Something interesting happened to me recently. I've had a busy few months: I went to India, for a wedding (mine), came back to the US and to work. Pounded out a bunch of experiments before I left and few since I returned. Struggled badly with jetlag (it only gets worse!), cultural disaffection, being tired and ill, loads of pressure from the boss and truly pernicious lethargy.
And now I want to work. I want to do experiments, read immunology, gossip about science. I even looked up job openings in India, because I think I want to start my own lab there. I want to keep being a scientist.
It's difficult, rarely rewarding, massively underpaid and a niche profession if I ever heard of one. My job prospects in my home country are limited, to say the least, aside from the fact that I have never actually worked in India. I have done all my research in the States and am, for all practical purposes, an American scientist. I have a new husband and our busy life together. I need some sexy papers, and some powerful, original ideas. I need to push and slog and labour till I can't stand it anymore and my family can't stand it anymore.
Why would I do this? I guess its because I really like being a scientist.
Who knew.
Showing posts with label Academia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Academia. Show all posts
Friday, March 7, 2008
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Responsibility for Scientific Fraud
Who is responsible when a paper is declared to be the product of fraudulent research? This is a tough question to answer, and is becoming more relevant every day. Is it the first author? The PI? If you're the third author, or even the second on a paper that's found to be fraud, how responsible are you? Should it be allowed to negatively impact your career (it probably will)? Can you claim that you do not bear responsibility if you are not the "direct perpetrator" of the fraud?
Nature has an interesting proposal.
I'm not sure making one author sign such a declaration is necessarily the solution, but at least it has the advantage of holding the senior author truly accountable for the work that bears their name. I don't think one can force responsibility. I think that a really responsible PI will have checked the work in a paper, and one that is inclined to be less responsible will not be made more so easily. Perhaps enforcing accountability with a binding (although I don't know how binding this will be) signed document may lead to greater responsibility.
Thoughts?
Nature has an interesting proposal.
I'm not sure making one author sign such a declaration is necessarily the solution, but at least it has the advantage of holding the senior author truly accountable for the work that bears their name. I don't think one can force responsibility. I think that a really responsible PI will have checked the work in a paper, and one that is inclined to be less responsible will not be made more so easily. Perhaps enforcing accountability with a binding (although I don't know how binding this will be) signed document may lead to greater responsibility.
Thoughts?
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Good Times Bad Times
Inspired by one of Sunil's posts, at balancing life.
The key question is whether one can put a value on all the research that isn't published. Anyone who does research knows that there are good times and bad times, and that one has very little control over when those times occur. Postdocs need hot papers to get academic jobs-assuming, for the moment that we are talking about postdocs who want academic positions. Grad students would also like to publish high, but its less critical at that stage in one's career. It's usually the quality of one's postdoctoral work that is evaluated for jobs.
So what happens if one's well designed, innovative and technically superb project has no results? No publishable, sexy, revolutionary results? That the null hypothesis is true? It is extraordinarily difficult to publish negative results, especially since one can always encounter the ultimately dismissive critique that one hadn't tried everything yet. Does that mean that the two years spent on the project are toast? One's thought, analysis and expertise are worthless because they cannot be proved in print? Five more years as a postdoc?
So how then can we quantify effort and ability if not by publications? If its an especially technically difficult field, years of experience should count for a lot. If the idea behind the project is not mainstream (as Sunil discusses) and doesn't have any of the fashionably fund-able keywords, should one get points for risk-taking? The willingness to take on challenges without guarantees, at least the guarantees implied in "current-hot-topics" research, is uncommon and to be prized. So should CVs include a paragraph briefly describing one's project and the ideas behind it? Or will that just be seen as an attempt to flesh out the CV in the face of the conspicuous absences in the publications section? Probably.
After all new fields are created by people who can think out of the box. And sometimes luck only shows up late, and it takes three failed attempts to come up with truly revolutionary ideas. Or, the three failed attempts could reflect the complete absence of any BS-detector. Which is it? Does one always need to have a publishable side project, which will generate small reliable papers, thus demonstrating that one can actually do publishable research as well as study risky and unusual subjects? That one's out-there ideas are the product of intelligent thought, hopefully as demonstrated by the stuff that did get published.
Seriously though, is this a workable solution? Most postdocs I know do have two projects, just in case and to keep oneself occupied, particularly in immunology, where some experiments just take so long. Isn't it somewhat ridiculous to require people to have two projects? Or more?
Or, should one just ascribe it to the nature of the game, and let it go if things don't work out? After all, there are just way too few academic positions, and luck may just be another way to filter people out. Just because some intelligent and qualified people get thrown out with the bathwater, that doesn't mean that other equally intelligent and qualified people don't get lucky, publish and get academic positions. This way of thinking goes against everything I personally believe, because it just is not fair.
But who said life would be fair?
The key question is whether one can put a value on all the research that isn't published. Anyone who does research knows that there are good times and bad times, and that one has very little control over when those times occur. Postdocs need hot papers to get academic jobs-assuming, for the moment that we are talking about postdocs who want academic positions. Grad students would also like to publish high, but its less critical at that stage in one's career. It's usually the quality of one's postdoctoral work that is evaluated for jobs.
So what happens if one's well designed, innovative and technically superb project has no results? No publishable, sexy, revolutionary results? That the null hypothesis is true? It is extraordinarily difficult to publish negative results, especially since one can always encounter the ultimately dismissive critique that one hadn't tried everything yet. Does that mean that the two years spent on the project are toast? One's thought, analysis and expertise are worthless because they cannot be proved in print? Five more years as a postdoc?
So how then can we quantify effort and ability if not by publications? If its an especially technically difficult field, years of experience should count for a lot. If the idea behind the project is not mainstream (as Sunil discusses) and doesn't have any of the fashionably fund-able keywords, should one get points for risk-taking? The willingness to take on challenges without guarantees, at least the guarantees implied in "current-hot-topics" research, is uncommon and to be prized. So should CVs include a paragraph briefly describing one's project and the ideas behind it? Or will that just be seen as an attempt to flesh out the CV in the face of the conspicuous absences in the publications section? Probably.
After all new fields are created by people who can think out of the box. And sometimes luck only shows up late, and it takes three failed attempts to come up with truly revolutionary ideas. Or, the three failed attempts could reflect the complete absence of any BS-detector. Which is it? Does one always need to have a publishable side project, which will generate small reliable papers, thus demonstrating that one can actually do publishable research as well as study risky and unusual subjects? That one's out-there ideas are the product of intelligent thought, hopefully as demonstrated by the stuff that did get published.
Seriously though, is this a workable solution? Most postdocs I know do have two projects, just in case and to keep oneself occupied, particularly in immunology, where some experiments just take so long. Isn't it somewhat ridiculous to require people to have two projects? Or more?
Or, should one just ascribe it to the nature of the game, and let it go if things don't work out? After all, there are just way too few academic positions, and luck may just be another way to filter people out. Just because some intelligent and qualified people get thrown out with the bathwater, that doesn't mean that other equally intelligent and qualified people don't get lucky, publish and get academic positions. This way of thinking goes against everything I personally believe, because it just is not fair.
But who said life would be fair?
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
No Quarter
(Persevering with the Led Zeppelin theme)
Can you succeed in academia only if you are a shark?
This is something I started to think about when I came to the USA. In India, in my experience, academic scientists are idealistic, workaholic, fatalistic and gossipy. Money is always tight and you rarely get to publish in the good journals (and I'm not talking only about the big three or five) because of where you're from. The salaries for PI-level scientists are nowhere as high as they are here, and respect from the public and one's peers in other countries can be in short supply. The keen-edged aggression that one sees among scientists (specifically, biologists) here is not at all common. But, and this is crucial, once you enter the system of government science labs, you will have a career. Every X years you will be promoted, every Y years you will get a salary. You have tons of holidays, your kids have opportunities. Many post-postdoctoral scientists I know in India have jobs and some measure of security.
Many things are common between the scientific world in India and the United States, the most glaring absence in the latter is the absence of any prospects of security in academia until you have tenure. So the situation is then that you have really bright people who work and work and work, with limited pay and even more limited prospects. To make things more interesting, these people are often enormously motivated and justly ambitious: So where does all the energy go?
We all know there aren't enough PI positions. There aren't very many non-PI permanent researcher positions either. So the only thing to do then is to fight for the positions there are, right? To give no quarter, to your peers, to the possibility of failure, to your life, or to yourself. To be aggressive and up-to-date, to work harder, better and more successfully than everyone else. To know things and have connections that others don't have. Not that there is anything wrong with any of these things, I get a buzz out of the hunt just as much as anyone. My point is that it is not really sustainable.
Or not sustainable for the majority anyway. what happens to the people who cannot, do not want to or will not be sharks? The laws of luck and averages dictate that some such will succeed in academia, but in the balance I think the sharks don't succeed. Then you have a situation in which the system "selects" for the most aggressive people, and often does not encourage other more nurturing or considerate professional behaviour. The lack of consideration and sensitivity, coupled with a reluctance to show "mommy qualities" because that would invite professional ridicule, leads to bosses who demand and do not teach, who hector not mentor, and whose personal advancement is their primary goal.
Shark eat shark then. Which doesn't seem like much fun to me, and maybe to more people. Why is it that the system is ok with people who are excellent scientists but dreadful people? Why is that acceptable? I don't know. However I do see some incremental changes (not where I work at, but), and I think the key to any improvements in the system can only occur with recognition of these issues. I hope so, because the joy of research is being subsumed by the nastiness of its execution.
Can you succeed in academia only if you are a shark?
This is something I started to think about when I came to the USA. In India, in my experience, academic scientists are idealistic, workaholic, fatalistic and gossipy. Money is always tight and you rarely get to publish in the good journals (and I'm not talking only about the big three or five) because of where you're from. The salaries for PI-level scientists are nowhere as high as they are here, and respect from the public and one's peers in other countries can be in short supply. The keen-edged aggression that one sees among scientists (specifically, biologists) here is not at all common. But, and this is crucial, once you enter the system of government science labs, you will have a career. Every X years you will be promoted, every Y years you will get a salary. You have tons of holidays, your kids have opportunities. Many post-postdoctoral scientists I know in India have jobs and some measure of security.
Many things are common between the scientific world in India and the United States, the most glaring absence in the latter is the absence of any prospects of security in academia until you have tenure. So the situation is then that you have really bright people who work and work and work, with limited pay and even more limited prospects. To make things more interesting, these people are often enormously motivated and justly ambitious: So where does all the energy go?
We all know there aren't enough PI positions. There aren't very many non-PI permanent researcher positions either. So the only thing to do then is to fight for the positions there are, right? To give no quarter, to your peers, to the possibility of failure, to your life, or to yourself. To be aggressive and up-to-date, to work harder, better and more successfully than everyone else. To know things and have connections that others don't have. Not that there is anything wrong with any of these things, I get a buzz out of the hunt just as much as anyone. My point is that it is not really sustainable.
Or not sustainable for the majority anyway. what happens to the people who cannot, do not want to or will not be sharks? The laws of luck and averages dictate that some such will succeed in academia, but in the balance I think the sharks don't succeed. Then you have a situation in which the system "selects" for the most aggressive people, and often does not encourage other more nurturing or considerate professional behaviour. The lack of consideration and sensitivity, coupled with a reluctance to show "mommy qualities" because that would invite professional ridicule, leads to bosses who demand and do not teach, who hector not mentor, and whose personal advancement is their primary goal.
Shark eat shark then. Which doesn't seem like much fun to me, and maybe to more people. Why is it that the system is ok with people who are excellent scientists but dreadful people? Why is that acceptable? I don't know. However I do see some incremental changes (not where I work at, but), and I think the key to any improvements in the system can only occur with recognition of these issues. I hope so, because the joy of research is being subsumed by the nastiness of its execution.
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