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.