Responsible Conduct of Research, Part I

Last week I was forced to attend a mandatory seminar for postdocs on the responsible conduct of research. I had avoided it for two years, but after some threatening emails I have now participated in this day-long affair. For the most part, it was mind-numbingly dull. Don't get me wrong, I think it is fantastic to teach people about research ethics and foster discussion about all the murky grey areas that at some point we have to deal with (e.g., what contributions deserve authorship, interactions within the lab, etc.). I'm not convinced, however, that a mandatory day-long snooze-fest is particularly useful.

The people who do perpetrate serious academic misconduct generally know that it's wrong but do it anyway. The people in the news for fabricating data weren't ignorantly going about their business thinking it was alright to just make up results. Even on a less dramatic scale, people will rationalize their actions, knowing that they are doing something sketchy. I have heard many comments like, "I know person X didn't do anything to earn authorship on this paper, but I really want to help them [get into grad school/ get funding/ get a job/ get tenure] so let's add their name to this manuscript." Basically, when people do things that are unethical (or in a murky grey area of possible-unethicalness), they usually are aware of it. In the same way that pictures of diseased lungs on cigarette packs don't make smokers quit, listening to talks about how academic misconduct is bad is probably not going to change the behaviour of unethical people.

Moreover, shouldn't you already know this stuff by the time you get your Ph.D.? Maybe we shouldn't be awarding Ph.D.'s to people who haven't yet learned that you shouldn't fabricate data or that a significant contribution is necessary to earn authorship. This type of seminar would make more sense for senior undergrads or junior grad students, when they are first starting to do research and are still learning how to do research right. Gotta train 'em up right in their formative years! In fact, I had just such a course as a grad student, where we learned all sorts of fabulous things about peer review and authorship and academic misconduct. Useful then, redundant now.

So, by all means, when people start doing research make sure they are taught the rules and expectations for ethical research (and the consequences of violating those rules). Keep an eye out for anything sketchy and address it immediately to stop misconduct in it's tracks. Continue discussing what is and isn't appropriate with your students and colleagues. But don't waste people's time.

Responsible Conduct of Research, Part II: Mentoring

Imagine that you are at a big party and someone across the room catches your eye. You make your way over to them and after a brief chat you find each other interesting enough that you decide to go out on date. You have a lovely dinner together, during which you find you get along really well and have similar interests. At the end of the date, the other person whips out a contract and asks you to commit to dating them for the next five years. You would probably assume that this person is f--king crazy, no?

Welcome to grad school. When those five years are up you will "break-up" with your supervisor and repeat the process for a two-year contract as a postdoc.

On the surface this scenario seems ridiculous, but this is essentially how applying to work with a mentor goes down. You are interested in their work, you apply to work with them. If they are sufficiently interested in you, they bring you in for an interview (which is on par with a first date for anxiety provocation). If you mesh well during the interview you can look forward to committing yourself to this person for an extended period of time.

In my last post I talked about my day at the mandatory responsible conduct of research seminar: 3/4 of it was pretty dull, but there was one session that was actually interesting and potentially useful. It was on the mentor-trainee relationship and the rights and responsibilities of each party. Perhaps not surprisingly, many of the same qualities that make for good personal relationships are really important for positive and productive mentoring relationships as well.

1) It takes two
I think one thing that gets forgotten when problems do arise in mentor-trainee relationships is that it is, in fact, a relationship and both parties have played a role in whatever problems have arisen. Mentors and trainees share responsibility for the quality of their relationship. Of course, there is a power imbalance inherent in this relationship, which means the mentor probably needs to be more aware of how his-or-her actions are influencing the trainee than vice versa, but trainees have to take responsibility as well. If you're not getting what you need from your mentor you need to speak up (nicely, of course!). Which leads to...

2) Communicate!!!
To have a successful and productive relationship, both mentors and trainees have to make themselves available to the other person, listen carefully to the needs and expectations that the other person is expressing, and clearly communicate their own needs and expectations. If you discover mismatches in your expectations early on you can address them and hopefully come to a solution, but if your expectations aren't clear and explicit there's a pretty good chance that the other person is not going to live up to them and everyone will be disappointed and miserable. Make sure you are clear about what you are expecting from your mentor, and if you're not sure what they expect from you, ask.

3) ****You can have multiple mentors****
I put lots of extra stars by this because I think it's a point that's not talked about much but really important. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses and different areas of expertise. It is perfectly ok to seek out mentorship from people other than your supervisor who have skills that you want to learn. You shouldn't expect one person to provide you with everything you need and a good supervisor will recognize when there are things they can't teach you and encourage you to find that information elsewhere.

4) Keep learning
A good relationship is hard work. The mentor-trainee relationship is no exception and will continually evolve over time. Mentors can learn through experience and feedback to become better mentors. Similarly, trainees can learn to be more successful trainees and can learn how to become good mentors themselves. If everyone keeps communicating and is open to constructive criticism, mentor-trainee relationships can be positive, productive, and end with both parties having forged valuable friends and colleagues for future collaborations.

Group projects

I am a big fan of group discussion. Getting your students into small groups can be really helpful for fostering discussion, particularly for those who don't feel comfortable speaking up in front of a large class. At the senior-undergraduate and graduate levels, small group seminars can produce some excellent discussion and exchange of ideas. Group projects, however, are a whole other kettle of fish (yes, I just said that, judge me if you will). It's one thing for students to discuss ideas (or in a lab, collect data together), but having them be evaluated as a group is a recipe for disaster:

via I Love Charts

The only way for a group project to work is if all the people in the group have similar motivation, goals, and knowledge, which rarely happens in an undergraduate course. There's always that one person who doesn't show up for meetings or does a half-assed job of their part of the project (if they do anything at all). I've had more than my share of group projects where I ended up doing the majority of the work so that we didn't fail. Almost everyone I know has expressed their extreme dislike for group projects.

So the question is, who are the people who think forcing students to do group work is a good idea? This keeps happening in undergraduate classes. Were they the assholes people who didn't do much during their group projects and let the over-achiever in their group do all the work? I can see these people having the impression that group projects were fun. Or, given that the over-achievers seem most likely to go on to become professors, are they assigning group projects because of a sadistic need to do to the students that which was done to them? Perhaps it is out of a desire to be helpful and teach the students a valuable lesson (i.e., that people suck). Why? Why do we keep making students do these horrible group projects? I hereby vow to only use group work and discussion when it will enhance students' learning and to only evaluate my students as individuals. You know, once I actually have a job and students.

Vancouver vs. Durham, part II

Last month I posted about some of the things that I had to get used to upon moving from Canada to the USA. Now, while I sit at the airport waiting to leave Canada at the end of my vacation, I have a few additional thoughts about my home and native land:

1) It's cold here! Given that I'm in the warm part of Canada it is obvious that I have become a complete wuss in the two years I've been gone. Apparently my body can no longer tolerate temperatures even remotely close to freezing? I need my sunshine and warm weather! However, the rental car had heated seats, and having a toasty-warm ass did help.

2) The speed limit is so. damn. slow. After doing a road trip on the US highways last week, the difference between 80 mph and 80 km/h is painfully obvious. It's took a lot of effort to not be that annoying asshole that weaves in and out of traffic to pass everyone.

3) Strangers aren't just polite, they're actually helpful. When I was on the ferry, a group of strangers worked together to help get a woman out of the bathroom when the door got stuck. My mom and a group of people helped a man who fell outside the grocery store and waited with him for an ambulance.  (Note to all people regardless of country of origin or residence: if you see someone in need of medical attention and you do nothing, you are a douchebag).

4) Mountains are freaking awesome. I realize there are many very beautiful, mountainous locations in the US, but I do not live in one of them. I took a lot of photos of mountains and the ocean on this vacation.

Canada, I love you, but you are just too damned expensive. So now I will return to my large affordable apartment in North Carolina, where I can indulge in cheese and wine for half the cost.

Anatomy of an Interview: The Morning After

The interview proces was so exhausting, I had no energy left to post updates during the trip. Now that I'm back home and have had a decent night's sleep, here's the recap:

Day 1:
Meetings. So many meetings. I think I had individual meetings with 13 different faculty members. I'm pretty sure by the time I reached dinner I was no longer witty or charming, and perhaps no longer completely coherent, because I was just so damn tired. Upon returning to the hotel I intended to do a run-through of my talk, but I was so exhausted that I barely mustered up the energy to put on my pj's before falling into bed.

Day 2:
More meetings, although far fewer (only 8!) and broken up by my job talk and a tour of the new building that will house the new faculty. A little backwards, as my meetings probably would have been easier had my job talk already happened. But I will say that I didn't really have the chance to get nervous before my talk because I was so busy with meetings. The nerves hit a little when I noticed the camera in the corner of the room filming my every move. There's something about knowing that your talk will be recorded that ups the anxiety.

Miscellaneous notes:
Because I was fortunate enough to drive to my interview instead of fly, I was able to pack a ton of stuff so that I could be prepared for any situation (the weather has been changing pretty rapidly here lately). I packed granola bars in case I needed a snack, and had a pair of flats in my laptop bag in case my heels got to uncomfortable as the day wore on. But there were things I didn't think to bring that I will now know to take in the event that I get other interviews in the future. 1) A nail file. Maybe I was extra clumsy due to the sleep deprivation, but somehow I managed to break three nails during my trip, which is usually a rare occurrence for me. 2) Throat lozenges!!! Basically it was two days of non-stop talking. My throat is now so sore and by day 2 (when I had to give my talk) my throat was already feeling pretty croaky. Next time I'm taking a jumbo-sized bag of lozenges with me to save my voice.

So, is interviewing for a faculty position stressful? Hell yes. But at least I think I managed to not make an ass of myself and impress a few people, so it could have been much worse.

Anatomy of an Interview: T-minus 12 hours

I think I have discovered the solution to pre-interview jitters:

1. Be very, very sleepy. It is hard to be anxious when you are having trouble staying awake.
2. Drive into an unfamiliar city at night, in the middle of a thunderstorm/torrential downpour, complete with lightning, power outages, and tornado warnings. Trying to find your hotel in these conditions will distract you from any anxiety you may be feeling about dozens of people judging you and your work to determine if you're worthy of a faculty position.
3. Actually get your job talk finished and in a state where when your supervisor asks how your talk is coming along you can reply, "My slides are f--king awesome!" and actually mean it.

That last one might be the real reason I'm more relaxed.

Anatomy of an Interview: T-minus 36 hours

And so begins the countdown to my first interview.  I have decided that this period of the interview process must be the obsessive phase. The ability to sleep eludes me now. Oh sleep, how I miss thee! My ability to eat, however, has not diminished at all. A lot of ice cream and cookies have gone into this talk preparation. There is a lot of list-making, and double and triple checking that I have packed everything I will need. There has also been much ironing, something I rarely do but was necessitated by having to spend two days in clothing that isn't jeans and a sweater.

The job talk is... mostly done? It still needs tweaking. There are citations to insert and a few images to perfect, and a summary slide that says "write something here" that I should probably fill in with actual information. Although I'm sure I will be tweaking my slides until the last minute, the bigger panic comes from feeling the need to prepare for the 20 or so individual meetings I am scheduled for. I keep reading on websites about how you should read at least one paper by each person you are meeting with to familiarize yourself with their work. Ummm, given that I only got the schedule today and my first meeting is in 36 hours, I'm probably not going to be able to read 20 papers by then. I think a gander at their websites to get a general idea about their research is going to have to suffice.

Now, off to re-assess my outfit choices and re-pack my suitcase a few more times!

Job talk prep... and valuable life lessons?

In late summer, I started thinking about what I would need to prepare to go on the job market this fall. With the dawn of the new academic year began the CV updating and tweaking of research statements and the gradual accumulation of a list of current job postings (I really do enjoy making lists). In late September, I started sending in my first batch of applications, which I've dealt with in waves around the 1st and 15th of each month ever since. I've spent countless hours researching departments and customizing cover letters, not to mention harassing my supervisor, with little success, to get his reference letters in by the deadlines. 

I was so focused on putting together a good application, however, that I neglected to spend any time thinking about what to do if any of these places actually wanted to interview me! So when I was phoned last week and asked for an interview I went into shock a bit and immediately thought to myself, "F--K! I have two weeks to prepare a job talk!" The next few hours involved a lot of panic and wandering around muttering profanity to myself. After overindulging on celebrating with Thai food and wine, the panic subsided a bit, at least enough for me to come up with a title for my talk and put together a pretty awesome title slide.

Anyway, the upside was that once I started thinking about how to convince an entire department why my research is important and they should pay me large sums of money to keep doing it, it was kind of reinvigorating. The day-to-day stresses of work had really been sucking all the enjoyment out of research for me lately. The endless meetings and revisions and lab drama (*cough* people not cleaning equipment properly *cough*) was really wearing me down. But by spending some time trying to sell my research to other people I kind of re-sold myself on it. I had started the day thinking, "how am I ever going to make this interesting to a diverse department that includes people who care nothing about cognitive neuroscience?" and ending the day thinking, "damn, this sh-t is cool! I would totally hire me"

So, the moral of this story is that sometimes you have to take a step back from the monotony and daily frustrations and remind yourself why you love your work so that you can continue to love it. And also, that you should probably start preparing your job talk a whole hell of a lot sooner than I did.  

Puppies = Awesome

I think I might be the luckiest postdoc (maybe person) on the planet - instead of sharing my office with another postdoc, I get an adorable puppy as my office mate. Meet Jake, our lab Lab:

Jake posing for the camera

Ok, so he's not really a puppy anymore, but he is quite possibly the sweetest dog ever and I can't stop calling him a puppy. Every afternoon at 3PM we have 'puppy cuddle time', which primarily consists of him lying on my feet and pawing at me until I rub his belly. And he's so damn cute that I can't possibly say no. I cave and rub his belly every single time. 

I think this puppy sharing my office might be the one thing keeping me sane during job application season. Between endless tweaking of cover letters, data analysis, preparing talks, and writing manuscripts, the days have gotten more than a little hectic. Usually by mid afternoon I'm feeling that to-do-list panic, the anxiety that comes when you realize you haven't accomplished half of the things you intended to and the work day is nearly over. Fortunately, that's about the same time Jake starts snoring and twitching in his sleep. Seriously, watch him twitch in his sleep and just try to feel stressed out:

My blood pressure just went down watching this again.

They take cute animals into hospitals and seniors homes to help reduce stress and lift people's spirits, I think we need to start doing this for academics too. Wouldn't grant writing be more fun if you got to take breaks to cuddle an adorable puppy? Yes, yes it would. 

Random Culinary Awesomeness

Since this blog is supposed to be about academic things I normally wouldn't post anything about food here, but last night I made the most awesome dinner and I think it deserves sharing. As justification, I use the argument that cooking is actually science (or, as Hannelore delightfully put it in Questionable Content, "Baking is wonderful! It's like science for hungry people!").

Apron based on this Questionable Content comic

Without further ado, I present you with a picture of the awesomeness I created:

This, my friends, is a roasted stuffed pumpkin. And it was freaking delicious. 

Here are the little guys before baking. You basically cut the top off a small pie pumpkin and clean out all the pumpkin guts. Then you fill it with bread, cheese, cream, and whatever other seasonings and extras you want, put the top back on, and roast it in the oven for 2 hours. You end up with a savory bread-pudding-type stuffing inside a soft, sweet pumpkin shell. AWESOME.

I used a multigrain bread that had lots of sunflower seeds in it, which added a nice texture to the stuffing, along with chunks of gruyere cheese. The cream was seasoned with nutmeg and pepper. 

I will definitely make these again! They are time consuming because of the long roasting, but the actual prep work is pretty easy. I was thinking that next time I might try an herbed goat cheese and maybe add in some cranberries and almond slices. The way they are now they make a pretty impressive meal for vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike, but I bet you could add meat (bacon!) and it would be pretty freaking good.

I saw this recipe on another blog, which you can visit here for better pictures and the full recipe. 

Random Geekiness

These plush toy statistical distributions just made me giddy when I saw them. I was all, "awww, look at the adorable little normal distribution. I  want one of my geeky friends to have a baby just so I can give them as a gift."

And then... I discovered the set of evil distributions. And now I'm thinking, "screw giving them as a gift, I want an Evil Poisson for myself!"

I mean, come on - in a head-to-head (tail-to-tail?) battle who would win?

Student's t

Evil Poisson

                             VS.

  

That Poisson has such an awesome evil face I have to give it to him. However, I don't think anyone could beat the Evil Weibull - he has a monocle:

These (and other) statistical awesomeness from Nausicaa Distribution on Etsy

How to kill a grad student's love of research: Step 3

In two previous posts I talked about how over or under supervision and CV padding were good ways to make your grad students want to run away from academia. Today I want to rant about discuss how unreasonable expectations can totally f--k up the supervisor-student relationship. 

Frustration and disappointment arise when expectations start getting unreasonable or when the student and supervisor have conflicting expectations. I think some examples will help illustrate this nicely:

Supervisor to Student:
Reasonable: "I was reading this paper and I think we should try the analysis method they used. Why don't you have a look at the article and tomorrow we can discuss a plan for our project."
Unreasonable:

Reasonable: "I would really like you to present this work at an upcoming conference. The submission deadline is in a few weeks, why don't you put together an abstract?"

Unreasonable: "You know this project that you only have six subjects for and we have no idea how it's going to turn out? I would like you to write a sufficiently vague abstract to submit for this conference... oh, and the submission deadline is in 3 hours."

Student to Supervisor:
Reasonable: "I'm going home to visit my family for Christmas, but I'll still be checking email while I'm away if you need to get a hold of me."
Unreasonable: "I'm going on vacation for the next three weeks, so you're going to have to finish that revision without me."

Reasonable: "The journal's deadline for this revision is in three weeks. Do you think we could sit down together sometime this week to discuss the reviewers comments so that I can work on the necessary changes?"
Unreasonable: "If you don't provide me feedback on my manuscript by date X I am going to submit it without you"

In this example, the supervisor can laugh heartily and say, "Like hell you are, that's completely unreasonable. Also, I pay your salary and publication costs." The more serious problem tends to arise when the supervisor's expectations are unreasonable because chances are the student will never speak up about it. No one wants to disappoint their supervisor, and many find it next to impossible to say no to the person that holds their career in their hands.

I have more first-hand experience than I would like with only sleeping a few hours a night and spending entire weekends doing data analysis just so that I could finish all the things my supervisor wanted.  In retrospect, I had a pretty awesome supervisor who would have completely understood that I needed more time to complete a project so that I could get some damn sleep. Somehow, the fear of your most important reference-letter-writer thinking you can't handle the workload wins out and you just live on caffeine and chocolate until the work is done (i.e., when you graduate never).

So, what's the solution?
Ideally, honest communication between the student and supervisor.

My department had a fairly comprehensive graduate student handbook that contained general guidelines for what was expected from students and supervisors. For example, it was suggested that it was reasonable for students to expect feedback on their written work in a timely manner (e.g., within two weeks) but also that it was unreasonable for students to expect major manuscript revisions on short notice and should provide plenty of time (e.g., at least one month) for supervisors to provide reference letters. Good advice. Sadly, almost no one in the department ever read it.

The handbook also suggested that students sit down with their supervisor on a regular basis (e.g, once a semester) to discuss what both parties expected in the coming months and create a written plan or contract for both short-term and long-term goals. The idea that both the student and the supervisor have the opportunity to sit down and honestly discuss their expectations for each other is a good one. The problem? This almost NEVER happens. Typically, students aren't made aware of the fact that they are not meeting their supervisor's expectations until it's too late and very few students feel comfortable telling their supervisor that their expectations are unreasonable. Maybe a safer starting point is more general discussion about what is and isn't reasonable to expect within departments and lab groups that don't focus on a specific individual or pre-existing problem.

Given the power imbalance inherent in the student-supervisor relationship and our tendency as ambitious academics to place unrealistic expectations on ourselves, this is probably not an issue that can be easily solved. But I do hope that when I have a lab full of students (soon, hopefully!) that 1) I am clear about my expectations of them, and 2) I am mindful of how difficult it will be for them to tell me when my expectations are insane and so try to keep my expectations reasonable. I'm sure I will fail miserably at this from time-to-time, but I think it's a good thing to strive for.

Vancouver vs. Durham

I was talking to a friend yesterday and I started feeling very homesick for Vancouver (I miss you Canada!), which got me to thinking about the weird ways that things are different here in North Carolina. There was no huge culture shock, but there were lots of little differences that took some getting used to.

• People laugh at me for how I pronounce words like 'sorry' and 'pasta'. However, I laugh at them every time they say 'route'.
• No one here seems to care about hockey. The do however camp out for days to get basketball tickets. Seriously, days.  
• Everyone gave me a strange look when I referred to street performers as buskers. Is this really a Canadian thing? No one from my lab had heard this word before.
• My collaborators keep removing the u's from my words. Colour, neighbour, behaviour, favourite. No matter how long I am in the US I will never get used to these words not having a 'u' in them.
• This one came as a big shock to me:

Smarties in Canada

Smarties in the USA

• No one in my lab had experienced poutine, nor did they know what butter tarts or nanaimo bars were. I did manage to get a couple of people to try poutine on a conference trip to Montreal, and I plan to force-feed them butter tarts later this week (I don't think they'll put up much of a fight). 
• There are no yam rolls! This may be a west coast/east coast thing, as I have had yam rolls in San Francisco. The do not exist in North Carolina (that I'm aware of, if anyone knows a place I can get some, please tell me!!!). Yam (or sweet potato, if you prefer) in tempura batter, all rolled up in rice. Crunchy and soft, sweet and salty all at the same time, and if they're fresh and the yam is still warm it's the best food ever. Seriously, put trying these on your bucket list.

At a tiny sushi place in Vancouver. Probably the best yam rolls I've ever had.

• However, two of my favourite things in the world, cheese and wine, are far more accessible and affordable in NC. Now, it's not like California where you can buy gallon jugs of vodka in the Rite-Aid, but you can still get good, cheap wine at the grocery store. The quality of the alcohol I consume has increased dramatically since I moved to NC. 

So, pros and cons to both places. At least I can still get good sushi here, apart from yam rolls. But no matter how cheap the liquor is here in the USA, there's no place like home:

View from the Granville St. Bridge, Vancouver

Supervision: Teaching More Than Science

I just came across a link on google+ (my new favourite place for all things sciencey) to a nice piece from The Chronicle of Higher Education regarding professors failing their students when it comes to career preparation. Here are a few excerpts:

To be sure, my clients tell me that advising occurs—endless advising of "the dissertation project." As if that project, and its minutiae of citations and shades of meaning, is the point of graduate school. It is not the point of graduate school. It is simply a document that demonstrates a mastery of a discipline and a topic. The point of graduate school, for the actual graduate students themselves, is preparation for a career. A career like yours, with benefits and a retirement plan.

[...]Your responsibility to your advisees extends to telling the whole truth about the academic enterprise at this time. Tenure-track lines have been evaporating for years. Aiming for a tenure-track job is, for most students, unrealistic. For those students who wish to try, the effort requires years of methodical training and calculation of career chances, from the point of arrival in the graduate program through the dissertation defense and beyond. Your job is to look up from your students' dissertations, and assist them in mastering those skills and calculations.

How? By teaching your Ph.D.'s how to write a CV; to cultivate prominent scholarly supporters; to pursue grant money with a single-minded purpose; to apply for national awards; to publish, publish more, publish higher, write a stellar application letter, and do the elevator talk.

And when, even after doing all of the above, the tenure-track job doesn't materialize, as it often will not, instead of averting your eyes in shame from their so-called "failures," you step up, professors, and work with your Ph.D.'s to transfer their skills into some sector of the economy that is not contracting as badly as your own.

This post brings up a number of issues that just don't seem to be discussed enough, at least in my field. First, although it's important to teach a student to perform good science, it is equally important to teach them the professional skills they will need to succeed in academia. There are too many graduate students who know that they should network at conferences but have no idea how to do that so they just don't. Or who have never been taught how to provide constructive criticism as a reviewer. Or don't know how to go about finding a postdoc position. Or have no idea what should go into their research and teaching statements when they apply for faculty positions. In fact, often students don't even really know what a faculty position entails. They've experienced the lecturing and research, but they often don't know about all the other responsibilities professors have within the department (or the hell of grant writing, or all the department politics that make you crazy). All of these are things that a good supervisor will make a point of teaching their graduate students, particularly if the student's goal is to stay in academia.

Second, there needs to be an acknowledgement that not everyone can, or should, get a tenure-track faculty position. It seems to be assumed that that's where all grad students will end up, but it is often unrealistic. If a student has a talent and enjoyment for teaching, they can be encouraged to explore teaching-based faculty positions. There are research-based positions in both private and government institutions that may be perfect for someone who doesn't want to teach but really loves research. Some people may be better suited for industry jobs. Given how tough getting a faculty position is these days, the alternatives need to be discussed more. There are many options, and both students and supervisors should communicate what their goals are, what outcome it is reasonable to expect, and then tailor the student's program to try to meet everyone's needs.

And that's my rant for the day. The full article from The Chronicle of Higher Education can be found here.

That's one good-looking flow chart you've got there

I do love a good flow chart, and this one of the top 100 Science Fiction / Fantasy books is pretty impressive. I may use it to decide what to read this weekend.

Well done, SF Signal

Random geekiness: 100th visitor!

Adventures in Academia rustled up it's 100th visitor today! In honour of this occasion, I... worked on my job applications. Because that's pretty much all I ever do anymore. I'm really looking forward to that happy day in mid-November when the bulk of my applications have been sent in. Although then I'll be anxiously waiting to see if I get interviews, which might be worse. We'll find out in six weeks or so.

I'm working on part III in my "How to kill a grad student's love of research" series. In the meantime, here are some pretty pictures:

Photos by Eric Hines, reblogged here from boingboing

And a pretty cool video:

Teaching evaluations

I spent some time last night going through my old teaching evaluations so that I could put some information about them in my job applications. Here are some of the best responses to, "What do you consider to be the strongest and weakest features of the instructor, as a teacher?"

Positive comments are usually pretty similar, just variations on "great teacher." But occasionally a student will be more creative with their praise:

• "No weaknesses, she's divine!"
• "Very responsible"
• "She made the class tolerable"
• "Put up with my pedantic questions"
• "I only took this class b/c I didn't want to take [biological psychology]. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be."
• "She was really patient when students made stupid comments"

But you can't please everyone:

• "She should walk around a bit more while she's lecturing" 
• "Needs to stop walking around so much, it's distracting"

Some complaints really have to be taken with a grain of salt:

• "There is far too much in this course that lacks scientific reliability and validity"
• "Office hours too early. I shouldn't have to be on campus at 10am"

And my personal favourite:

• "I think the TAs are having sex" 

This wins on so many levels. Either this person didn't actually read the question, or they have some interesting theories about how teaching ability is related to sexual activity (and the sexual activity of people other than the teacher, no less!). Although, there's no judgement about it, so I can't tell if this student thought that the (imagined) relationship between my TAs was a strength or weakness of my teaching. Perhaps they meant it as a compliment.

Pirate science

In honour of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, here is a pirate-themed paper from PNAS.

Gordon, V. D. (in press). Shiver me timbers: Pulsatile contractility in model tissues. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA.

Ok, the science actually has nothing to do with pirates, but the title is awesome. Yarrrr!

It seems so simple when you put it in a chart

from I Love Charts

How to kill a grad student's love of research: Step 2

Quite often when students complain about their supervisor, they start off with, "I really like him, but..." or, "He's a really nice guy, but..." And it's true - many of these "bad" supervisors are really awesome people to grab a beer with. Often, one of their most frustrating attributes is that they really do mean well and are trying to be nice, which brings us to...

2) Killing the lab with "kindness"

In today's craptastic economy, tenure-track faculty positions are harder to come by (although this year looks much better, which is great for me!). It's harder for PIs to get funding, making it harder for them to fund postdocs. Basically, anyone who finished their PhD in the last 5 years probably had the panicky realization at some point that all their education guaranteed them diddly-squat. Why is this important, you ask? Well, because it means that the competition for the available positions heated up and the typical 'publish or perish' mentality went into overdrive. PIs need their students to go on to good postdocs, and their postdocs to go on to good faculty positions, almost as much as the students and postdocs need those things. So the kindly supervisor, with their heart in the right place, realizes that they have a student (or two, or three) who is not going to be very competitive in today's market and they decide to help them out.

On the surface, it seems harmless enough to tack someone's name onto a paper even though they didn't contribute or to give the student first-author credit even though the supervisor (or often another student or postdoc) did the majority of the work. In the long run though, NO ONE WINS. Seriously, this is bad for everyone, the PI included.

• The students who aren't being helped because they are perceived as capable of succeeding on their own become increasingly bitter and disillusioned. They are often the students who end up doing all the work while others get the credit, and now they have to fight for jobs with people who have inflated CVs. If you've been this person, you know how disheartening it is to feel like other people are being handed freebies while you work your ass off. This situation often leads to comments like, "Maybe I should just go work at the mall" and a desire to find a job outside of academia, thus pushing the most talented researchers out and making way for the mediocre. 
• The student who received the help often ends up in one of two situations because they didn't learn how to do good work on their own: a) they have to work three times as hard to catch up in their next position, or b) they flounder without someone to help them out and end up being unable to live up to the expectations set out for them in their next job.
• The PI, although they may initially have warm fuzzy feelings that they've done a good deed, will also suffer for their kindness. Sending students on to other jobs that they are unprepared for eventually bites them in the ass... once people realize that you're helping student's pad their CV and writing overly-positive reference letters, they're not going to trust your recommendations and will avoid taking people from your lab, thus effectively screwing over any person you supervise.

So everyone, what is the moral of this story? Just say, "NO!" to CV-padding handouts in the name of kindness! Making sure your students have earned every line on their CV and are truly prepared to be independent researchers will benefit everyone.

Timely...

Like what I said yesterday, but in funnier comic form.

How to kill a grad student's love of research: Step 1

Now that I am in the midst of applying for faculty positions, I spend a lot of time thinking about the kind of supervisor I want to be when one day (hopefully soon!) I have my own grad students. Although grad school was hard work, and I am very happy to never have to write a dissertation again, on the whole it was a positive experience for me. My supervisor was really excited about research and good at motivating me, and as a result we worked well together and managed to be very productive. But I know a lot of people who have had such bad experiences with their supervisor that they've left academia altogether, depriving the field of truly promising scientists. So in my quest to be the world's best supervisor, I've started thinking about what I should avoid doing so that my students don't end up hating science.

There seems to be a fine balance to be struck with how often you interact with your students and how much control they have over their projects. Based on the not-so-random sample of grad students I've talked to, a supervisor going to either extreme of attentiveness will cause problems:

1a) Be an absentee supervisor
I've heard more than a few students (and ex-students) complain about how difficult it was to get help when they needed it. Particularly when students are just starting out, they need a lot of guidance from their supervisors. And when they don't get it, things can be disastrous... New students often have great ideas, but have trouble implementing them well because they don't have the background knowledge in the theoretical and practical aspects of their field yet. It's hard work for the most experienced researchers to design an experiment with minimal confounds, and yet many supervisors seem to expect their young grad students to do so without much assistance. The end result seems to be crap projects that have to be re-done over and over again, leading to frustration, despair, and a desire to do anything other than research for a living.

1b) Be a control freak supervisor
Conversely, students seem to be equally frustrated by supervisors that are always hovering over them and micromanaging everything they do. This seems to be a problem particularly for senior students who, like teenagers, are struggling to assert their independence from their academic parent. The joy of publishing one's work is pretty much lost when you feel like you had no real contribution to it or everything you did do was redone by your supervisor. In extreme circumstances, I've heard students describe themselves as slave labour or unpaid RAs. It's hard to enjoy and take pride in your research when you don't actually feel like it's your research.

The Solution?
It seems like the solution that would satisfy everyone is to have a gradient of attentiveness, with new and inexperienced students getting more supervision and more senior students being given more freedom. Not having had a lab full of people to supervise myself, is this actually a reasonable and practical thing to do? Would there be a perception of inequality and favouritism if some students got more help than others, even if it was because they needed it? How does one balance giving the student the time and attention they need while ensuring that the project remains theirs?

Random Geekiness

The other day while discussing the relative merits of red vs. green laser pointers with a colleague, I got to thinking, "you know what would be cool? A sonic screwdriver laser pointer. I would totally buy that."

I have managed to find instructions on how to make one from a laser pointer and a sonic screwdriver flashlight, but it seems like there are a lot of people discussing how to make these on forums. I feel like geeky academics everywhere would totally love a Doctor-Who-inspired laser pointer. Why has no company produced these yet?

Welcome!

I started setting up a blog a handful of years ago as a means of procrastinating from writing my dissertation, but I never quite got around to posting anything. Now that I have a handful of manuscripts to procrastinate from again, I thought I'd give this blogging thing another try. Ahhh, procrastination!

My goal for this blog is to share interesting science as well as some thoughts about academia and the challenges that young researchers face when trying to find jobs and start new labs. As it's important to have a balance between our work and personal lives, I'm sure some random non-academic geekiness will show up occasionally as well :)

I hope you enjoy reading it!