Today, I taught Advisor that a Flipper has holes for 0.5 mL tubes on the other side.

A heated discussion over at DrugMonkey/PhysioProf's place about the value of the PI still being able to do experiments.

As I've said before, I don't think a PI who ditches benchwork for grant-writing is making a mistake. I'm generally in agreement with PhysioProf that if your unique talent in the lab is grant- and paper-writing, then you shouldn't be spending your time doing work that could be farmed out to others. I have a great deal of respect for GradAdvisor, even though she never did benchwork while I was in the lab.

HOWEVER. One thing that helped me maintain that respect through some angry stretches was that if I was having problems with my microscope images, she could pop her head in and in 5 minutes twiddle the right knobs the right way to improve my images far past what I had accomplished in the last frustrating two hours.

Which is to say, go ahead and abandon the bench, all ye PIs who readeth here. Your talents are better used elsewhere.

But don't forget that your minions, laboring over in situ hybridization, will one day wonder why they take orders from someone who has never shown herself capable of pipetting.

IVF 2: Acupuncture

The nurse who walked us through the whole plan for in vitro fertilization (IVF) mentioned that acupuncture might be helpful in increasing our (well, my) odds of getting preggo. What's that all about?

Methods: I used PubMed (a search engine of published scholarly articles in the biomedical sciences) to find primary research articles and a couple of commentaries. I read 6 of these, in various states of ebriation. In order to maintain objectivity, I significantly suppressed snarky thoughts about acupuncture (p less than 0.0000001).

Results: First off, few published articles address acupuncture and IVF. PubMed gave me 20-odd hits for "ivf, acupuncture". Many of these hits were irrelevant. This alone indicates a line of research of such infancy that I would not use it to make any medical decisions.

Second, and I'm going to say this in practically every blog entry on infertility treatments, infertility is not a unitary syndrome. I can think of no other medical problem in which patients would be lumped together regardless of whether their problem was hormonal (such as polycystic ovarian syndrome), accidental (damage to the tubes?), unexplained (your eggs just don't implant....), natural (your eggs are getting old), or even non-existent--since, after all, male factors alone explain 20-30% of infertility.

This seems crazy. I can imagine many reasons why a woman with hormonal problems might respond differently to a given treatment than a woman whose husband had a bad soccer accident. Yet they're lumped together for the purposes of this and other studies on IVF. It's clear why: it's hard to recruit enough patients for a clinical trial otherwise. Also, so many fertility problems are unexplained or derive from multiple causes that it'd be a headache to separate them out. But still.

We'll leave that aside for now. What was I reading? Most everything published on the topic is in the journal Fertility and Sterility. I don't know its reputation, although I have some opinions now after reading its publications.

Ok, on to the meat. The original observation was published by Paulus et al in 2002. In a study of 160 patients randomly assigned to acupuncture or control, where control means that the patients just lay quietly, the pregnancy rate was 1.5 x higher in the acupunctured patients (43% vs 26%). Acupuncture was carried out twice, both the same day as the embryo transfer.

Well, that's quite a big increase in pregnancy rates! Naturally, people wanted to follow up. In the May 2006 issue of F&S, three groups published their findings: 2 found significant increases in pregnancy rates following acupuncture, and a third found an increase in pregnancy rates that, while large (50%), did not reach significance.

Let's break these studies down. First, all three were careful to assign patients randomly to the acupuncture vs control groups, with the happy result that in all papers, the characteristics of women in the two groups were highly similar (age, # of previous IVF attempts, # of good embryos retrieved/implanted, etc etc). Good.

What happened to patients in the "control" groups? In a study of 225 total patients, Dieterle et al compared acupuncture to "placebo acupuncture," in which half of the patients were given actual acupuncture but at sites other than those indicated for improving pregnancy odds. This seems like the best way to evaluate whether targeted acupuncture itself is helpful (as opposed to general relaxation associated with the procedure). The "real" acupuncture group had pregnancy rates of 28%, while the placebo acu group got pregnant at a 14% rate.

Those results look great, but the authors acknowledge a strange fact: the average rates (in Germany) for pregnancy success after IVF are ~23%. They do not report the average rate of success at the clinic they studied, which is unfortunate because clinics have highly varying success rates. But if you assume that their clinic was representative, then the study raises the worrisome possibility that real acupuncture did very little, but acupuncture in the wrong spot diminished pregnancy rates. That should give anyone pause. Again, though, we can't know if that's likely or not because they don't report expected success rates at their location.

Ok, what about the other two studies? Westergaard et al have two acupuncture groups, one of which gets one acupuncture treatment, one of which gets two; plus one control group, which gets no treatment at all. This study will not necessarily tell us anything about acupuncture per se, as opposed to stress-reducing effects of the treatment, but at least they're not putting pins in the wrong places. This group finds an increase in pregnancy rates that reaches significance in the one-acu group (from 24% to 39%), but does not reach significance in the two-acu group (36% pregnant). For no apparent reason, all of the pregnancy increases came in women under the age of 37 (the median age of their patients).

The third study, by Smith et al, used "sham" acupuncture as a control, by which they mean that needles were put in slightly "off" locations, about an inch or two away from the traditional sites. Also, sham needles were used. There were 3 sessions of acupuncture or sham acupuncture, and this time the increase in pregnancy rates (from 18 to 28%) did not reach statistical significance.

These studies are overall encouraging regarding acupuncture. All show an increase in pregnancy rates following acupuncture in the "right" locations, and two of the studies even give a hint that the precise acupuncture locations, as opposed to the procedure itself, are important.

The only major concern I would raise is the possibility of publication bias. That is, if your study shows a significant effect it will be much more likely to see the light of day than if your conclusions are negative or murky. This concern was also raised in a commentary at the time by Domar. She claims that the original group (Paulus et al) presented follow-up data at a meeting, this time comparing acupuncture to acupuncture with sham needles; there was no significant increase in associated pregnancy rates (43% for acu, 37% for sham). However, these data remain unpublished, making it impossible for us to evaluate the study. How many other such studies are unpublished, Domar asks?

It wasn't a rhetorical question. Two years later, Domar et al published a paper showing absolutely no increase in pregnancy rates between acupuncture and quiet resting groups (31% acu, 33% resting). I.e., an effort to replicate the original Paulus study failed. The authors do not have any persuasive explanations, although they helpfully point out "It is notable that this is the first study from the United States and perhaps there is something to the expectations or care that differs." (Right, because here in the US we're known for our skeptical attitude towards all things mystical.)

Conclusions
1) Is acupuncture on or around embryo transfer safe? These data all suggest that it is, as long as you don't get punctured in contraindicated locations.

2) Does any aspect of acupuncture lead to increased pregnancy rates for women undergoing IVF? The jury's still out. As I said above, I personally would avoid making medical decisions based on such a small number of studies (although, of course, not deciding means not getting acupuncture, which itself is a decision...). To my surprise, I'm reasonably impressed with the evidence in favor of acupuncture, simply because four distinct groups have seen some form of positive result. However, I remain concerned about publication bias.

The other thing is that all these studies exhibit quite low success rates for IVF overall. Partly this may be due to the age of the patients, which was on average high (37). The clinic Dr Hyde and I are using boasts of 67% success rates for one cycle for women under 35, though. I'd like to see what a similar acupuncture study would find in this group.

3) Am I going to get acupuncture? Not for the first round, at least. There's already going to be enough novel experiences involving needles that I feel no urge to add another. But if you want to get acupuncture, go ahead. I will reconsider acupuncture if the first IVF cycle fails, if for no other reason than that I would want to do something.

4) How might acupuncture work in this instance, if it does work? The hypothesis put forward in several papers is that the sites needled aid in blood flow to the uterus, thereby diminishing uterine contractions and aiding in implantation. Bummer, though, that Paulus et al published another article specifically evaluating uterine contractions and found no effects of acupuncture on them. So the mechanism of the effect, if the effect is real, is a mystery.

IVF 1: Introduction

I started this blog in part because Dr Hyde and I are currently grappling with infertility, and because it was awkward, to say the least, to talk about this with my friends or colleagues, most of whom are either utterly uninterested in reproduction or Malthusian-level fecund.

Initially, I looked at various websites (iVillage, etc.) with infertility message boards, on the theory that others in our condition would provide the best support network. However, after some grim hours spent reading those bulletin boards, I decided they were not going to be the answer. For starters, all the participants post in a special lingo that reads like a cross between your uninterpretable insurance bill and trucker shorthand. E.g., "DH and I have been ttc since May 05, 2 IUI, but both BFN, so now we're trying IVF with ICSI, got three nice embies injected yesterday!"

I have never in my life wanted to refer to an embryo as an embie, and am not about to start now.

Also, I have never thought that what the internet was really missing was a special emoticon for "My miscarried baby/ies are now winged angel(s) in Heaven." If you should care to see what this emoticon looks like, google it. I would prefer to take a heated horseshoe to my visual cortex than to carry that image with me.

This is not to disparage those who use these bulletin boards. It helps them--fabulous and huzzah. But what I need is more like the "Sarcastic cranky infertile atheist scientists" message board, and oddly enough, I have not found it.

So this is the intro to a series of posts for the critical thinker with infertility. Dr Hyde and I had our first consult with the in vitro fertilization (IVF, aka test tube baby) doctor last week, and we were told a lot of things we should and shouldn't do to help our putative offspring-making. However, as with many bits of doctor's advice, what we were told was based on a few badly-done research studies. I'm going to take some time to look up the primary literature and tell you what I think about it, and whether or not I buy into the advice.

I should say upfront:
I have ZERO medical training. You should NEVER take my advice over your doctor's, nor should you EVER take my advice without asking your doctor about it.

First up: Our nurse said, "There's some reason to think that acupuncture helps people who are undergoing IVF, so if you want, we can refer you to some people who do that."

Say what? Stay tuned.

Reason #538 I don't miss high school

I was thinking, for no real reason other than a comment over at FSP's, about an incident in my high school physics class.

There were perhaps 36 or 38 of us in this honors physics class at a math-and-science oriented high school. I was within the top three or so (I can't remember exactly which of my very bright acquaintances was in this class....Pretty sure one of them was our salutatorian, and he and another one or two guys went off to do math-y things at Harvard or similar).

Anyhow, my point is that I was competing with the best of them. Also in this class was a boy we shall call Ian, for that was his name. I had a crazy crush on Ian. He was cool, he was sly, he was daring, he was cute in an indie fashion, etc etc. I knew he was waaaay out of my league. I was nerdy, I was unduly respectful of authority, and my idea of a daring fashion purchase was Doc Martens. In any case, Ian had a girlfriend, in this same physics class, no less.

One day our physics teacher announced that we would all have to do short physics projects, for which we would team up in pairs. The project was due some N weeks in the future.

N minus 2 weeks later, Ian came up to me at lunch. "Hey, Jekyll, I was wondering if you didn't have a partner for that physics thing yet, and if so if maybe we could partner up?" (God he was adorable.)

I swooned. In my infatuation, I believed that Ian had a reciprocal unspoken crush on me. Screw the girlfriend. He loved me! Me!

I was oblivious to the obvious: Ian's grades in physics were nowhere near mine, and he figured I'd be a gullible target in my dreamy-eyed state--I would do the whole project, and he'd get the A.

Anyhow, I'd already partnered up with another friend in the class (who, come to think of it, also had low grades....) so I regretfully had to turn him down. My diary from the time records a long, pained entry in which I imagine that I could have been Ian's new girlfriend if only I hadn't already had a partner for the stupid physics project.

It took me years to figure out what had actually been going on.

Took years more to learn that some boys truly liked me for being smart, and not because they needed help with their homework.

What I'm doing for Memorial Day

Juniorprof has a great post up about his grandfather's service in WWII.

There's also an article in the Times (from the archives) about how nowadays, Memorial Day is more often a day for picnics than for actually, like, remembering our veterans' and troops' sacrifices.

Both of my grandfathers served--one in WWII, one in Korea. Neither of them will talk much, if at all, about those times. After their respective services, one of them ran a laundry and worked hard to send his four children off to better lives; the other taught math and ditto. They both succeeded.

So what am I doing for Memorial Day? Well, honestly, I don't feel comfortable doing any of the things that might be most appropriate to celebrate--sending care packages to Iraq/Afghanistan? Visiting local military cemetery, or VA? Other?

What I am doing is working. And you know what? Since your tax dollars pay my salary, I like to think I'm giving back to my country by working hard on a day that most people spend barbecuing. Thanks, grandfathers.

Mood swing

I've spent the last few weeks trying to optimize some experiments, and this week, jackpot! I got the first n=2 I'll need for one critical finding of my project. I was delighted, Advisor was thrilled, and everyone congratulated me on getting traction on these difficult experiments.

This weekend, though, some depression has set in. Odd though it sounds, I harbor some resentment about how happy this week made me. The previous couple of weeks were frustrating, full of sort of aimless troubleshooting, and it's still unclear whether anything I did actually improved my experimental setup or if things "just started working" as they sometimes do.

What I resent is how dependent I am on getting data to be happy. I mean, I'm reasonably happy to head into lab most days, I like my co-workers and my advisor, I find experiments interesting, and I'm usually able to shake off a particularly bad day with a beer or two. Still, though, if two or three weeks go by without tangible progress (preferably figure-ready data, although preliminary data or equipment fixing count too), I'm depressed.

What I'm trying to say is that there are times when I wish I had a job that didn't leave me feeling worthless anytime there's a dearth of apparent progress.

Then I usually get some more data, cheer up, and think that science is grand after all.

They don't write them like they used to.

I am reading an old monograph first published in 1928. Advisor lent it to me saying that he thought I would find it interesting.

Despite the old-fashioned language, it's a pleasure to read, both because it gives me a picture of biology research in 1928, and because I see the origin of so much of research now, 80 years later.

My favorite bit comes at the end of a paragraph in which the author brings together data from disparate areas of the body to draw the conclusion that they operate on similar principles. He finishes,

There is nothing very startling in this conclusion, but it is satisfactory to have reached it.

You don't often see that kind of understatement in today's hyperbolic papers, where every phenomenon is novel, and every conclusion striking and unexpected.

Overheard

PI, to another PI (in a public space; this was not eavesdropping):

"Look at this terrible abstract that Nature X sent me. They want me to review the paper. I said no. I don't want to spend my time reading any paper this stupid.

[The abstract did sound soul-crushingly boring.--Jekyll]

"Also, my policy from here on out is that I only have to review as many papers per year as I send out for review. That's what my fair burden is. So this year I will only review two or three papers total, since that's how many reviews my lab will likely solicit this year. And this [indignant gesture towards computer] certainly won't be one of them."

Archiving PDFs

We have internet! After paying a mere $15 to the cable modem company for the privilege of installing it ourselves (rather than $55 to have a service person visit), two phone calls to said cable company to troubleshoot the connection, and one close examination of our residence to find the well-hidden cable inlet (inside a cabinet; this might not have been so difficult had there not been three decoy cables in other locations), we are once again riding the tidal wave of misinformation.

Two weeks ago, Nature had an article about PDF archiving (you'll need a subscription to read it). They pointed to the program Papers; comments (which you can read w/o subscription) also pointed to various other solutions: google desktop, Sente, Zotero, Mac Spotlight, etc.

The commenter that made me laugh the most was the one who said he uses mind mapping software. I thought this was a joke until I googled it.

To date I have not bothered keeping PDFs on my computer, for some of the reasons listed in the article--it's impossible to come up with a naming system that is both consistent and consistently useful; hard to organize, etc. Also for another reason, which is that I much prefer reading paper than computer screens, so if I'm just going to print the paper out anyhow, what's the point in indexing it all complicated-like on my computer?

However, I can see the advantage of being able to organize and search through pdfs, since I'm quite bad at remembering papers I've read in any but the haziest form ("You know, that group, I think they're in Canada somewhere, they did something where they looked at the floogly-flugs, or maybe it was at the poogly-plugs, now I'm not sure, but the result was that they changed during development, only now I don't remember if they increased or decreased"). Also, mind-mapping dude's comment about attaching ideas to articles made some goofy sense to me.

I have a reasonably good organization system for printed-out papers, I think. Papers from PIs I'm familiar with are filed in a folder under the PI's name. Papers from unfamiliar groups, or papers on topics that I'm not very invested in, get filed in a folder with a topic name ("Poogly-plugs"). Before filing away the papers, however (and this is the only labor-intensive step), I import their citations into Endnote. If a paper is filed under the lead PI's name, no problem; if it's going to be filed under Poogly-plugs, then I type that in to one of the Endnote fields. When I'm trying to find a paper, I can just check Endnote to see if I have it, and if so where it's filed.

I'm happy with this set-up, because once every few months or so I have a day where I just can't motivate to do "real" work, so I grab my stack of accumulated unfiled papers, put them into Endnote, and file.

Dr. Hyde, in contrast, keeps an extensive archive of PDFs on his laptop. He doesn't have a good search solution (but he has a waaay better memory than I do....). I'm thinking about whether it'd be valuable to do something like that, for better browsing/indexing/linking/brainstorming purposes. Any thoughts?

How can it be?

How is it possible that Jon Stewart, a comedian, has more sensible and rational interviews than any other anchor I know?

There's two parts to this uncut interview with Doug Feith. It's respectful, hard-hitting, and occasionally funny. It's also outstandingly informative and well-reasoned.

Part 1 (which then links to part 2).

Sorry for bloggy silence--our free Wifi off the neighbors has gone password protected. We're getting a cable modem, so I should be back soon.

!!!!!Fourteenty!!!!

I have just been invited to give a short talk at an upcoming summer conference!

(Mine was "selected" from submitted abstracts, although because I doubted this approach would garner me a speaking slot, I leaned on GradAdvisor to write an email to the conference organizer encouraging him to select me, which she did and he did.)

Emotions:
1) Happy happy happy!
2) Vomitorious anxiety.

I know there are people out there who delight in public speaking, who waltz to the podium with confidence and joy in their hearts, but those people are mysteries to me. I dread it. I have clammy palms right now thinking about it. Several days before the talk, my stomach will start churning when I think about it. Hours before the talk, there will be so much adrenaline in my bloodstream that the talk, delivered in a squeaky wiggly register, will pass in a haze for me, as will the rest of the day. (This was my experience at my thesis defense, although people who attended assured me that I didn't come across as particularly nervous. Still, that was a home audience, not like this Important Conference of Nature Paperers. Also, at my defense I calmed down a bit after 10-15 min in, while this talk will be all of 10' itself, not leaving me much window....)

You might ask, Dr. Jekyll, if giving talks scares you so much, why are you such a bonehead as to apply--nay, to petition--to speak at this conference? Well, success in science is (beyond the whole labwork thing) partly dependent on publicizing your work at seminars. So I need to start getting myself out there, and what's more I need to overcome talk anxiety.

Also, I have a cool story and I want the whole field to hear about it. I'd skywrite it, if I didn't think the graph legends would lose a little clarity.

So. I have a few months to prep the talk (10 min) and near-memorize the spiel. What advice do you have for alleviating talk anxiety terror?

Fessing up

DrdrA has an interesting discussion going about management mistakes she's made, and what she's hoping to improve. She's challenging readers to come up with their own--shall we say--opportunities for improvement.

I'm an early postdoc, so I haven't managed many people yet, but I was basically in charge of a rotation student who ended up joining GradLab--I thought up her rotation project, taught her what she'd need to know to pursue it, wrote code for some acquisition and analysis, helped her over the rough spots of analysis, and, once she joined the lab, helped her prioritize follow up experiments.

She was/is an exemplary grad student, so happily I wasn't required to use super-fantabulous management skills. I would say the biggest mistake I made with her was to be scared to manage her. Partly this may have been due to the fact that we were both grad students, and therefore I didn't always feel comfortable telling her what to do. But I see myself making this same error with others--I think they're screwing up, but if they resist my advice then I just back off.

I don't know if I'm just scared of the conflict that might result from pressing my case, or if I'm not yet at home being the one with Authoriteh! or what. Anyhow, the end result is that I get annoyed at the person I'm managing for continuing to mess up, instead of addressing the issue head-on as I should. I'll work on this.....thanks for the prodding, drdrA.

In the same line of self-improvement, BugDoc says:

An area where I could seriously improve would be in figuring out how to best get manuscripts written quickly in a manner that allows grad students to get some experience in writing, but doesn’t require me to rewrite everything. Suggestions welcome!

My suggestion: once the MS bones are in place, sit down with the student and go over it paragraph by paragraph, explaining what you think needs redoing and why. Be as explicit as possible. This will take hours and hours, but it's way more educational for the student than if you rewrite it yourself. However, I'm quite curious how other PIs write papers with their students; I've only experienced one way.

Things I learned in grad school that aren't about science, Part Two: You and Your PI

Many students entering grad school are fresh out of college, or mostly so, and have had little experience with a full-time boss. If you are one of these students, I am here to tell you that your professional relationship with your PI is the single most important factor in your success in graduate school. Forthwith, some thoughts.

Earning your PI’s respect is not like impressing your boss at whatever temp jobs got you through college, where you were likely the smartest person around and as long as you showed up on time, you were a star employee. It is also not like working 15 hrs/week in a lab as part of your senior project. In that job, nobody actually expected you to accomplish jack. Undergrads are considered amazingly productive if they carry out a single experiment unaided. Grad school is different. So don’t assume that the skills that got you here are all you’ll ever need.

Work under the assumption that your PI cares about basic professionalism: be on time to lab meetings (and stay awake during them!); work at least 9-5 unless it’s abundantly clear that your PI is fine with your slouching in at 11; let Advisor know if you’ll be out of lab for more than a few hours; etc etc. The lovely thing about academia is that many advisors don’t give a rat’s ass about any of these things. The bad thing about academia is you won’t know which ones they don’t care about until you get them wrong. So start out on a good foot.

Different advisors care about different things. Some care about regular hours in lab. Some care about lab meeting participation. Some care that you work to understand the literature before formulating an experimental plan, while some prefer you dive in on a preset project. You will need to understand and adopt your advisor’s values, at least outwardly. This sounds conniving, but it’s not really. Time and again, I’ve heard students complain that their advisor is stupidly harping about X (where X = making attractive graphs for lab meeting, or keeping your bench clean, or whatever), and how come Advisor is being such a hard-ass? You can plan to run your own lab with your own obscure set of rules, but for now, you should tailor your presentation to your advisor’s preferences. Yes, your advisor may be silly to care so much about graphical quality for freaking lab meeting. But the two extra hours to improve your graphs is two hours well spent, if it means Advisor will pay more attention to your data. Complain all you like to your friends, but don’t imagine that their sympathy means you can ignore Advisor’s odd demands.

All PIs care about data production. Most grad students know this already, so I hesitated to address it here, but in fact I’ve known rotation students who were super-fantastic literature geeks, full of smart and thoughtful questions, but who rarely bothered themselves with, like, experiments. Guess who doesn’t get invited to join the lab? Spend time with the literature and work to synthesize the important questions of your field, but not to the exclusion of experiments. Duh.

Most PIs would rather see some crappy data than none at all. Crappy data is evidence that you’re working. Crappy data may give you or your PI some ideas about how to refine the techniques or question. Crappy data can tell you something about what’s possible. Zero data accomplishes none of these things. Some PIs are super-perfectionists, but for the most part, especially with younger grad students, PIs would far rather see data from three unusable experiments than from zero perfect experiments.

When you get hints that you and your PI are not getting along, it is up to you to improve your relationship. Some PIs, when disappointed with your performance, will say as much outright; many, many others will give indirect clues:

E.g., “Postdoc Q has a dirty bench, so why is Advisor telling me I have to clean mine, which is less messy?” First, Postdoc Q has likely already earned her PI’s respect via data production. You have not yet done so, so you can’t get away with skanky gel boxes. Also, your PI is likely annoyed with you and taking it out in another, easy-to-address, domain.

How to deal with it? If possible, talk with someone trustworthy in lab who has a good relationship with your advisor. They may have some ideas about what’s rubbing Advisor the wrong way, and how you can fix things. If no such person exists, you may want to approach Advisor directly. This can be dangerous with really passive-aggressive PIs, but you knew better than to pick someone like that anyhow, right? Choose a time when you can behave calmly, and come to the point: “I’ve noticed that you seem unhappy with my performance in lab, and I thought that might be because I haven’t made headway on Project Z yet; is this right?” (or whatever the case may be). Even PIs who are scared of managing people (practically all of them…) can often meet you halfway if you have the guts to act professionally like this. Geeka posted a related anecdote; you can see how she recognized her PI’s subtle signs of ire, and addressed the problem directly in grown-up fashion, to good effect. Do like she did.

Once you establish a moderate level of trust and respect with your PI, you can occasionally earn points with some well-timed feedback. Good advisors will value the occasional constructive criticism or suggestion about lab management. Key words here are “good,” and “constructive.” A truly shitty PI will resent any criticism, real or perceived. But you knew better than to join that kind of lab, right? I should emphasize, though, that this stage of Advisor/Advisee relations is for advanced students in good situations only.

When in doubt, put yourself in Advisor’s Birkenstocks. Would you be happy about seeing a student play online games while you were rending your garments over the state of NIH funding? No? Hmmm. Would you want to send out a paper you considered flawed, knowing that the credit or blame for the data will be mostly yours, rather than your student’s? No? Hmmm.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that you kiss your advisor's caudal territory. Nobody likes brown-nosers, and they do horribly in science anyhow (eventually) because research is all about challenging received wisdom. Argue, take a stand, fight back, etc etc. on any and all scientific topics, and even others where appropriate. Just keep in mind that this relationship is yours to screw up. The sad truth is that in most cases, you need your PI more than your PI needs you (the exception usually being very junior faculty ISO tenure, yet another reason grad students should consider those labs seriously...). So find a way to respect your advisor and earn respect in return. I wish someone had told me these things before I joined grad school; if I had listened (admittedly unlikely), I would have saved myself a couple of tempests far worse than Geeka's, and I would have spent less time ranting about GradAdvisor and more time quilting playing web games reading the Times working.

Update: Ms PhD on the other side of the coin.

In two body systems, one often revolves around the other.

Today I had an interesting lunch with a renowned visiting speaker (VS). Among other topics, we discussed that perennial favorite, Where Have All The Women Gone (WHATWG).

VS's institution is distinctly male-dominated, which has always surprised me because the senior faculty there whom I've met are nice, friendly, liberal men. While the primary field of research at that institution does tilt XY, it did not seem like the sort of place whose culture per se would be anti-XX. (I'm just in the mood for all caps tonight.)

I asked VS what he thought about this. His reply was: "We had a job search whose main goal, honestly, was to recruit women to our institution. We offered the job in turn to three terrific female candidates, and each of them turned it down. In all of the cases, it was because their husbands were not enthusiastic about finding jobs in Slightly Obscure Town where our institution is located."

While it is disappointing that his home institution remains a predominantly male enclave, I was heartened to see that their search committee sounds serious about hiring women. It's nice to know that the women are rejecting them, rather than the other way around.

Of course, it is still frustrating that, as always, men are easier to hire because their spouses are more likely to be portable. However, overall I'm encouraged by the news that VS and his colleagues are trying. Three offers to women is not a token effort--it's a significant step at an institution as prestigious as this one.

Therefore, I am trying to get Dr. Hyde to consider more flexible career paths, like becoming an acrobat.