Maybe if Mr. T had given them advice, they would have listened

I’ve done some outstandingly foolish things in my time, and am no doubt headed for many more, but this post is about Foolish Other People.

If I could give just one piece of Advice to anyone entering science grad school, it would be: Find an advisor you get along with, both intellectually and emotionally. It does not matter so much whether the topic of research in their lab is exactly what you’ve always dreamed of studying. If you can find an advisor who works on stuff you love plus you get along well, mazel tov. If you’re torn between Supercool Stuff and Terrific Person, choose Terrific Person every time.

What does this have to do with Fools? That they hear this Advice and think, “Yeah, that’s good advice…for people who are going to rely on their PI. Fortunately, I am smarter-n-shit and will do just fine in Supercool Lab.”

These people, many of whom are as book-smart as it gets, are the Fools. (And not Fools in a good, speaks-the-truth-to-King-Lear kind of way).

Recently two students from my grad program have left, or debated leaving, their Cool Stuff Labs. Both of them have spent 2+ years being miserable in their chosen labs. When these students were first years, I gave them the Advice. One of them was angry at me for denigrating the labs she had rotated in (to be fair, I may not have been totally tactful about it); the other clearly thought that this Advice was intended for stupid people.

So now I hear they’re unhappy, and considering switching labs late in the game. I feel sorry for them. I used to feel just awful about situations like this, and I would wring my hands and talk about the state of advising in our grad program, and how the students and faculty should work harder to keep people on track. And I still think we should, because these are terrific, hard-working, thoughtful scientists-in-training, and it’s a loss to all of us if they end up so miserable that they leave science altogether.

But I’ve also gotten a bit more philosophical about it. These people did get some good advice. I know, ‘cuz I gave it to them. And I wasn’t the only one.

Now, neither of these people, nor the many others I know who have made the same mistake, are actually terrible fools. They may have been guilty of hubris, or more likely just inexperience. (Often one and the same, no?) What I don’t know is whether that mistake was indicative of a significant flaw in judgment that would keep them from succeeding no matter what, or whether those people would have been happy and productive in another, more sympathetic lab.

I am inclined to think they would have succeeded in another lab, although I do suspect they needed to get this sort of mistake out of their systems. Most of all, I wish that they had taken more time between college and grad school--both to mature as scientists and to have a chance to make some mistakes before they arrived here and made such a big one. Because the essence of a foolish mistake is that it is one that could have been prevented.*

*For example, by taking my Advice.

scientiae-carnival

Oy

Last week I gave a paper draft to Grad Advisor. Her feedback went something like this: "I liked it, except for the words."

Back to the drawing board.....

Oh them ciggies, part two

DrugMonkey made an interesting comment on my post about the flap over cigarette manufacturer funding for a lung cancer researcher:

This knee-jerk reaction really perplexes me. We just got a round of this with the Edie Londen flap at UCLA too. There seems to be an element that thinks that any research support that derives from tobacco sales is bad, whether this might be a result of settlement monies to the state or a direct payment from PhillipMorris.

I'm not naive about the ways that companies might influence outcome. But the point should be to assess on a case by case basis whether in fact the research was affected by the funding source. Do you know the agreements by which the support was awarded to the researcher? How do you know that the researcher wasn't completely independent?

"will totally discredit"? Don't you see how arrogantly circular this is?

This foundation was set up apparently for early detection of lung cancer. I am having difficulty understanding how this, and the scientists area of research are negatively affected by the funding source.

I mean, what? Early detection of cancer might allow treatment / smoking discontinuation resulting in fewer nastiest-case-scenarios available to demonstrate how evil smoking is? oo, big win for tobacco there! is this the rationale for objecting to this situation?

I'm not sure if you had a chance to read the whole Times article or not, but the idea is that Dr. Henschke’s data make lung cancer sound "safer" by suggesting CT scans can detect it in early, curable stages.

If this were true, that would be terrific, for smokers and non-smokers alike, because we'd all have a hugely improved chance of surviving lung cancer. Of course, smokers get lung cancer at way higher rates than nonsmokers, so it's particularly good news for them. And in turn, for the cigarette companies, whose customer base will live longer, and perhaps grow larger as more people see lung cancer as an inconvenience, not a death sentence. That's why a tobacco company would plausibly be excited about funding Henschke's research....and in turn why Henschke might be lured to tilting her study interpretations favorably towards CT scanning as a solution for lung cancer.

I agree with the basic principle that it'd be nice if we could somehow look at people's data and results, and separate out the Tainted from the Pure-As-Driven-Snow. Unfortunately, as long-time journal club attendance has taught me, we as scientists are always capable of disagreeing about the accuracy of data even from theoretically unbiased scientists with no axes to grind. How are we supposed to police people for ciggie (or Viagra, or Prozac) tilted data? (Also, who's going to take on that job? Not only will they make enemies right and left, they themselves can't take any of this lucrative tobaccy money.....).

Because of these kinds of problems, cancer researchers are generally not supposed to take money from cigarette-funded groups:

“If you’re using blood money, you need to tell people you’re using blood money,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society. The society gave Dr. Henschke more than $100,000 in grants from 2004 to 2007, money it would not have provided had it known of Liggett’s grants, Dr. Brawley said. [From the NYT article]

I'm not sure why you find the idea that cigarette money discredits lung cancer research "arrogantly circular." It's true that some scientists can probably take that money and not let it affect their findings. But since it's so hard to distinguish good from bad from nobody-can-agree-which, I think the ACS's position of not funding anyone who is funded by tobacco money is reasonable. At the very least, Henschke is in trouble with them.

What's in my name

When Dr. Hyde and I got married, I faced a common question for progressive, matrimonially-inclined women: to change, or not to change? As astute readers have no doubt figured out, I chose to change my legal name, but keep my "maiden" (heh) name professionally. Thus at work I continue as Girlname X. Jekyll, while at home I am technically Girlname J. Hyde.

This choice came as surprise to many who know me. Because we travel in rarefied academic circles, vanishingly few women of our acquaintance even considered changing their names upon matrimony. That's an reactionary neanderthal symbol of marriage as ownership. Countless women fought very hard to show how this particular patriarchal holdover diminished the standing of married women by treating them as chattel.

However, thanks to the women who have already fought this fight, I no longer feel as though the only "feminist" option on the table is to keep my maiden name. To me, the fight about married names was more of a demonstration experiment, if you will. The point was to raise awareness of the insidious ways in which we devalue women. It wasn't really about your last name, per se.

Because anyway, my "maiden" name? That's my father's last name. So how am I undermining the patriarchy by keeping it? I know a lot of women, including many old-guard feminists, will disagree that the name is unimportant. But for my generation, I think that's shifting a little. Another grad student in my lab decided to do the same thing I did, for the same reasons. It's got some symbolism, but not so much that we felt owned by it. I'm unspeakably grateful to the women who fought this fight for giving me this option.

Why'd I choose the professional/personal route, rather than staying with Jekyll or changing wholesale to Hyde? Well, I felt I had to keep Jekyll at work. Not only have I already published with it, it is about 275 times more unique than Hyde, and PubMed is terrible with common names.

So why take Hyde at home? Dr. Hyde and I are planning on having children, one way or another, and Dr. Hyde prefers strongly that these (currently imaginary) children have his last name. I could have put up a fight about this, since why shouldn't they be little Jekylls, especially if they ever plan on growing up into pubmeddable scientists themselves?

But the thing is--feminism has accomplished a huge amount, and one of those things is that Dr. Hyde's respect for women, their choices, and their accomplishments, is absolute. I have never heard him say a single thing that disparaged or diminished women, or in any way indicated that he was likely to take them less seriously than men. I love him for this (as well as for many other reasons). So I decided not to fight the last-name thing for the prospective kids, because after all, it's window-dressing; I know without doubt that Dr. Hyde would treat his daughters as well as he treated his sons, so who cares what they're called?

And, in my own hidebound reactionary way, I wanted to have the same last name as the kids.

So that, in non-nutshell format, is why I chose what I did.

___________

From a practical standpoint, for curious readers, it has been a minor to moderate hassle. It would have been significantly easier to keep my maiden name wholesale, but doing the personal/professional split is not noticeably more difficult than taking Hyde wholesale would have been, either. And, there's a certain inner glee I derive from having a secret identity, in a superhero sort of way. Sure, you know me as Dr. Jekyll.....but wait til I pull out my driver's license! I'm a whole new person! It's possible that it requires a certain abnormal turn of mind to think this way.

If I remembered his last name, I would pubmed him

I'm amused by the posts at FSP and Dr Shellie on grad students who choose to go to more prestigious universities. They're not alone! Here's an approximate transcript of my dinner discussion with a visiting prospective grad student, whom we will call Eton, a few years ago:

Dr J: "Hi Eton, I'm Jekyll. I saw from our info sheet that you also went to my alma mater, Ivy! Welcome to our program here at Non-Ivy."
Eton: "Thanks. [some chitchat about Ivy]. So, can I ask you how you ended up choosing Non-Ivy?"
Dr J: "Well, it was really the depth and breadth of the research program. There are so many terrific researchers here in the Biology Sub-Sub-Field of my interest, and I felt confident from my interviews that there would be several people who would be good to work with...."blah blah blah, as I am a true Non-Ivy enthusiast.
Eton: "I guess what I was wondering was, how did you feel about going to a non-Ivy League school? I mean, all of my family members graduated from Ivy League schools, and if I told them that I was choosing to go to Non-Ivy instead of Harvard, they wouldn't really understand. I mean, Non-Ivy? Over Harvard?"
Dr J: [momentary pause, and regroup] "Well, for undergraduate educations it's certainly more prestigious to go to Harvard than to go here, but you have to keep in mind that graduate schools are not necessarily like that; the strength of the program can be higher at other institutions that have really focused on this biology subfield."
Eton: "I guess. Still though, I don't know if I can turn down Harvard."

At that point I sincerely hoped he would not, in fact, turn down Harvard.

The whole episode was disappointing to me because although I know that several people at my Ivy undergrad were snotty like that, I never hung out with them so I preferred to imagine they didn't exist (except for one outstandingly bad blind date frosh year, when I had to acknowledge their existence). We don't get a lot of grad applicants from my alma mater, so I was excited to meet this one. What an embarrassment he was.

Anyhow, he did indeed end up at Harvard, and I wish him well. As in, I wish that he falls in a well.

Eww eww eww eww eww

If you're working on a major disease which is popular for funding from both government and private sources, why, oh why, would you take money from the one group of people whose funds will totally discredit your work? The linked story is about a lung cancer researcher who did just that.

Do you suppose she thought to herself, Other people may be tainted by taking ciggie dollars, but I am smarter than that? I can see as how that would happen, but c'mon, we all know hubris is a classic Greek tragic flaw. Duh, avoid those!

But also shame on NEJM for not looking into this more closely. If authors disclose their financial conflicts, then shouldn't we, um, check those out before publishing their papers? What's the point in forcing people to declare their financial conflicts if we're not going to examine their meaning?

Just don't hire an illegal immigrant if you're running for public office

One of Nusslein-Volhard's reflections on the life of women scientists was that because women usually put in more "house/home" hours than men (whether it be on cooking, cleaning, or childcare), they are stressed more by science's monomaniacal focus. She provides an interesting solution, which is to give mini-grants specifically for house or child care to women scientists in a time crunch. She actually administers a fund for this.

Speaking as someone whose clothes are perpetually wrinkled because I don't fold my clean laundry, I applaud. However, her funds are limited to women scientists who have children, since they have the worst of the overscheduling burden.

Is this the best solution? Would those of you with young 'uns prefer to have some cash to take care of them and/or the laundry, so you can scamper back to lab? Or would you prefer to have some time off of work? I think it's laudable to support women in this style, but it'd be nice to have some mechanism in place for women who really just want to take 6 months off after acquiring a kid.

Nobelist reflections on women in science

Nusslein-Volhard describes her experiences

Also do click on the comments--both of the commenters (Ben Barres a female-to-male transgender who has spoken a lot about the sexism he is now immune to) make nice points. Eve Marder echoes FSP's recent complaint about how few women get invited to conferences, because of "knee-jerk" invitees from conference organizers.

Everybody's working for the weekend

A postdoc pal and I recently had a chat that must've ranked high on World's Mootest Discussions.

Both of us work regular hours during the week (say 8-6 ish), plus 5-10 hours on Saturday or Sunday.

What we were debating was, Saturday or Sunday?

I thought it was self-evident that one should work on Saturday, ideally from 9-3 or so, to get it out of the way so you can relax on Saturday night and all day Sunday. That's what Dr. Hyde and I do.

My friend was appalled. Sunday is the work day, she insisted. In her version, this is because during the lovely holiday of Saturday, you can at least entertain the possibility that you won't work on Sunday, thereby temporarily fostering the illusion of a two-day weekend (before of course crushing that dream by heading to work Sunday a.m.) If she were to work on Saturday, her entire Sunday would be clouded by the thought of work the next day.

In other words, yes, we had a 15-minute argument about whether it was better to work 6 days out of 7 or....a different 6 days out of 7.

When I later relayed this all to Dr. Hyde, his contribution was, "She's stupid. If you work on Sunday, then you can't drink on Saturday night." [thoughtful pause] "'Course, the way we do it, we can't drink Friday night."

At least not Czech beer.

What not to say

Lately our lab has had some contact with a junior professor at a different university. He did his postdoc in a BigName lab, and he was reasonably successful there (i.e. several publications in respectable if not BigShot journals).

Here are a few things he has said, during casual conversations, about his postdoc advisor (whom we will call Dr. Big):

"Well, I'm not sure you can believe a lot of the data out of Dr. Big's lab."

"Lots of Dr. Big's data looks good when he presents at conferences, but you know, he just lies."

"If we were to be honest about author contributions, Dr. Big's contribution would be listed as 'wrote a lot of angry emails'. Or maybe 'landlord'."

Now, I am perfectly aware that such PIs exist. This professor is not the only person I've heard be so vindictive about a previous (or current) advisor.

However, the other people who are willing to say such things about their (ex-)advisors are usually either very good friends of mine, or drunk, or both.

It seems to me like Jr Prof is being more than a little stupid about the effect of his words. While it may cause me to doubt Dr. Big, it certainly causes me to doubt Jr Prof's ability to keep his trap shut. I'm not advocating for a code of silence, but don't statements like these come across as a wee bit intemperate, even if true? Accusing Dr. Big of lying is a serious stab at his scientific integrity.

Then again, if everyone only says polite things about their ex-advisors, we will continue to have jerks, and even liars, running the show. Perhaps more transparency would make science a better place. I don't think Jr Prof is going about it quite the right way. But then, I don't know what the right way is.

And here I thought the problem was the burping

This article jolted me out of my boozy post-dinner stupor. Some guy did a study showing that beer consumption negatively correlates with scientific publication records.

Now, before you leap up in alarm and perhaps knock over your brewski, take heart in the knowledge that the author conducted this research by surveying his fellow Czech ornithologists. I don't know about you, but I feel confident that the beer/prowess curve looks a little different among my species of biologist. (Hope I'm not giving up pseudonymity here to reveal that I am neither Czech nor a birder.)

The author, Tomas Grim (all of the jokes about Czech ornithologists, and people named Grim, are left as an exercise to the reader), leaves open the question of whether this beer-to-bad-pubmed-record correlation is causal: do you get bad data because you drink, or do you drink because you get bad data? A veritable chicken-egg question for all of us.

Anyhow, the point is this article really opened my eyes. Starting now, I'm swearing off Czech beer.

Nature vs....wait, what's the other bit? Suture?

I was feeling down about my science earlier. Even though there's some reasonable external evidence that I'm doing decent work, I still sometimes compare myself to the very best people out there and end up focusing on where I fall short.

Usually when I get in these moods, the tune in my head goes something like, "Other people are just more born scientists. They love science more than you. They think of experiments when they are taking hikes in the mountains. When you are taking hikes in the mountains, you think about not tripping."

I'm aware this is a variant of imposter syndrome. (Also, perhaps, of some problems with coordination.) What's interesting to me is that in these moods I often focus on the degree to which my peers and superiors seem born with an aptitude for experiments.

After 5+ years of grad school, it's clear to me of course that while a certain amount of scientific aptitude can be inborn (as it must be for this guy), much more of it is a matter of training. My sub-sub-field of biology, like most, involves a lot of practice at both the techniques and the intellectual approach. I'm now quite good at troubleshooting problems, not because of any inborn arcane know-how, but because I trained for these skillz. Yeah, molarity calculations!

So there's no reason to think that whatever my scientific deficiencies may be to date, I can't train to overcome them, too. Yet when I'm feeling low in the water, I tend to think I was born without a scientific bent, and that I can never overcome that.

I don't know if this is a common aspect of impostor syndrome--the notion that one's defects are insuperably ingrained--but I hope that every time I can identify it, I can fight it.

Er, unless the ability to talk oneself out of a stupid mindset is genetically ingrained.

N = 6

Oh the magic of statistics. X and Y now both significant. Glory, fame, publication, etc etc.

(side note for stats junkies: although I am cranky about having needed to get this last N, I did take the opportunity to learn a bit more about the paired t-test vs the Wilcoxon paired test, and when to use each of them. Turns out any time it would be appropriate to use the paired t-test, you can also use the Wilcoxon, since it's ok to use nonparametric tests (Wilcoxon) even on normally distributed data. I knew this general statistical principle already, but still, the voice of my stats teacher rings in my ear: "You can't just do your stats a couple of different ways and pick the one that's most significant!!!" Which is just what I did. Screw the paired t-test, it's still yapping about p = 0.06.

Of course, every biologist I know does stats this way, because statisticians aren't biologists so what do they know? Also there's no way to find out, with an n of 6, if your data are normally distributed or not, so it doesn't seem all that illegitimate to try the parametric and non-parametric tests, unless you have really good reason to believe that your data shouldn't be examined with parametric stats.

But maybe there are biologists out there who actually follow the protocol of evaluating their experiments beforehand to decide on the N they'll need for statistical success, and sticking to it? I sure don't know any of them, but if you do that, I'd be interested to hear about it.)

Schadenfreude, or my second favorite German word

A friend and I were recently discussing retractions, prompted in part by this article in the NYT. My friend had emailed the article to me, and I said that I’d already seen the retraction in Nature; and for that matter, that I always read the retractions in all journals whose table of contents shows up in my inbox, regardless of whether the paper is in my subfield of biology or not.

My friend was sort of appalled by this news. “You mean, you read retractions even if they’re not relevant to you?”

Sure, I said, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically.

First, I’ll admit straight off, Schadenfreude, particularly when this is a pal-reviewed journal.

Second, it’s nice to see the journal system working more or less as intended, despite the constant moans from journalists about how the peer-review system is broken, and nobody can get an interesting grant funded any longer, etc etc. Basically, a paper was found to be gravely in error, and the authors did the right thing (whether of their own volition or under institutional pressure (in the Buck paper instance, of their own volition, clearly)) and retracted it. Huzzah, more or less.

Third, and most importantly, the retraction statements are a little slice of scientific life. If I weren’t busy with my real job, I’d compile a list of all retraction statements in top journals in the last 10-20 years, and write a paper about what those retractions tell us about how science happens. Scientific journalists and historians, take note--I’m just giving these ideas away for free!

Sometimes a paper is retracted because nobody can reproduce the results, as appears to be the case with the Buck paper. This is scary because it suggests either major malfeasance on the part of one or more of the authors, or some sort of inexplicable lab-specific mystery. At any rate, it’s good when these papers get retracted so no one keeps trying the same things over and over.

Sometimes a paper is retracted because the authors realize they made a grave error. These accounts can be horrifying, or illuminating, and there can sometimes be a little shiver of there-but-for-the-grace-of-double-checking-my-solutions-go-I. And occasionally they are just plain funny (though presumably not for the authors), such as this one.

If you’re not a biologist, the rough translation of what these poor authors wrote is:
We found a bit of RNA that inhibited a gene called Hes1.
We did a look-up in GenBank and thought that meant Hes1, hairy-enhancer-of-split.
Turns out that gene names can be tricky.
There’s another gene, also abbreviated Hes1, meaning homolog of human ES1.
We wrote a whole paper about hairy-enhancer-of-split.
Guess what our RNA actually inhibits?
Sorry.


Fave German word: Fahrvergnugen, duh.

I thought I was done with these experiments: an elegy

Conditions: Before drug; after drug (within-cell comparison)
Parameters measured: X, Y
N=5 [and a hard-won 5, at that]

X increases in all cells
Y increases in all cells

Parameter X, Wilcoxon paired test: 0.039
Huzzah! Glory, publication, and scientific knowledge are mine!

Parameter Y, Wilcoxon paired test: 0.06
Boo. Boo. Many times boo.


Seriously though, how is this possible? Now I have to get another n, despite the fact that it is obvious to any clod that Y increases following drug application. Corollary question: how is it possible that I love math, but hate stats? (especially those which seem designed to thwart the earnest scientist....i.e. all of them).

I couldn't help but notice you're interested in biology too!

The other day I had lunch with a good friend who is about to graduate. She is considering both academic postdocs and industry, and to get a toe into industry positions she attended a small local conference/workshop on industry.

She made many useful contacts, although the response was overwhelmingly: **Economy sucks, FDA isn’t approving anything, no one’s hiring. But here, I’ll introduce you to my friend at this other company. Repeat from **

My friend mentioned that she made a real effort to be ingratiating at this workshop, and it paid off; she now has lots of business cards from people who aren’t hiring anybody. We discussed the fact that all successful PIs we know are capable of being friendly and networking at conferences, even though in real life many of them are freaks who appear to look upon humanity with a disturbing lack of interest, or even basic comprehension.

Then my friend said, “All the great PIs just turn it on when they go to a conference, but how come no one ever tells us that we should learn to do that, too?”

This taps into the suggestions Jenny F Scientist made about what else your advisor should teach you besides science. So maybe this should be made explicit, too:

While you may in real life be a grumpy, laser-focused misanthrope, when attending a conference or other opportunity to meet people in your field, put some genuine energy into meeting people, getting interested in what they have to say, and conveying your enthusiasm about your own work, too.

A cynic might read that as: brown-nose, suck up, and self-promote. There’s a fine line. But the word genuine should be a tip-off. If you can’t summon real excitement about science, yours and others’, you are probably in the wrong line of work anyhow. At least that's what I think...

Condensation

Somewhat to my surprise, my grad advisor has given the green light for me to write up some of our data for submission to a pal-reviewed journal. I am excited to give this a shot, although I am not particularly confident we will succeed.

Today I checked out the journal website and found that the abstract is limited to 150 words. 150 words?!? I can't write a Post-It note that short. My first draft (i.e. the thesis write-up of these data) used >250. And I've gotten more data since then.

This evening I have been slowly and painfully whittling it down. Some observations:

1) You can only use two sentences to set up the problem your data address. For a long time I was stuck on three sentences, but then decided gaily that the time for hand-holding my reader was over. You'd better have some basic background knowledge or you are sunk.

2) My default writing style is full of digressions and asides. 150 words puts an end to that.

3) I have had to remove all of my qualifying adverbs. "These data are likely due to blah blah blah" becomes "These data are due to...". "The kinetics of the response were predominantly unaffected by this drug" becomes "This drug did not affect the kinetics of the response." I have heard that women are more prone than men to qualifying their data in this manner, and that this gets us into trouble because we come across as wishy-washy and irresolute. So I guess you could say that I have masculinized my abstract. Predominantly.

3b) As a corollary to (3), my data now sound better because I don't acknowledge that some things are only mostly true. So the abstract, which originally read like it was destined for a trade journal, now sounds like it damn well deserves to be in pal-reviewed journal. And now I know why papers in this journal always sound so unreasonably authoritative. Word limits.

What you don't kill, you learn a lot about

Yesterday GradStudent came in with the good news that he just received a grant that will pay his stipend and tuition. Hurray! Our Advisor responded with many congratulations, and handshakes, and then a thoughtful, “And good thing you got it because Dr. Jekyll just broke the ______[insert $15K piece of equipment here].”

Actually it was slightly broken before I ever laid hands on it, but now it’s much more broken, largely due to my efforts to fix it.

It was all in good cheer, though, insofar as a joke like that can be. I am lucky in that another Advisor (call him AdvisorB) had tried to help me fix the equipment. His repair methods were aggressive, and the initial result was no improvement. I then proceeded to try realigning a piece he had taken out and put back in, with the result that an interior lamp started shutting off. So, slightly more broken. I proceeded to solve that problem by removing and reseating the piece that AdvisorB had acted on, which certainly fixed the lamp on/off issue.

However, now the entire piece of equipment malfunctions, in the sort of way that may require it to be sent back to the company.

The company in question is in Germany. Insert Advisor, holding his head in his hands and muttering about time and money, here.

Fortunately, I spent yesterday trying a replacement piece of equipment, which ended up working fabulously. So much so that Advisor high-fived me and proceeded to wax enthusiastic about the new equipment. Which, incidentally, cost no more than $500.

Phew.

But the added bonus is that I am now pretty darn expert about the original piece of equipment, due to my repeated efforts to rearrange its innards according to my needs. This knowledge will come in handy….should the equipment ever recover to the point where it is usable once more.

The principal is your.....

I heard a funny description of the Nature/Science/Cell/Nature ____ journals at a conference recently. A woman there referred to that cohort as "pal-reviewed" journals.

I.e., while "peer-review" describes the goal, in fact since editors at those journals will only send a manuscript to be reviewed by other people who have published there, who in turn will likely give the most favorable views to people whose work they already know and respect (their pals), who in turn will do the same for them, the net result is pal-review.

'S funny 'cause it's true. Even without entertaining conspiracy theories, it's easy to understand that reviewers are sometimes (always?) influenced by their knowledge of the article's authors, and their opinion about the quality of science generally performed by that lab. It's a heuristic--if you trust that Dr. X is a smart scientist, then you don't have to pore over each detail of the methods as carefully, since Dr. X is a smart scientist.

This leads to a lot of journal clubs where we get to tear apart the latest Nature paper, leave it quivering on the floor, and then feel good about ourselves for being smarter, more thoughtful, more rigorous than Dr. X. Maybe it works out for the best after all.