Happy New Year to you all! I thought I'd start this year's blogging off on the right foot, by complaining.
My current lab project is very exciting. We have a significant amount of data obtained via one technique, and the resulting data suggest something that will be of broad interest to the community. When Advisor lays out his vision of the eventual paper, he does so by listing four figures.
However, the findings will be immensely strengthened if we can back them up using a completely different technique. We have a good idea how to do it, too! But--we need a specific experimental material to accomplish this goal. This Material is not something we can whip up on our own.
Another lab has recently produced and published on a few variations of this Material. One of them could be ideal for us. The problem is, in neither the publication nor the supplementary info did this lab provide enough information for us to decide if any of their Materials would work for our particular question.
Advisor emailed his counterpart in this lab, who promptly said that a postdoc would send us the relevant information so that we can decide if we should order any of the (extremely expensive!) Materials.
This postdoc and I have now been emailing for six weeks. Repeated promises to produce and send the information have gone unfulfilled.
I am desperate to see this information. I have sent all the clues that could be useful so that the postdoc can select the appropriate information to send me. However, I can't think of anything I can do to speed the process up. We are the ones importuning another lab for something. I have no leverage, since the postdoc is certainly not going to get publication credit out of sharing this information with us.
If any of the Materials will be useful to us, there is a significant delay--perhaps three months--between our ordering them and the key experiment being feasible.
I am going to a conference in the spring for which these data would be incredibly useful, and I am theoretically having a child in August. Delay is not on my agenda right now. If the Materials will not be useful to us, I likewise need to know right away so that I can start a workaround experiment (which will be much harder and more time-consuming, if it's possible at all).
I understand that I am low on the postdoc's priority list. I'm sure there are many other people emailing this lab for information on the Materials.
Meanwhile, I am impatient and helpless. 2009 is not winning my heart just yet.
15 years ago
8 comments:
If the post-doc is stonewalling, you need your PI to talk to the post-doc's PI again.
I find it is always helpful to Cc the PIs when making these kinds of requests. There's also the phone...
Glad you are doing well DJMH, hope you had a nice holiday.
I don't remember if you said that your PI knows about the baby on board, but you may need to explain that it's now or never for the project.
I second the Cc PIs... I nearly always Cc my PI when I'm communicating with another lab, especially if I'm having trouble, and I have, on occasion asked my PI to follow up as CPP suggested...
Good luck though! I hope the promising material works for you. Sounds like it could be great stuff.
Yeah, I think that cc'ing my PI (or having a PI-PI intervention) would help, I'm just a bit reluctant because I do sort of know this postdoc already--we've met and interacted before, so it's not just some anonymous person. That's why it feels a bit more awkward to bring the the "parents" on this.
I could call too....it's just I know the postdoc is getting my emails (there have been a few responses) and so it feels like harassment. Should probably just get over that.
Anon, yes, my PI knows about the critter. He's just as eager as I am to get this part of the project off the ground.
You have given your acquaintance enough time to make good on his/her promises. Although uncomfortable, I would make a phone call to him/her, stressing the importance of the material... and if not fruitful, definitely involve your PI. You need the junk, bottom line.
I would either ask PI to talk to othe rPI or call the post doc once now after New years break and stress the importance of getting the data - or at least a time line.....
Good luck!! _And I hope all if fine with "the third one" :)
Definitely call. Or, is the post doc at an institution that is within a reasonable driving distance? Face to face can really get stuff done. This sort of thing drives me crazy, you just have to get yourself at the top of the post doc's list of priorities (or top of the guilt order, more likely). Don't feel bad though, this person knows that they're dropping the ball.
I completely empathize on the baby deadline....
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