Head on over for some shoe-pukin' fun

A news story in Nature about sex discrimination against women in physics. Not many stories get comments, but this one did, including a real gem from someone named Paul Kantorek:

Female thinking seems to be more lateral then vertical. By that I mean, women in physics are generally harder working than male colleagues and are great co-workers in terms of encouragement, diligence, and backup support. They do not, however, contribute a great deal of original ideas and rigorous logical analysis to the research. Female judgment seems to more emotionally biased.

I totally had a reply to this but then I lost it in a surge of hormones. Oh, yeah, it was this: you FUCKWIT.

Fuckwit #2, Clay Malinak, opines that it's a real problem that we focus so much on, you know, this harassment stuff, because it makes it so hard for a senior prof to have a "normal working relationship with a younger colleague of the opposite sex." Also crying because he was not the "in crowd" when in a fem-heavy lab. Maybe if you weren't staring down their shirts the whole time it would be easier, hmmm?

I would go all Physioprof on their asses, but I don't want to do the whole registration crappo. Also they're clearly both bitter because they never got good jobs, so it's hard to feel real threatened by either of them. But if any of you want to take up this cause, good on you.

Holy moley

I recently posted a link to a Times article about wholesale manipulation of military "experts" for the purposes of selling the Iraq war to us.

Commenter S. wrote:

You're not alone in that point. I used to be able to have polite conversations about politics. My husband is home from his second tour in Iraq; he could be stop-lossed or called out of inactive for a third. I can't even be in the same room as anyone who would vote Republican. It's way too personal.

Whoa. As though dealing with a spouse's repeated deployments weren't enough, S. is also a graduate student in the sciences, and to top it all off is fighting an intestinal war that trumps even Crystal's.

All's I can say is, next time you readers catch me whingeing about the two-body problem or some such, tell me to stfu asap. S., I'm in awe of you. Good luck.

When do I get my pilot's license?

I love pilot experiments. Love as in luuurrrrrrrve.

What's not to love? You have a brainy idea, you scour out an unusual reagent or two, you sit down at your bench/other, you give it a whirl, and perhaps achieve the magical N = 1 that calls for further investigation. If not, perhaps you've wasted as little as an afternoon.

I was thinking about this in context of PhysioProf's discussion about what PIs are best at. (There's the linkluuuurrrrve return.) He made a good argument that he is the best person in the lab for writing grants, interpreting projects, etc, and therefore his time is best spent doing those things, rather than hands-on experiments. This seems eminently sensible.

A few months ago, I had dinner with another PI, who had a different take on things. He said that (up until quite recently, when other demands on his time had finally won out) his preferred MO in the lab was to do pilot experiments, based on his deep and rich knowledge of the literature. When said experiments looked promising, he'd hand them off to a grad student or postdoc to pursue. When experiments tanked, no big loss--he'd just go back to writing grants that week.

Given the constraints of experimental needs, plus the demands on new PIs, I imagine that I am more likely to follow PhysioProf's model of training up people, then letting them run. However, this other PI (who is not the same person I described in yesterday's post) sure sounded as though he lived in my idea of paradise.

A year or two ago, a PI visited our lab to get some pilot data for a grant he was submitting. We had a transgenic critter he thought would be useful, but the time required to transfer said critter to his lab would have been too long for him to get useful pilot data by the grant deadline. So he visited to try some experiments with us for two days.

I hung out with him as he did, partly because I wanted to learn more about his science, partly because he was using my stuff. Late into Day Two, he was still struggling to get his pilot N=1, because of all the unfamiliar materials at hand. I eagerly (like, salivating....) jumped at the chance to help him out. We got the N=1, he was delighted, and I had crazy fun. I should note that these data had nothing to do with my research. Aside from perhaps impressing Visiting Guy with my batshit craziness, this interlude did nothing to advance my career. Still, pilot N=1 data....that's my scientific Eden.

Everyone on Earth should read this Times article

It's a distillation of the entire Bush-league operation.

Military "analysts" who show up on your TV screen have been prepped with talking points from the Pentagon. They also are heavily invested in military defense contractors, so they have financial incentive to cheerlead for the war.

One of many money paragraphs:

Like several other analysts, Mr. Eads said he had at times held his tongue on television for fear that “some four-star could call up and say, ‘Kill that contract.’ ” For example, he believed Pentagon officials misled the analysts about the progress of Iraq’s security forces. “I know a snow job when I see one,” he said. He did not share this on TV.

I'm not sure whether to send Mr. Eads a mash note, for revealing this shit to the Times, or a bomb, for being part of the whole operation to begin with.

Which brings up a different issue: Dr. Hyde tells me that I'm being childish when I refuse to be friends with fellow scientists who are Republicans (and who voted for Bush's second term...I give an eye-rolling pass to those who realized their error by 2004). I don't think I'm being childish. They are trying to kill my country. This is the proof.

When PIs do experiments

In my sub-sub-field of biology, rarely does one encounter PIs past the 5 year mark or so who still do experiments. Our experiments usually take an entire uninterrupted day, and thus cannot be scheduled in pockets of time around meetings etc. Furthermore, it's difficult to pick up experiments after a gap of > 1 week, meaning that you'd best do them regularly if at all. In fact, I know several PIs who have not done, in their own lab, a single experiment that didn't involve teaching someone else how to do experiments.

So it's always interesting to talk with those PIs who persist. At a conference, I had the opportunity to talk with one such PI, and was flabbergasted to learn that he does experiments twice a week; in summer, with no classes to teach, three times a week. On top of this he manages a lab of 4-6 people, puts out top-notch publications, participates in the larger community, etc etc. Seeing as how I usually manage experiments four days a week, I realized he must be an expert at efficiency. How do you accomplish it all? I asked.

He had some useful suggestions:

1) Know yourself and your work habits. He thinks and writes most clearly in the mornings. Therefore, when he gets into work, he does not "shit away my time on email for an hour" (I don't think he's aka PhysioProf, but now I am forced to wonder....) but instead sits down to write and revise papers. He saves emailing and other low-brainpower activities for mid-afternoon and late evening, when he's sleepier and less coherent. For different people, their day might be structured differently, but it's common for folks to be most alert in the a.m., less so two hours after lunch.

This sounds like terrific advice, but I find myself almost incapable of breaking the habit of email first thing in the morning, or at least second thing. Of course, since most of my days are experiment days, and there's actually a short rest break during these experiments that's perfect for email, it's not a big deal; but I'm not sure how I'll develop his willpower when I'm a PI. Perhaps one could skim the email first to make sure nothing SuperUrgent has arrived, and then deal with it more thoroughly in the afternoon?

2) Experiment time is sacred. He refuses to schedule any meetings at all on his planned experiment days. I imagine this makes him a total biyatch to deal with if he's on your thesis committee, but it clearly works from the experimental standpoint. I don't know if junior faculty would feel comfortable being that firm when other faculty are trying to schedule a committee meeting of some type, but more power to you if you can do it.

3) Only volunteer for community activities that are worth your while. This one might be a bit controversial. What he meant was that since reviewing papers, for example, still advances his science (because he hears what's afoot in his field) he's happy to accept a significant reviewer workload. Other activities, such as working on Scientific Society boards, he views as useless to his science, so he avoids. Again, I could imagine this being a difficult line to hold as a junior fac, with all sorts of service activities being thrust upon you. Still, I see what he means. I'd surmise that he's also happy to run a journal club, but not pleased to be on the admissions committtee.

4) Get good, independent people in your lab. No surprises here--if you're running a tight ship, you can't have a clingy barnacle-esque grad student or postdoc. He also emphasized a point I've heard from many others, that a mediocre lab member will suck much more of your time than they will give back, and you should resist the temptation to accept anyone subpar, even in your early days.

5) There are benefits too! Since he's down in the lab doing experiments, he's readily accessible to help troubleshoot other folks' experimental woes, and to help recognize when someone's seeing something Rilly Cool (I'm sure PP had a post about this, but can't find it, sorry). Seems like an obvious point, but again I know a lot of PIs who hole up in their offices to write grants (understandable....) and as a result miss out on times where they could easily give a boost to a lab-member's science.

My take-home from this was that any tenured PI still doing experiments probably has some seriously efficient work habits, in addition to a deep-seated love for the benchwork. Hats off to you, Unnamed PI.

Oh, and for those of you who are wondering--I think he has two kids, and his wife works full-time.

Food for thought

Came across this in Eric Kandel's autobiography In Search of Memory, and later tracked it down to its source.

If pure scientists were motivated by curiosity alone, they should be delighted when someone else solves the problem they are working on--but that is not the ususal reaction.
-Alan Hodgkin

Hodgkin was a major founder of the field of neurophysiology. It's hard to imagine him ever feeling "scooped," which makes this comment particularly funny.

And in conclusion...

I am grateful to many people for my scientific training, but in addition to my grad and postdoc advisors, there is one person in particular who stands out.

When experiments aren’t working, this is the person who most frequently offers useful troubleshooting advice. When experiments are working, he’s full of feedback on my interpretations, and ideas about where to take the science next. In short, I rely on him at every step, and it would normally be appropriate to acknowledge his support each time I give a talk or write a paper.

The problem is that this person is Dr Hyde.

Ok, it’s not a problem per se. It’s fabulous that over dinner every night he helps me solve the modern mysteries of experimental biology. He’s in the same sub-field as I am, but has several more years of experience than I do; also, he’s brilliant and well-versed in many aspects of biology; so his feedback is unbelievably useful.

The problem is that, while his contributions put him well over the bar for whom I’d normally thank after a talk (and if he were just another postdoc I’d certainly do so), thanking one’s spouse at the end of a scientific presentation is uncommon. This issue is particularly thorny for women, because I’m leery of raising, even for an instant, the question of whether I’m somehow dependent on Dr Hyde.

Presumably, for most people the fact of our marriage implies that we give each other useful scientific commentary (although any fair accounting would show that he helps me more than I help him). Still, I feel like I’m giving him short shrift if I don’t formally acknowledge his contributions.

I wish that I could simply say, “Dr Hyde gave me useful feedback on these experiments” at the close of talks, and not worry about what people would think.

Undoubtedly that will be alright, after I win the Nobel prize.

THIS is the way to make people BITTER

In which I am both angry and political. If you're only here for the helpful suggestions about magnets, turn your browser around.

I'ma puke. Obama acknowledges that there's some bitter people in our country. McCain jumps all over him--okay, that's McCain's job. But then HILLARY does the same thing. WTF? WTF? WTF?

Now, I always thought her campaign was badly run and no matter how much that was due to bad advising, it eventually gets laid at her feet (hello, Stopping the Buck?) But, in my foolish starry-eyed pro-Dem naivete, I actually thought that the exodus of shitbag Mark Penn meant that her campaign might maybe, just maybe, STOP the disgusting constant attacks on her FELLOW DEMOCRAT.

Wuz wrong.

Happily, Obama struck back, and struck back good:

Out of touch? John McCain — it took him three times to finally figure out that home foreclosure was a problem and to come up with a plan for it, and he’s saying I’m out of touch?

Notice something here. Obama does not grind HRC into the dirt, despite the fact that he totally could ("The Clintons have made $100 MILLION in the last five years but they think I'M out of touch???").

He left that for the reader to figure out. And why? Because he doesn't think it's a good idea to tear down fellow members of his party.

Call me crazy, but that's the person I support for President.

I'll just leave a flyer, then

Today I am wearing this shirt. I can just about track the president's approval ratings by wearing it. Back around 2004, I'd get the occasional thumbs-up and some hairy eyeballs. These days, I frequently get compliments.

A sales rep stopped by the lab:

Sales rep: "Do you do any molecular biology?"
Jekyll: "Sort of."
SR: (staring at my shirt) "You know, if you wanted that to be fair, you'd have to put Clinton's picture on there too."
Jekyll: (choking back rage) "There's a difference in the magnitude of the lies."
SR: "Well....." (thoughtfully, then with the air of making a concession) "Ok, I guess so."

I am confident we do not need a gene sequencer.

Things I learned in grad school that have nothing, and everything, to do with grad school

An irregular series on everything but your experiments. Hell, I may advise you how to do those too. I'm bossy like that.

Part 1: Asking Questions at Talks

Don’t be scared. People like being asked (polite) questions about their research. Particularly if the question demonstrates some level of informed thought. But even questions of the “Hey, that’s totally cool, have you ever tried such-and-such experiment? or Do you ever see such-and-such response?” variety are almost universally welcome. It shows you’re engaged, paying attention, and enthusiastic. As you will find when you give talks yourself, that is the dream audience.

Ok, be just a little scared. If you’re asking this question in a big seminar, people will evaluate your question, and if it is idiotic in the extreme, you may be judged accordingly….perhaps not the first time, but if you do this sort of thing repeatedly, yes.

As a corollary, sit next to a smart friend in seminar. If you want to ask a question, but you’re nervous that it betrays utter stupidity, nudge your smart friend and ask. If she thinks it’s interesting too, then go ahead and ask it. Two is a quorum.

Aim for coherence. If you’re nervous, particularly if you get a bit of stage fright speaking up in seminars, write the question down so you can phrase it appropriately ahead of time and not fumble your words.

Keep it down. This is for the ladies. Nervous men will often instinctively deepen their voices, which helps project calm authority. Nervous women will often tighten their chests and end up twittering at higher pitch. Guess what this does? Take a breath, relax your diaphragm, and aim to speak at or even below your usual conversational pitch. Sorry, it’s a sexist truism, but it will affect your audience so you may as well deal with it. No matter how nervous you are, you never want to project it.

Advanced question-asking: Tie in your question to known facts or literature for extra oomph. The ideal question of this genre takes the approximate form: “You showed us Data X, which you say provides support for Hypothesis Y. However, in light of Published Finding W, isn’t Hypothesis Z another possible interpretation of your results?” These are not easy questions to come up with. They require some knowledge of the literature and real capacity for synthesis. If you ask two excellent questions like this in the course of your grad career, you’re doing great. Make it your goal, though, every time. You'll notice that the smart folks you admire are often asking a question like this.

For Chrissakes, ask questions in seminar, at least occasionally. I hate it when I talk to a friend post-seminar and she has a totally brilliant question that she left unasked, because she didn’t want to pipe up. That’s not just your loss--it’s to the detriment of the whole audience, which loses your thoughtful perspective. Ask!!

Hints from Jekyloise

Yesterday Advisor pointed to the wall. "Why are these things here?" he asked, somewhat sternly.

"Those are magnets taped to the wall," I replied. "Since we always want razor blades at hand for opening packages, cutting tubing, etc etc, but we do not particularly want said razor blades flying loose on our desks, they can be attached to the magnet. Then when you want one, it is at hand."

Advisor paused. "This is genius!" he cried. "You are so smart!"

"You hired smart post-docs," said I, modestly.

"I would hug you!" he exclaimed, still gazing in delight upon the magnet-razor blade confection.

This morning he brought us bagels.

Moral: Buy cheap magnets. Tape (backwards) to wall. Deposit razor blades at will. Graciously accept compliments showered upon you. Enjoy the bagels.

In which Dr Hyde contributes

Ok, I was kind of obsessed by the song-graph meme. I spent the rest of the day humming more candidate songs for graphical representation. Then I told Dr Hyde of my plans to create another song-graph, and he scoffed, "That's not going to make a good graph." I challenged him to improve upon it. He did. Forthwith, Dr Hyde's song-graph:

"We attempted to separate the two individuals using common geological features that are commonly encountered in situ. To our surprise we found no mountains, valleys, or rivers sufficiently high, low, or wide enough, respectively, to effect a permanent separation (data not shown). These data were supported by the lack of effectiveness of low to mid-height hills (10 - 100 m), an irrigation ditch, and a small, but fast-moving, creek."

Dr Hyde's making fun of me(mes)

It's the weekend! Time for memes--like chain mail, but without the threats, or the USPS getting cranky.

First, Mad Hatter and Stepwise Girl tagged me for my memoir in 6 words. I can't improve on the origin of this meme (a book of them, entitled "Not exactly what I was expecting...."), but I'll stick with the science:

Yes, I make tissue glow green.

No picture but you can imagine me at the Thanksgiving table repeating this patiently each year.

Second, I saw the song-graph meme over at Junior's and just about died laughing, particularly with the original stash on Flickr. Here's mine:



Anonymoustache's also gave me a giggle. Tag to anyone who can be, you know, quantitative.

edited!

Breaking up is never easy to do

While graduation from a PhD program is the culmination of your graduate schooling, it often doesn’t mark the end of your graduate research. Because of the foot-dragging nature of science, students often graduate while some or all of their papers are not yet published. There may be some loose ends hanging--control experiments not yet done, n to be added--or even some significant results to finish up--an experiment the thesis committee suggests, a follow-up to one of the implications of the thesis. Not to mention the review your advisor says you should really write as soon as those papers are out.

Writing a paper for submission to a journal (as opposed to writing it up for your thesis committee) can easily take a couple of extra months, depending on your writing ability, your advisor’s feedback, and your inner ability to glue your fanny to a chair for as long as it takes.

Finally, of course, even once the paper is sent out, there is a month or two delay while reviewers review, and then the dreaded reviewer experimental suggestions. Carrying out reviewer experiments, or arguing persuasively against the need for those experiments, can occupy another couple of months.

And let’s not even talk about what happens if you’re rejected and have to repeat these steps at one, or heaven forfend, two or three or four more journals.

All of which is to say: when should a graduate student take the leap to a postdoc or other job?

If you leave as soon as the experiments are (in theory) finished, you will spend the first six months or year at your new job trying to write a paper over email with your advisor.

If you wait until the paper(s) is(are) submitted, you are in better shape, until the reviewers come back with four experiments you absolutely need to do to publish. Then you must make your apologies to your new supervisor and return to GradLab for weeks or even months. Not a fun thing to do as you’re trying to impress a new boss, and to immerse yourself in some new experiments. Alternatively, you will share authorship with whatever grad student ties up your loose ends.

If you wait until the paper comes back from review, you have dealt with it as necessary, and resubmitted, you are in the best shape to leave; however, by this stage you are likely so tired of GradLab that you may have killed your advisor. (A fellow grad student and I once posted this article prominently in lab.) But more importantly, there is the opportunity cost of waiting this long--could you have been making some headway in a new lab? There is also the personal cost--often after 5+ years a grad student is burnt out, tired of GradLab, and can only revive her interest in science by going somewhere new. And don’t get me started on the two-body problem.

I am currently luxuriating in the excitement of a new lab that is geographically close (but scientifically distant) to my GradLab, so I can go back to do Grad experiments on weekends or occasional off days, but meanwhile reignite my brain with the new perspectives and ideas of PostdocLab. However, it is only a matter of time til Dr Hyde and I move somewhere new….and I’ll be hit with this problem all over again.

Good mentoring 1

Today my postdoc advisor and I talked about the experiments I'm working on right now. In my corner of biology, people usually do experiments every day or nearly so. In many instances, computer programming can facilitate those experiments, so it can be valuable to pause experiments while working on code. However, it is hard to justify taking time off of doing experiments, even if that time will be spent making future experiments more efficient.

This is tricky in part because it involves mentor/mentee assumptions about how frequently one should be doing experiments. I'm sure even those of you in different areas of research know that many advisor relationships founder because assumptions or expectations go unstated....to disastrous effect.

Anyhow, today Advisor said explicitly that it would be fine for me to spend the next two weeks, or even a month, writing code and in other ways optimizing experimental protocol, so that when I got around to doing experiments again they would be significantly more efficient. This is good news because I've wanted to spend some time coding but hesitated in fear that Advisor would see me and think, "Hmm, Dr. Jekyll is slacking off experiments....again" and downgrade his opinion of me accordingly.

This is a long-winded way of saying: those of you who are in a position to mentor people--you presumably know this already, but do take the time to lay out your expectations clearly. People who are anxious to please you, while also anxious to get data, will appreciate it.