landlord dropped by and assured us that this was Skunk.
We spent the evening turning on fans, opening doors, etc, and we slept in the guestroom, which was fortunately less pungent than our own bedroom. We don't know if the skunk(s???) is still in the crawl space, or for that matter what will happen if our semi-outdoors cat should encounter him.
Anyhow, the point of this post is that my jeans, which had been hanging in the bathroom to dry after laundering, have taken on the Eau de LePew. I spent today in lab, emanating odor. While this was distressing to me and, one may presume, to my colleagues, I must say that things could be worse.
Reasons to be Glad I Have a Lab Job When I Reek
a list I never thought I'd make
** Labs are well ventilated, with something like 8 full air changes per day. Thus my wafting skunkness is not encouraged to linger.
** While the lab has an open floor plan, we're not sharing office cubicles. The nearest person sits about 12 feet from me and is often not at his desk. So I have some space to fumigate.
** There are many smells in lab that compete with, if not dominate, my own. Mouse cages, bacterial growths, chemicals--heck, even Advisor's dog, in a show of solidarity, peed on a desk today. Malodorousness loves company!
If you're wondering, Dr Hyde gave me a useful idea that markedly improved my experimental setup, and that's why I am so cheerful in the face of our odoriferous misfortune.
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Decisions, decisions
So I'm putting together a talk for Big Conference, and I am in rigid paralysis.
It's not the choice of this graph vs that, or which data to keep, or how much intro I need.
It's the elephant in the room: What color should the slide background be?
I'm almost paralyzed typing this.
White: standard (for everyone who blanches at the once-default powerpoint royal blue plate special); bright and contrast-y; but glaring, often too contrast-y, and a disaster if you have any dark immunofluorescence images or similar--the white background blinds your viewers before their eyes can adapt to darker hues. I don't actually have any of those images, but still--the whole Very Bright Screen in Kinda Dim Room thing bugs me.
(I write as I type on my laptop in the dusk.)
Dark: dramatic, but then you're faced with the question of whether to make all your graphs with white axes etc, or to put white boxes on the dark background and plop your graphs on there, which doesn't seriously annoy me but has a certain ad hoc quality to it.
JrProf, I expect you to take some time off your high-minded projects to address this quasi-sartorial dilemma.
It's not the choice of this graph vs that, or which data to keep, or how much intro I need.
It's the elephant in the room: What color should the slide background be?
I'm almost paralyzed typing this.
White: standard (for everyone who blanches at the once-default powerpoint royal blue plate special); bright and contrast-y; but glaring, often too contrast-y, and a disaster if you have any dark immunofluorescence images or similar--the white background blinds your viewers before their eyes can adapt to darker hues. I don't actually have any of those images, but still--the whole Very Bright Screen in Kinda Dim Room thing bugs me.
(I write as I type on my laptop in the dusk.)
Dark: dramatic, but then you're faced with the question of whether to make all your graphs with white axes etc, or to put white boxes on the dark background and plop your graphs on there, which doesn't seriously annoy me but has a certain ad hoc quality to it.
JrProf, I expect you to take some time off your high-minded projects to address this quasi-sartorial dilemma.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Happy Congressional Recess!
A happy Fourth of July to you all. And a happy Independence Day to my fellow USA inmates.
Did you know that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two founders who kinda hated each other for a while, both died on July 4th 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence? (Actually independence was declared on July 2 and the D of I signed in August, but let's not get all nitpicky here.) And both died thinking the other still lived, it being back before the days of Twitter.
David McCullough's John Adams, in which I learned this tidbit, was a bit of a hagiography but terrific reading nonetheless.
Enjoy the day. We, naturellement, are celebrating with Korean barbecue.
Did you know that John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two founders who kinda hated each other for a while, both died on July 4th 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence? (Actually independence was declared on July 2 and the D of I signed in August, but let's not get all nitpicky here.) And both died thinking the other still lived, it being back before the days of Twitter.
David McCullough's John Adams, in which I learned this tidbit, was a bit of a hagiography but terrific reading nonetheless.
Enjoy the day. We, naturellement, are celebrating with Korean barbecue.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Picture this
Making figures of your research can be gratifying in the "Gee, when you put it all together like that it's kinda impressive!" sort of way. It can also be tedious in the "Criminy this is tedious" sort of way.
What aspect of figure-making would I term the tediousest, if I were inspired to abuse my mother-tongue? The candidates:
* Gathering together all the data that despite your best organizational efforts is scattered across three binders, two lab notebooks, and seven computers, one of which has a dead hard drive and another of which you've forgotten your special login/password combo for.
* Finding figure-quality examples. You know the data add up.....so how come no individual example is ever "representative"? A mystery for the ages.
* Scale bars. Even when you have the Photoshop file with pictures of your calibration slide, there is always some sort of problem: you've changed the resolution of your picture, you've montaged several pictures together and they're no longer the same pixelage, your old camera died and the new one takes slightly different photos and no one has updated the Photoshop calibration file....
* Realizing that you analyzed your older data differently from your newer data and you have to go back to re-analyze months of work. Yum.
* Trying to make 5 equal-sized graphs fit into a multi-panel figure. "Hmm, 2x2 +1? Or, um, 3x2 - 1? Fuck it, I'm creating an unnecessary graph just to make it all fit right."
Of these many options, I surely loathe scale bars the most. Because even when you've gotten it all finished, you print out the graph triumphantly and then think...."That's odd, there's no way in nature that that object could be that size. Ohhell."
What aspect of figure-making would I term the tediousest, if I were inspired to abuse my mother-tongue? The candidates:
* Gathering together all the data that despite your best organizational efforts is scattered across three binders, two lab notebooks, and seven computers, one of which has a dead hard drive and another of which you've forgotten your special login/password combo for.
* Finding figure-quality examples. You know the data add up.....so how come no individual example is ever "representative"? A mystery for the ages.
* Scale bars. Even when you have the Photoshop file with pictures of your calibration slide, there is always some sort of problem: you've changed the resolution of your picture, you've montaged several pictures together and they're no longer the same pixelage, your old camera died and the new one takes slightly different photos and no one has updated the Photoshop calibration file....
* Realizing that you analyzed your older data differently from your newer data and you have to go back to re-analyze months of work. Yum.
* Trying to make 5 equal-sized graphs fit into a multi-panel figure. "Hmm, 2x2 +1? Or, um, 3x2 - 1? Fuck it, I'm creating an unnecessary graph just to make it all fit right."
Of these many options, I surely loathe scale bars the most. Because even when you've gotten it all finished, you print out the graph triumphantly and then think...."That's odd, there's no way in nature that that object could be that size. Ohhell."
30 published papers can't be wrong!
Recently I happened to see a reviewer's comments on a manuscript submitted to a good journal (not my manuscript, and I didn't help review it either). The review, heavily paraphrased, went something like this:
"The authors show evidence in favor of a strange result.
"The evidence per se isn't bad; however, many respected labs do the same type of technique as these authors, and the respected labs don't see these results.
"Ergo, Strange Result is likely the result of inexperience or idiocy on the authors' part.
"Vote to reject."
I am of mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, this is the sort of dismissive attitude that makes it difficult for revolutionary research to get published in good journals. It contributes to the do-safe-research-with-expected-results mindset: if your research turns up something too novel, you can't even publish it!
On the other, I think the reviewer might be right.
"The authors show evidence in favor of a strange result.
"The evidence per se isn't bad; however, many respected labs do the same type of technique as these authors, and the respected labs don't see these results.
"Ergo, Strange Result is likely the result of inexperience or idiocy on the authors' part.
"Vote to reject."
I am of mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, this is the sort of dismissive attitude that makes it difficult for revolutionary research to get published in good journals. It contributes to the do-safe-research-with-expected-results mindset: if your research turns up something too novel, you can't even publish it!
On the other, I think the reviewer might be right.
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