For obvious reasons our State of the Lab Address was postponed until just recently.
GrAdvisor didn't really feel like sitting us all down to tell us how crappy things were back at the very beginning of the year...but they have since improved.
Looks like our grant will get funded and people can return to their full-time salaries in a month or two. Huzzah!
This also gives me a bit of wiggle-room with my defense date as it will not be quite so crucial to get out before the $$$ run out. Though GrAdvisor is still pushing for soon, as am I.
We had a nice candid discussion about money and how to get it (all my info previously came from DrugMonkey) which was a nice change of pace.
Another student asked if we could be more involved in the grant writing process (I have never even seen a copy of our current one, though I know that some of my data are in it). GrAdvisor seemed to think this was a strange request, and another student suggested taking the grant-writing class. First student and I countered that it is a more valuable experience to be actively working on a grant using your own data than it is to process generic information in a seminar. GrAdvisor seemed receptive? We'll see where that goes.
In other news, BH got himself a pretty sweet post-doc here which is a de facto decision to stay in our current location for a few more years. This is a considerable relief, as it greatly focuses my own post-doctoral search (not to mention that we quite like our house and friends here). Still holding out hope for the Shining Star in candidate review for a faculty position here, though the timing might be awkward. However, I spoke to another faculty who uses the same model organism. S/he seems reluctant to commit to taking on new people in the next year as s/he is up for tenure review, but I imagine that I could fanagle a short-term position in hir lab until Shining Star is up and running which might work out great for everyone. S/he encouraged me to meet with hir to discuss projects so I will set up an appointment for the near future and see if we can't work something out.
Things are starting to look up.
On the other hand, GrAdvisor is pessimistic about both of these people. Not sure what to make of this really other than to look at other options as well and hope that his tendency to be rather out of touch regarding these things holds true in this case too.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Yes? No?
Do we like this new look?
Everybody's doing this re-formatting lately so I've succumbed to peer pressure. Plus I was really getting annoyed with the pages long posts with 2 inch margins - what a waste of space and my mouse wheel is on the fritz so that makes the narrow format even more frustrating.
I also found out that my former header image had been copyrighted since I first got ahold of it. Sad to see that one go, but now you get some Ernst Haeckel. Who doesn't love them some Ernst Haeckel I ask you.
Everybody's doing this re-formatting lately so I've succumbed to peer pressure. Plus I was really getting annoyed with the pages long posts with 2 inch margins - what a waste of space and my mouse wheel is on the fritz so that makes the narrow format even more frustrating.
I also found out that my former header image had been copyrighted since I first got ahold of it. Sad to see that one go, but now you get some Ernst Haeckel. Who doesn't love them some Ernst Haeckel I ask you.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Kick-Your-Cold's-Ass Soup Recipe!
ScientistMother is feeling under the weather (go over there and offer moral support and drug recommendations). Jr. Grad Student in my lab has a wife and three kids at home with strep throat infections...I'm wearing an isolation mask whenever I need to talk to him lately. Yep, it's that time of year - the Lab Plague is going around. I haven't got it yet. Let's hope it stays that way. For those of you who are less fortunate, I submit my secret weapon:
Kick-Your-Cold's-Ass Soup
1.5-2 qt. chicken broth
2-4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, boiled then shredded with a fork
1 can chickpeas
1-4 canned chipotle peppers, finely diced (pepper proportion should increase in relation to how crappy you're feeling - don't be scared of the heat - mucous prevents the overburn)
1 avocado, cubed
chopped fresh cilantro/coriander
Throw the first four ingredients in a pot or slow cooker. Heat through. Stir in avocado and top with cilantro. Serve hot. Repeat as needed.
Guaranteed to clear your sinuses and make you feel slightly better than your current state of death-warmed-over.
Kick-Your-Cold's-Ass Soup
1.5-2 qt. chicken broth
2-4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, boiled then shredded with a fork
1 can chickpeas
1-4 canned chipotle peppers, finely diced (pepper proportion should increase in relation to how crappy you're feeling - don't be scared of the heat - mucous prevents the overburn)
1 avocado, cubed
chopped fresh cilantro/coriander
Throw the first four ingredients in a pot or slow cooker. Heat through. Stir in avocado and top with cilantro. Serve hot. Repeat as needed.
Guaranteed to clear your sinuses and make you feel slightly better than your current state of death-warmed-over.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
What exactly am I ambivalent about? Part Deux
As a follow up to my post on the positive valences of academic science, here is other side of ambivalence. I almost didn't want to finish this post what for all the warms and fuzzies going on over the first one. But, alas, I am still ambivalent and so here goes.
I love science. I really do. But some of my experiences as a Ph.D. student, as well as the fear and uncertainty that I see in so many people on the job market (post-docs and faculty) have colored me a bit of a cynic. I am much more jaded about the realities of academic science now than I was as an entering student with my pie-in-the-sky ideas of the Academy. What follows are some of my unfavorable impressions about academic science. They are, by and large, gross generalizations. I am well aware that there are exceptions to many of these, and I am not in any way trying to paint all of academia or all academic scientists with a broad, crap-colored brush. After all, I am one too. Most of my readers (that I know of) are academic scientists, and I like most of them very much. So, dear readers, please do not take personal offense at some of these critiques -- they are not personal.
The negative valences of academic science, as I see it, include:
Cannibalism
As it stands right now, academic science in this country eats its young. The numbers I keep hearing are these: for every 10 Ph.D. students that our academic institutions turn out, there is ONE available academic faculty position. If this is true, then 90% of Ph.D.'s are not going to get the job that they are being trained for. Now, it may be true that 90% of Ph.D.'s just aren't academic faculty material, though I think that estimate is a little high. I'm sure that some, possibly even many, just don't have what it takes. But many do. Many more than 10%. So what gives? I'm not really sure, but I'll go ahead and propose some hypotheses. Given my up-to-now rather short stint in the Academy, perhaps some wise sages can offer some insight into this problem. Fundamentally, I see the problem as: Labs need grants in order to function. Labs need data to write grants. Labs needs people to generate the data. The more economical you can be about which people are generating your data, the more science you can do on your limited grant funds, the more data you can generate, the better chance you have of landing one of these elusive grants. So it makes sense to hire cheap labor to generate data.
So who's cheap labor? Grad students and post-docs. PiT and I have had some interesting discussion about the relative economy of students v. post-docs - it was enlightening to me. I didn't realize that by the time you factor in health insurance and tuition on top of the rather measly student stipend, the cost of a student to the lab approaches or equals that of a post-doc. And post-docs should require much less investment of time and effort to get a return in data. So really, it is post-docs who are the PI's best chance at generating data at the lowest cost in time, energy and money. But post-docs don't stay post-docs forever. Some of best and luckiest move on to their own faculty positions. Some of the best and unlucky, get tired of the perma-post-doc prospects and do....something else? So you need more post-docs to replace them, which means you need to graduate more Ph.D. students.
But here's what I don't get: grad students are costly to PIs in terms on time/money/energy. They are costly to grad schools too since in most cases it is the grad school that covers stipend/tuition/benefits until the student joins a lab (contrast this against med students who generate revenue by paying tuition). So there's this glut of over-trained and underemployed scientists out there and we keep making more? Why? Well, as funding becomes more competitive, there is more pressure to get data, more pressure to get people to get the data, and post-docs are not going to stay post-docs forever. From the grad school's perspective, they want grant money coming in and as such need to supply people to help a PI get it. Turnover is high in trainee positions, so you need to keep bringing more into replace the ones that move on. So I guess that's why we keep training more grad students.
But as I said, nobody stays a post-doc or a grad student forever, so what happens eventually to the 9o out of 100 of them that don't land the faculty position? Honestly, I don't know what happens to all of them. Some of them teach or work in industry. Some of them take on other alternative science careers. Some of them get thrown under the bus. Not all, probably not even many, but I have seen it happen and it is grotesque. In some cases, the trainee (as both grad students and post-docs are known in this country) are chewed up and spit out by the data-production factory. You can't help but feel a little exploited when you look around and realize that these things happen.
Of course, there are plenty of PIs and programs out there who will bend over backwards to make sure this doesn't happen to their people. Sometimes that's because it makes them more attractive to future trainees if they have a long track record of their former trainees going on to successful positions. Sometimes it's just because they're good people (the two are not mutually exclusive). But how much can these individual PIs do in the deluge of trainees with nowhere to go? Of course, an academic faculty position is not the only career option for a Ph.D. and not all Ph.D.s want it. But that is what academic Ph.D. students and post-docs are being groomed for, and it's probably what most of us aspire to - at least in the beginning.
Pressure to perform/conform
The pressure to perform is a big one. Scientific discovery is moving at a blistering pace thanks to many technological breakthroughs and the exponential increase in information available. As such, it can be tough to keep up. We are many scientists with many ideas and worthwhile projects, competing for limited resources. If you've carved out for yourself a little corner of super-hot-and-sexy field you must constantly fight to stay ahead or someone else is going to usurp your position. (I love natural selection as a concept, but it kind of sucks when it's acting on me.) Everybody wants a piece of what you've got and so you face the pressure to publish first, in the best journals, so you receive credit for the ground-breaking work that might land you another big grant, or maybe an appointment to the National Academy.
This kind of pressure creates an environment in which those that are willing to sacrifice most are often the ones who receive the rewards. You know the ones -- the Vitamin D-deficient grad student who never speaks to anyone and never seems to leave the lab for fear of wasting precious time that could be spent on experiments. The post-doc who is going through a divorce but won't talk about how the working hours affected the marriage for fear of being seen as less-than-committed to the bench. The bitter PI who resents the things given up in earlier years for sake of the career. When I see this kind of desperation it can suck all the joy out of the work. It makes me question myself. Not about whether I am a good enough scientist to do this work, but whether I am worthy. I love science, but not enough to pay that price. If I'm not willing to make such great sacrifices, am I less deserving of scientific success as those who do? I think not. In science there is not a linear relationship between effort and results. So while I may not have the talent of Mozart, I will not choose to be Salieri. There has to be some middle ground, but not everyone sees it as such.
There is a second kind of pressure: "You must make the same choices I did to be successful and validated as a scientist." Coming from someone who's "made it" this kind of advice can seem pretty compelling. But sometimes I suspect that it's really just a rationalization of the choices they've made. To see someone else making different choices about their lifestyle and career -- and still succeeding -- must make it pretty hard to live with the sacrifices that they regret. Moreover, the idea that there is only a single path to success is just crazy. It makes no more sense than asserting that there is only a single experimental approach to tackle a hypothesis.
Yet this attitude is pervasive. I remember being told by my Program Director on the first day of my graduate school career that our Ph.D.'s "really meant something" and that we ought to "aspire to great things"...sounds like a pretty good pep-talk...but he went on to say that "anyone graduating from this program and going on to teach or work in industry was a failure and a disappointment and a cut-rate scientist". WTF man?!?! I got into this for my passion. I want creativity and independence, so you can take your rigid ideas of what a good scientist looks like and stuff them into some choice orifices.
Finally, there is always some resistance to new ideas and challenges to the dogma...which is really what science is all about, but despite the ideal of objectivity, we do get attached to our ideas, and that makes it so much harder to change our understanding. I see greybeards attacking the character of young upstarts who challenge the dogma put forth in Dr. BigWig's GlamorMag publications. I hate this. I just hate it. While we all should strive for objectivity when examining scientific work, I really have no problem with heated debate over data and conclusions. However, when the debate turns to character assassination it leaves me feeling pretty disappointed in those practitioners of our profession. Pressure from any of these factions creates an environment where Science must compete with ego and so many other demands. No good.
Elitism
I almost hate to bring this up with all the echoes of "professorial" and "the educated elite" still ringing in my ears since the presidential election. But I'll try to explain what I mean here. I think we can all agree that having an education is quite a privilege. At the same time, I don't appreciate the slinging of "educated elite" by some members of my least favorite political party as if it were some kind of epithet. I've worked hard for my education - this here learnin' don't come easy. At the same time I recognize that this places me in a privileged position, and I don't take that lightly. But it also doesn't make me a bad person, or one who thinks poorly of those who have not had the same kind of educational opportunities as I. I do get pretty tired of the attitude I get from some of my high school classmates, "Ooooh, so you think you're hot shit since you're gonna be a doctor or something?" Actually, I don't think I'm hot shit. I think I work my ass off. It makes me sad that a higher education is not more highly valued in this country and I dislike being made to feel as if I ought to apologize for wanting to be an awesome braniac scientist. I don't like that I am presumed to be "elitist" because I have a passion for science and education. I hope that will change.
The other side of this coin is that there are certainly some who do think they're hot shit - and they give the rest of us a bad name. Such hot shit in fact, that not only should the undereducated public bow before them, but so should everyone else who holds the same damn degree. You know who I'm talking about. There's probably one in your department. There might even be a science-diva-in-training in your very lab. These are the people who have published some really-hot-shit-papers, maybe they've landed some huge friggin' grants and they're the only one who knows the first damn thing about the latest hot science field or technique that all the hiring committees are tripping over themselves to get in their departments. Or maybe they haven't done any of this yet, but they are so certain that they are so much smarter than everyone else that it is a foregone conclusion. These people are the steamiest of all shit. Don't believe me? Just ask them. They'll tell you themselves.
Somehow, their "elite" status within the scientific community grants them entitlement to be total ass-hats to everyone around them. Or just everyone. True, they've probably sacrificed a lot to get those GlamorMag papers and pick-your-favorite-science-society appointments. They've likely worked pretty hard for those things. But you know what? There are a lot of other scientists who work just as hard and do not expect special entitlement to asshattery and fuckwittery without consequence.
So much of this is manifest in the flagrant disregard that some Dr. BigWigs have for the rules of social interaction and professionalism. Example: I rotated under a PI who had previously thrown his coffee mug at his technician's head because he wasn't happy with her data. On what planet is this OK? Why is he still working here? Why is he allowed to supervise laboratory animals, let alone people?
In another rotation lab, the PI asked one of his lab staff if she would set him up with her friend (because the friend was of his "preferred" ethnic group) all the while shtupping the half-his-age-technician (also of "preferred" ethnic group) who claims she was just working there to boost her med school applications (I'm assuming she got some damn good LORs). I don't think that I need to point out the problems with this behavior. I mean, I'm not going to judge someone's sexual proclivities, but throwing that into the mix with a tremendous power imbalance is asking for trouble. It is not tolerated in most professional settings for good reason.
Everybody knew about this stuff. In fact, it was administrators who passed on these rumors to me when I said I wanted to rotate in these labs - I ignored the rumors because I couldn't believe they were true. Silly naive little AA. They warned me and I didn't believe that such things would be tolerated in a professional setting. What I still cannot understand is why these Dr. BigWigs got a free pass. They were held to a grossly lower standard of professional behavior because why? Because we can't afford to lose them and their big grants? Because if we tell them to shape up or ship out they'll just go to another R1 and become our competitors? I say bullshit. In any other industry I can think of, being a team-player (or at least not making others so uncomfortable that their job performance falters), is Priority 1.
The trouble with the Academy is that we are loathe to get rid of those who can't play well with others because there is no one else who does exactly what they do. So what? There's someone else out there doing something else that nobody's onto yet who can play well with others, and who probably doesn't run with scissors either.
Some of the bad social behavior is not malicious. I think that academic science tends to attract a higher proportion of introverts and socially awkward individuals than are represented in the general population. The whole "flawed genius" hypothesis aside (although there might be something to that), the Academy attracts the geeks and nerds and socially awkward out there because here your intellectual contributions are valued more highly than your ability to make small-talk. This isn't a bad thing - hell, I'm a geek and a nerd and I'm often socially awkward outside my native habitat (if you don't believe me, check out my nerd rating in the sidebar!). However, the general acceptance of social awkwardness should not be misinterpreted as license to be an intentional jackass to your colleagues or anyone else.
The other aspect of elitism that really irks me is snobbery towards alternative science careers. I wrote a little bit about this in the Cannibalism section, but it's worth stating again here - we are grooming young scientists for academic careers, but there aren't enough of these to go around. As such, many young scientists will take non-academic careers wither out of desire or necessity. However, those who do are often looked down upon.
I've seen the term "SLACers" leveled at Ph.D.s who go on to primarily teaching positions at small liberal art colleges and it just makes me bristle. I did my undergrad at a SLAC and I had some incredible science professors. They were phenomenal teachers (evidence: I loved going to class, and I kicked ass in grad courses compared to my counterparts that did their undergrad at R1s). They're pretty great researchers to boot. No, they're probably not getting multiple R01s, maybe not any at all, but they're doing some pretty hot science and publishing good work in solid journals with nothing but bumbling undergrads in their employ. If that's not indicative of someone who can really make science happen I don't know what is. And let's not forget that education is just as important to the scientific endeavor as research. Where else are we going to find an endless stream of starry-eyed young scientists to fill those grad student and post-doc positions without the teachers who are lighting their fires? Why are educators so undervalued compared to researchers? We've all heard that saying: "If you can't do; teach." Bollocks. There are a lot of piss-poor professors out there teaching courses when they would be much better off staying in the lab. I say, if you can't teach; stick to the research and leave the tough stuff to those who know how to communicate.
And then of course there are those that leave the ranks of academia and go to industry. "Tools." Not my epithet; I didn't make it up. Seriously. My personal ethical objection to drug marketing aside, what in the hell is wrong with wanting to be on the cutting edge of drug discovery? Or any other applied science for that matter?
The Academy would do well to step out of the Ivory Tower every once in a while and engage with the public, the educators, and industrial science on a level that shows value for all these positions. Science is never conducted in a vacuum and just as collaborations within academia are necessary to fully explore a hypothesis, a collaborative attitude toward scientists outside of academia is necessary as well.
Politics
Interpersonal relationships (or perhaps more frequently, disagreements) have a much greater impact than they should on which findings see the light of day. I really don't have a lot to say about this because I think it is so patently obvious. As much as we'd all like to believe that we as scientists are entirely rational beings, and are always objective and so on and so on...well, we're still human. We still do silly irrational things. We still apply subjective judgment to ourselves, our data, and our colleagues even though we know better. Some of the things we do as imperfectly-rational humans is to form political alliances and enemies. I think that this is my least favorite thing about academic science, because although it happens everywhere all the time and not just in science, it is the last straw that breaks my delusional camel's back.
You see, at some point in my youth I knew that I wanted to be a scientist and I really truly and honestly believed that line about scientists being totally objective and rational and by implication ego-free. Bzzzzzzzzt! Wrong. Which it turns out isn't such a bad thing. After all, I wouldn't very much enjoy working with a bunch of robots in lab coats, to borrow an image from Scicurious. But it really can get in the way of doing good science when people's political alliances trump the scientific pursuit. And they do. Sometimes the personal is related to science - "I don't like him because we have diametrically opposed hypotheses about the BigIdea in our field." I guess that this is sort of understandable. Because we are all so passionate about our science, we can get very attached to our ideas. We have our reasons for what we think is true, and these are tied to our egos. If my idea is wrong, that means I wasn't smart enough to figure out the right idea. Therefore the passionate debate over ideas becomes a pissing match about who is right and by association who is smarter. I think that this is annoying, but it is only human and it is forgivable.
What is not forgivable is when it crosses the line and these passionate disagreements motivate interpersonal nastiness. I wish that science were more like a sport. You see professional athletes shake hands after the game and congratulate each other on a match well-played. They may be friends from when they played together last season, or they may hate each other's guts. But at the end of the game, the competition stays on the pitch. With the exception of Tonya Harding, you don't hear much about professional athletes trying to undercut each other's professional assets outside of competitive play. We all know about conflicts of interest in the peer review process, and most people who have had a paper rejected for an unreasonable review can probably speculate on who that reviewer was and why they didn't want to see this paper published. Or the ad hominem attacks from Dr. TopDog that might quash all dissent from competing ideas. It would be nice if more scientists could concede that they disagree about the BigIdeas, but since nobody really knows the answers, neither of them is smarter or more deserving of success than the other.
Of course it can work the other way too -- BigWigs getting their friends positions, or a favorable score on a grant. I really don't know how often this happens in academia, but I have seen a few incidents that make me suspicious. We're only human, but it would be nice if we could at least try to keep our personal likes and dislikes out of the science decision-making process.
So that's what I don't like about academic science. I expect that I'll probably get flamed in the comments section now for characterizing academic scientists as a bunch of ego-bent maniacs. To those of you tempted to leave such comments, please go back and read the beginning of the post. I do recognize that not everyone is this terrible caricature. In fact I don't even think that most are. But these things do occur and they are systematically tolerated. These are the things that should change.
I am exhausted from writing all of that, so now I'm going to go home and curl up with my laptop and try to put together a talk for Saturday. Peace out.
I love science. I really do. But some of my experiences as a Ph.D. student, as well as the fear and uncertainty that I see in so many people on the job market (post-docs and faculty) have colored me a bit of a cynic. I am much more jaded about the realities of academic science now than I was as an entering student with my pie-in-the-sky ideas of the Academy. What follows are some of my unfavorable impressions about academic science. They are, by and large, gross generalizations. I am well aware that there are exceptions to many of these, and I am not in any way trying to paint all of academia or all academic scientists with a broad, crap-colored brush. After all, I am one too. Most of my readers (that I know of) are academic scientists, and I like most of them very much. So, dear readers, please do not take personal offense at some of these critiques -- they are not personal.
The negative valences of academic science, as I see it, include:
Cannibalism
As it stands right now, academic science in this country eats its young. The numbers I keep hearing are these: for every 10 Ph.D. students that our academic institutions turn out, there is ONE available academic faculty position. If this is true, then 90% of Ph.D.'s are not going to get the job that they are being trained for. Now, it may be true that 90% of Ph.D.'s just aren't academic faculty material, though I think that estimate is a little high. I'm sure that some, possibly even many, just don't have what it takes. But many do. Many more than 10%. So what gives? I'm not really sure, but I'll go ahead and propose some hypotheses. Given my up-to-now rather short stint in the Academy, perhaps some wise sages can offer some insight into this problem. Fundamentally, I see the problem as: Labs need grants in order to function. Labs need data to write grants. Labs needs people to generate the data. The more economical you can be about which people are generating your data, the more science you can do on your limited grant funds, the more data you can generate, the better chance you have of landing one of these elusive grants. So it makes sense to hire cheap labor to generate data.
So who's cheap labor? Grad students and post-docs. PiT and I have had some interesting discussion about the relative economy of students v. post-docs - it was enlightening to me. I didn't realize that by the time you factor in health insurance and tuition on top of the rather measly student stipend, the cost of a student to the lab approaches or equals that of a post-doc. And post-docs should require much less investment of time and effort to get a return in data. So really, it is post-docs who are the PI's best chance at generating data at the lowest cost in time, energy and money. But post-docs don't stay post-docs forever. Some of best and luckiest move on to their own faculty positions. Some of the best and unlucky, get tired of the perma-post-doc prospects and do....something else? So you need more post-docs to replace them, which means you need to graduate more Ph.D. students.
But here's what I don't get: grad students are costly to PIs in terms on time/money/energy. They are costly to grad schools too since in most cases it is the grad school that covers stipend/tuition/benefits until the student joins a lab (contrast this against med students who generate revenue by paying tuition). So there's this glut of over-trained and underemployed scientists out there and we keep making more? Why? Well, as funding becomes more competitive, there is more pressure to get data, more pressure to get people to get the data, and post-docs are not going to stay post-docs forever. From the grad school's perspective, they want grant money coming in and as such need to supply people to help a PI get it. Turnover is high in trainee positions, so you need to keep bringing more into replace the ones that move on. So I guess that's why we keep training more grad students.
But as I said, nobody stays a post-doc or a grad student forever, so what happens eventually to the 9o out of 100 of them that don't land the faculty position? Honestly, I don't know what happens to all of them. Some of them teach or work in industry. Some of them take on other alternative science careers. Some of them get thrown under the bus. Not all, probably not even many, but I have seen it happen and it is grotesque. In some cases, the trainee (as both grad students and post-docs are known in this country) are chewed up and spit out by the data-production factory. You can't help but feel a little exploited when you look around and realize that these things happen.
Of course, there are plenty of PIs and programs out there who will bend over backwards to make sure this doesn't happen to their people. Sometimes that's because it makes them more attractive to future trainees if they have a long track record of their former trainees going on to successful positions. Sometimes it's just because they're good people (the two are not mutually exclusive). But how much can these individual PIs do in the deluge of trainees with nowhere to go? Of course, an academic faculty position is not the only career option for a Ph.D. and not all Ph.D.s want it. But that is what academic Ph.D. students and post-docs are being groomed for, and it's probably what most of us aspire to - at least in the beginning.
Pressure to perform/conform
The pressure to perform is a big one. Scientific discovery is moving at a blistering pace thanks to many technological breakthroughs and the exponential increase in information available. As such, it can be tough to keep up. We are many scientists with many ideas and worthwhile projects, competing for limited resources. If you've carved out for yourself a little corner of super-hot-and-sexy field you must constantly fight to stay ahead or someone else is going to usurp your position. (I love natural selection as a concept, but it kind of sucks when it's acting on me.) Everybody wants a piece of what you've got and so you face the pressure to publish first, in the best journals, so you receive credit for the ground-breaking work that might land you another big grant, or maybe an appointment to the National Academy.
This kind of pressure creates an environment in which those that are willing to sacrifice most are often the ones who receive the rewards. You know the ones -- the Vitamin D-deficient grad student who never speaks to anyone and never seems to leave the lab for fear of wasting precious time that could be spent on experiments. The post-doc who is going through a divorce but won't talk about how the working hours affected the marriage for fear of being seen as less-than-committed to the bench. The bitter PI who resents the things given up in earlier years for sake of the career. When I see this kind of desperation it can suck all the joy out of the work. It makes me question myself. Not about whether I am a good enough scientist to do this work, but whether I am worthy. I love science, but not enough to pay that price. If I'm not willing to make such great sacrifices, am I less deserving of scientific success as those who do? I think not. In science there is not a linear relationship between effort and results. So while I may not have the talent of Mozart, I will not choose to be Salieri. There has to be some middle ground, but not everyone sees it as such.
There is a second kind of pressure: "You must make the same choices I did to be successful and validated as a scientist." Coming from someone who's "made it" this kind of advice can seem pretty compelling. But sometimes I suspect that it's really just a rationalization of the choices they've made. To see someone else making different choices about their lifestyle and career -- and still succeeding -- must make it pretty hard to live with the sacrifices that they regret. Moreover, the idea that there is only a single path to success is just crazy. It makes no more sense than asserting that there is only a single experimental approach to tackle a hypothesis.
Yet this attitude is pervasive. I remember being told by my Program Director on the first day of my graduate school career that our Ph.D.'s "really meant something" and that we ought to "aspire to great things"...sounds like a pretty good pep-talk...but he went on to say that "anyone graduating from this program and going on to teach or work in industry was a failure and a disappointment and a cut-rate scientist". WTF man?!?! I got into this for my passion. I want creativity and independence, so you can take your rigid ideas of what a good scientist looks like and stuff them into some choice orifices.
Finally, there is always some resistance to new ideas and challenges to the dogma...which is really what science is all about, but despite the ideal of objectivity, we do get attached to our ideas, and that makes it so much harder to change our understanding. I see greybeards attacking the character of young upstarts who challenge the dogma put forth in Dr. BigWig's GlamorMag publications. I hate this. I just hate it. While we all should strive for objectivity when examining scientific work, I really have no problem with heated debate over data and conclusions. However, when the debate turns to character assassination it leaves me feeling pretty disappointed in those practitioners of our profession. Pressure from any of these factions creates an environment where Science must compete with ego and so many other demands. No good.
Elitism
I almost hate to bring this up with all the echoes of "professorial" and "the educated elite" still ringing in my ears since the presidential election. But I'll try to explain what I mean here. I think we can all agree that having an education is quite a privilege. At the same time, I don't appreciate the slinging of "educated elite" by some members of my least favorite political party as if it were some kind of epithet. I've worked hard for my education - this here learnin' don't come easy. At the same time I recognize that this places me in a privileged position, and I don't take that lightly. But it also doesn't make me a bad person, or one who thinks poorly of those who have not had the same kind of educational opportunities as I. I do get pretty tired of the attitude I get from some of my high school classmates, "Ooooh, so you think you're hot shit since you're gonna be a doctor or something?" Actually, I don't think I'm hot shit. I think I work my ass off. It makes me sad that a higher education is not more highly valued in this country and I dislike being made to feel as if I ought to apologize for wanting to be an awesome braniac scientist. I don't like that I am presumed to be "elitist" because I have a passion for science and education. I hope that will change.
The other side of this coin is that there are certainly some who do think they're hot shit - and they give the rest of us a bad name. Such hot shit in fact, that not only should the undereducated public bow before them, but so should everyone else who holds the same damn degree. You know who I'm talking about. There's probably one in your department. There might even be a science-diva-in-training in your very lab. These are the people who have published some really-hot-shit-papers, maybe they've landed some huge friggin' grants and they're the only one who knows the first damn thing about the latest hot science field or technique that all the hiring committees are tripping over themselves to get in their departments. Or maybe they haven't done any of this yet, but they are so certain that they are so much smarter than everyone else that it is a foregone conclusion. These people are the steamiest of all shit. Don't believe me? Just ask them. They'll tell you themselves.
Somehow, their "elite" status within the scientific community grants them entitlement to be total ass-hats to everyone around them. Or just everyone. True, they've probably sacrificed a lot to get those GlamorMag papers and pick-your-favorite-science-society appointments. They've likely worked pretty hard for those things. But you know what? There are a lot of other scientists who work just as hard and do not expect special entitlement to asshattery and fuckwittery without consequence.
So much of this is manifest in the flagrant disregard that some Dr. BigWigs have for the rules of social interaction and professionalism. Example: I rotated under a PI who had previously thrown his coffee mug at his technician's head because he wasn't happy with her data. On what planet is this OK? Why is he still working here? Why is he allowed to supervise laboratory animals, let alone people?
In another rotation lab, the PI asked one of his lab staff if she would set him up with her friend (because the friend was of his "preferred" ethnic group) all the while shtupping the half-his-age-technician (also of "preferred" ethnic group) who claims she was just working there to boost her med school applications (I'm assuming she got some damn good LORs). I don't think that I need to point out the problems with this behavior. I mean, I'm not going to judge someone's sexual proclivities, but throwing that into the mix with a tremendous power imbalance is asking for trouble. It is not tolerated in most professional settings for good reason.
Everybody knew about this stuff. In fact, it was administrators who passed on these rumors to me when I said I wanted to rotate in these labs - I ignored the rumors because I couldn't believe they were true. Silly naive little AA. They warned me and I didn't believe that such things would be tolerated in a professional setting. What I still cannot understand is why these Dr. BigWigs got a free pass. They were held to a grossly lower standard of professional behavior because why? Because we can't afford to lose them and their big grants? Because if we tell them to shape up or ship out they'll just go to another R1 and become our competitors? I say bullshit. In any other industry I can think of, being a team-player (or at least not making others so uncomfortable that their job performance falters), is Priority 1.
The trouble with the Academy is that we are loathe to get rid of those who can't play well with others because there is no one else who does exactly what they do. So what? There's someone else out there doing something else that nobody's onto yet who can play well with others, and who probably doesn't run with scissors either.
Some of the bad social behavior is not malicious. I think that academic science tends to attract a higher proportion of introverts and socially awkward individuals than are represented in the general population. The whole "flawed genius" hypothesis aside (although there might be something to that), the Academy attracts the geeks and nerds and socially awkward out there because here your intellectual contributions are valued more highly than your ability to make small-talk. This isn't a bad thing - hell, I'm a geek and a nerd and I'm often socially awkward outside my native habitat (if you don't believe me, check out my nerd rating in the sidebar!). However, the general acceptance of social awkwardness should not be misinterpreted as license to be an intentional jackass to your colleagues or anyone else.
The other aspect of elitism that really irks me is snobbery towards alternative science careers. I wrote a little bit about this in the Cannibalism section, but it's worth stating again here - we are grooming young scientists for academic careers, but there aren't enough of these to go around. As such, many young scientists will take non-academic careers wither out of desire or necessity. However, those who do are often looked down upon.
I've seen the term "SLACers" leveled at Ph.D.s who go on to primarily teaching positions at small liberal art colleges and it just makes me bristle. I did my undergrad at a SLAC and I had some incredible science professors. They were phenomenal teachers (evidence: I loved going to class, and I kicked ass in grad courses compared to my counterparts that did their undergrad at R1s). They're pretty great researchers to boot. No, they're probably not getting multiple R01s, maybe not any at all, but they're doing some pretty hot science and publishing good work in solid journals with nothing but bumbling undergrads in their employ. If that's not indicative of someone who can really make science happen I don't know what is. And let's not forget that education is just as important to the scientific endeavor as research. Where else are we going to find an endless stream of starry-eyed young scientists to fill those grad student and post-doc positions without the teachers who are lighting their fires? Why are educators so undervalued compared to researchers? We've all heard that saying: "If you can't do; teach." Bollocks. There are a lot of piss-poor professors out there teaching courses when they would be much better off staying in the lab. I say, if you can't teach; stick to the research and leave the tough stuff to those who know how to communicate.
And then of course there are those that leave the ranks of academia and go to industry. "Tools." Not my epithet; I didn't make it up. Seriously. My personal ethical objection to drug marketing aside, what in the hell is wrong with wanting to be on the cutting edge of drug discovery? Or any other applied science for that matter?
The Academy would do well to step out of the Ivory Tower every once in a while and engage with the public, the educators, and industrial science on a level that shows value for all these positions. Science is never conducted in a vacuum and just as collaborations within academia are necessary to fully explore a hypothesis, a collaborative attitude toward scientists outside of academia is necessary as well.
Politics
Interpersonal relationships (or perhaps more frequently, disagreements) have a much greater impact than they should on which findings see the light of day. I really don't have a lot to say about this because I think it is so patently obvious. As much as we'd all like to believe that we as scientists are entirely rational beings, and are always objective and so on and so on...well, we're still human. We still do silly irrational things. We still apply subjective judgment to ourselves, our data, and our colleagues even though we know better. Some of the things we do as imperfectly-rational humans is to form political alliances and enemies. I think that this is my least favorite thing about academic science, because although it happens everywhere all the time and not just in science, it is the last straw that breaks my delusional camel's back.
You see, at some point in my youth I knew that I wanted to be a scientist and I really truly and honestly believed that line about scientists being totally objective and rational and by implication ego-free. Bzzzzzzzzt! Wrong. Which it turns out isn't such a bad thing. After all, I wouldn't very much enjoy working with a bunch of robots in lab coats, to borrow an image from Scicurious. But it really can get in the way of doing good science when people's political alliances trump the scientific pursuit. And they do. Sometimes the personal is related to science - "I don't like him because we have diametrically opposed hypotheses about the BigIdea in our field." I guess that this is sort of understandable. Because we are all so passionate about our science, we can get very attached to our ideas. We have our reasons for what we think is true, and these are tied to our egos. If my idea is wrong, that means I wasn't smart enough to figure out the right idea. Therefore the passionate debate over ideas becomes a pissing match about who is right and by association who is smarter. I think that this is annoying, but it is only human and it is forgivable.
What is not forgivable is when it crosses the line and these passionate disagreements motivate interpersonal nastiness. I wish that science were more like a sport. You see professional athletes shake hands after the game and congratulate each other on a match well-played. They may be friends from when they played together last season, or they may hate each other's guts. But at the end of the game, the competition stays on the pitch. With the exception of Tonya Harding, you don't hear much about professional athletes trying to undercut each other's professional assets outside of competitive play. We all know about conflicts of interest in the peer review process, and most people who have had a paper rejected for an unreasonable review can probably speculate on who that reviewer was and why they didn't want to see this paper published. Or the ad hominem attacks from Dr. TopDog that might quash all dissent from competing ideas. It would be nice if more scientists could concede that they disagree about the BigIdeas, but since nobody really knows the answers, neither of them is smarter or more deserving of success than the other.
Of course it can work the other way too -- BigWigs getting their friends positions, or a favorable score on a grant. I really don't know how often this happens in academia, but I have seen a few incidents that make me suspicious. We're only human, but it would be nice if we could at least try to keep our personal likes and dislikes out of the science decision-making process.
So that's what I don't like about academic science. I expect that I'll probably get flamed in the comments section now for characterizing academic scientists as a bunch of ego-bent maniacs. To those of you tempted to leave such comments, please go back and read the beginning of the post. I do recognize that not everyone is this terrible caricature. In fact I don't even think that most are. But these things do occur and they are systematically tolerated. These are the things that should change.
I am exhausted from writing all of that, so now I'm going to go home and curl up with my laptop and try to put together a talk for Saturday. Peace out.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Who is John Galt Todd Allen Gates?
Google Analytics tells me that you folks have been finding this site via some weird and wonderful search terms.
Who is this "Todd Allen Gates"? I do not know. I googled him. This is him. He does not live here. I have no idea why Google thought he did.
Who is this "Todd Allen Gates"? I do not know. I googled him. This is him. He does not live here. I have no idea why Google thought he did.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Basking in the glow....
Yeah, all that stuff I said about not being motivated by fame and fortune in my first ambivalence post? Fuck it, I'm on the DrugMonkey blog! I'm famous! Just kidding really. Maybe a little serious though. Thanks PhysioProf!
Anyway, I love that this has kicked off a trend of sharing our "thrill of victory/discovery" moments. You know, those moments that are like crack. That high is so great, that we keep coming back for more abuse just to get another hit.
Unfortunately these moments are few and far between, so it's really nice to get a vicarious hit through other people's stories. Nat of The Junction Potential shares his here, and PhysioProf's is in the DrugMonkey post, along with other stories in the comments.
Oh go on then, now that I'm famous I'm sure you're just dying to know so I'll tell you mine:
Deep in the depths of third-year-grad-student-with-not-a-shred-of-data despair, I was trying to make several transgenic mice. In my lab we do the whole process ourselves. Engineering and cloning the transgene construct, purifying the DNA for injection, harvesting embryos, pronuclear injection, embryo transfer, subsequent screening of founders - the whole friggin' thing. It's quite an undertaking and there are a lot of skills to master and I was stuck (turns out later I wasn't, but thought I was due to some bad info from my advisor). I'd been trying and trying and couldn't get any founders. My advisor was breathing down my neck and asking why I couldn't get it done (yeah, thanks dude for your *ahem* wrong protocol, which of course I didn't know was wrong at the time) and I was thusly questioning my ability and reasons for being a scientist, and maybe also my reason for being.
I decided to give it one more go and then if it didn't work (again!), admit defeat and reconsider whether I wanted to stick with the PhD. So I did one more round of pronuclear injections with some modification to the protocol, got a few more litters of potential founders, prepped DNA for genotyping, and ran the PCR, fully expecting another big fat nothing.
To my surprise, when I looked at the gel I had five (5!) bands that indicated the mice were carrying the transgene. Oh. My. God.
I have founders!
IhavefoundersIhavefoundersIhavefounders
IhavefoundersIhavefounders!!!!1!11!!Eleventy!!!1!!1!1!!
Of course I was thrilled and wanted to tell everyone, but of course it was like stupid o'clock (why do these things always happen at night?). So instead I printed out a picture of the gel and scrawled across the top with a Sharpie "Oh FUCK yeah!"
Then I made three photocopies: one for the lab notebook, one to hang over my desk, and one to leave on my advisor's desk. They all have the expletive inscription.
Turns out none of the buggers actually expressed the transgene and I took the project in another direction, but that doesn't make that small victory any less sweet.
I've decided to start collecting these moments so please feel free to share your own in the comments.
Anyway, I love that this has kicked off a trend of sharing our "thrill of victory/discovery" moments. You know, those moments that are like crack. That high is so great, that we keep coming back for more abuse just to get another hit.
Unfortunately these moments are few and far between, so it's really nice to get a vicarious hit through other people's stories. Nat of The Junction Potential shares his here, and PhysioProf's is in the DrugMonkey post, along with other stories in the comments.
Oh go on then, now that I'm famous I'm sure you're just dying to know so I'll tell you mine:
Deep in the depths of third-year-grad-student-with-not-a-shred-of-data despair, I was trying to make several transgenic mice. In my lab we do the whole process ourselves. Engineering and cloning the transgene construct, purifying the DNA for injection, harvesting embryos, pronuclear injection, embryo transfer, subsequent screening of founders - the whole friggin' thing. It's quite an undertaking and there are a lot of skills to master and I was stuck (turns out later I wasn't, but thought I was due to some bad info from my advisor). I'd been trying and trying and couldn't get any founders. My advisor was breathing down my neck and asking why I couldn't get it done (yeah, thanks dude for your *ahem* wrong protocol, which of course I didn't know was wrong at the time) and I was thusly questioning my ability and reasons for being a scientist, and maybe also my reason for being.
I decided to give it one more go and then if it didn't work (again!), admit defeat and reconsider whether I wanted to stick with the PhD. So I did one more round of pronuclear injections with some modification to the protocol, got a few more litters of potential founders, prepped DNA for genotyping, and ran the PCR, fully expecting another big fat nothing.
To my surprise, when I looked at the gel I had five (5!) bands that indicated the mice were carrying the transgene. Oh. My. God.
I have founders!
IhavefoundersIhavefoundersIhavefounders
IhavefoundersIhavefounders!!!!1!11!!Eleventy!!!1!!1!1!!
Of course I was thrilled and wanted to tell everyone, but of course it was like stupid o'clock (why do these things always happen at night?). So instead I printed out a picture of the gel and scrawled across the top with a Sharpie "Oh FUCK yeah!"
Then I made three photocopies: one for the lab notebook, one to hang over my desk, and one to leave on my advisor's desk. They all have the expletive inscription.
Turns out none of the buggers actually expressed the transgene and I took the project in another direction, but that doesn't make that small victory any less sweet.
I've decided to start collecting these moments so please feel free to share your own in the comments.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The Obligatory Darwin Post
Nah, I'm not gonna bother. Go read JaneB's instead. Seriously, it's better than what I was gonna say.
What exactly am I ambivalent about? Part I
Well, alright, I'll tell you then.
Cath asked me this a while ago and it's something I've been meaning to get around to. But man, this post is a beast.
In case you missed the prelude, let me just start by defining my terms (again):
When I refer to being "ambivalent" I don't mean it in the more contemporary/colloquial/conventional use of the word. I think that many people use the word "ambivalent" to mean "oh, I could take it or leave it" or "I really don't have any strong feelings either way". Corollary: "I just don't care that much."
The actual definition of the word is what appears in the blog header (in case it's hard to read I'm reiterating here):
This is quite the opposite of the popular usage. What it really means to say that I am ambivalent, is to say that I am conflicted about academia. In the same way that someone who is ambidextrous is equally strong or adept with either hand, I have equally strong feelings (both positive and negative) towards academia.
So I'm going to break this into a few posts. I'll start with the things I have positive feelings about. There will be a second post about the negative feelings, and perhaps a third post in which I will attempt to reconcile the two.
Here are, in my opinion, the positive valences of academic science:
Pure pursuit of truth/knowledge/information
Science, in it's purest form, is a way of knowing. There are other ways to approach what we do not understand about life, the universe, whathaveyou. They also have value. But science is somewhat unique in that it precludes a particular background or set of beliefs. It requires only the ability to observe, to ask questions, and to design and conduct tests that determine the answer to those questions within the rules of logic. Human beings on the whole are capable of participating in such pursuits.
While unique backgrounds and perceptions and beliefs may vary between individuals, and indeed may enrich the pursuit of science by contributing to new directions or approaches (see the creativity section), science does not require that participants begin from an untestable assumption. Everyone's walking around with untestable assumptions floating around in their head, and being untestable, they are likely to vary from one individual to the next. As such, it is difficult to achieve a unified line of questioning the way things work if we are forced to start from disparate untestable assumptions. Science does away with this problem. Assume nothing, or at least assume nothing that you cannot test. For this reason, science is most inclusive of all participants and all pursuits of knowledge through observation. This pursuit is not limited to academic science, but as a basic researcher I appreciate that my choice of what to question and test is not constrained by whether my findings will produce a drug or a profit (this gets into the independence section).
Independence
I'm a basic researcher. And I love basic research. Many of my readers know what it means to be a basic, rather than applied, researcher but in case some do not I'll briefly define and then we can get into why this makes me happy and why I feel it allows me to be relatively independent.
Basic research is one half of a dichotomy, the other being applied research. Applied researchers are always looking to use scientific findings to improve something. There is always a next-in-the-pipeline intention for their finding. The basic researcher is looking to learn something new with no pre-defined intention for the application of the findings. Basic researchers are asking questions motivated by curiosity and a simple desire to know. They are operating on the assumption that more information is inherently a good thing even if we don't know what we're going to do with it yet. Findings from basic research projects can often be applied, but that is not the motivation for beginning that line of questioning in the first place. [As an aside, I would say that our current funding regimes are placing a lot of emphasis on applied research, and even asking basic research to be justified in terms of benefit to human health (NIH), which is not inherently a bad thing.]
I like basic research because it fits the way my brain works. I get curious about stuff and I just want to figure it out. I don't need to know how to cure cancer but I want to know how the disease works. If figuring out disease mechanism allows some applied researcher to develop a new treatment, great! But I prefer to work on my science without a pre-defined end goal. I think that academic science supports this kind of curiosity-driven pursuit of knowledge more than say, industrial science where the driving force is product development and profit rather than "hmmmm, I wonder how this works." There's a great need for good applied research both in academia and industry. I just prefer basic research, and I think it is better supported within the Academy than it is in other scientific environs.
Creativity
This is so closely tied to what I just wrote for the independence section that I am struggling with how to express this. Again, this is closely related to my preference for basic research. I want the freedom to pursue my curiosity and all its whims (independence) and I also want an environment in which this can be approached from many directions. Science, at it's heart, is a very creative discipline. We are always having to come up with new ways to look at things, new ways to ask questions, new ideas about how things might be related and new hypotheses to test. Without creativity science would never move forward.
One of the keys to maximizing creativity is to get as many different and diverse minds working on a problem as possible. As I described in the first section, as finite individuals we're always using our own unique perspectives to approach a question. Not all of them will be the best approach to answer the question. Therefore, having multiple approaches via collaborative efforts between diverse individuals (see the community section), as well as individual flexibility and creativity to come up with new approaches offers the best chance for answering the questions that we ask. I thrive in this kind of dynamic environment and I crave it. I think that creativity is an integral part of any kind of science, but it is less hindered by end goals in the case of academic basic research than in other applied or profit-driven sectors.
Community
I like this idea of a people from a gazillion different backgrounds coming together under a universal method of thought to figure shit out. It makes me all warm and fuzzy. Because really, where else do you have a global network of people who are committed (in theory at least) to discovering the truth, through objective inquiry, without agenda? I think that science, when practiced purely, is humbling. I love Hermitage's metaphors for her academic position -- monks, orders, all in the service of Supreme Science (incidentally, if you haven't read her blog you really should - she's hilarious). I like the idea that academic scientists are (in theory at least) more interested in discovery than agenda. I like that we by and large share reagents, even across national borders and sometimes at considerable expense, because discovery is more important than politics and profit in academia.
Now, before PhysioProf and the rest of the cynics come over here and trash my starry-eyed romantic notions of academic science, do keep in mind that there is a second post in the works about the negative valences of academic science. These romantic notions are the reasons that I got into academic science in the first place. I suspect that they are the reasons that most currently practicing academic scientists wanted to be scientists too. As my advisor is fond of pointing out, nobody gets into this business for the money. Some may do it for the prestige I suppose...but even then, big fish in a small pond really. You might be well-known in the Academy, but probably not outside your discipline, even less so in the general public. So I don't think that fame and fortune are primary motivators for people who go into academic science. I think it's a passion for discovery, the chance to do something that no one has done before, the pursuit of truth using a set of rules that is universally inclusive of anyone who wants to join the game.
I'm disappointed that this post is not turning out as eloquently as I would like it to, which is in part why it has taken me so long to write. I hope that some discussion here will help me to better clarify these ideas.
In the meantime, I'll leave you with this quote from the NYT, which pretty much sums it all up for me:
"It requires no metaphysical commitment to a God or any conception of human origin or nature to join in this game, just the hypothesis that nature can be interrogated and that nature is the final arbiter. Jews, Catholics, Muslims, atheists, Buddhists and Hindus have all been working side by side building the Large Hadron Collider and its detectors these last few years.
And indeed there is no leader, no grand plan, for this hive. It is in many ways utopian anarchy, a virtual community that lives as much on the Internet and in airport coffee shops as in any one place or time. Or at least it is as utopian as any community largely dependent on government and corporate financing can be."
Cath asked me this a while ago and it's something I've been meaning to get around to. But man, this post is a beast.
In case you missed the prelude, let me just start by defining my terms (again):
When I refer to being "ambivalent" I don't mean it in the more contemporary/colloquial/conventional use of the word. I think that many people use the word "ambivalent" to mean "oh, I could take it or leave it" or "I really don't have any strong feelings either way". Corollary: "I just don't care that much."
The actual definition of the word is what appears in the blog header (in case it's hard to read I'm reiterating here):
a state of having emotions of both positive and negative valence or of having thoughts or actions in contradiction with each other, when they are related to the same object, idea or person (for example, feeling both love and hatred for someone or something [i.e., grad school, or academia]). (blue text is my addition)
This is quite the opposite of the popular usage. What it really means to say that I am ambivalent, is to say that I am conflicted about academia. In the same way that someone who is ambidextrous is equally strong or adept with either hand, I have equally strong feelings (both positive and negative) towards academia.
So I'm going to break this into a few posts. I'll start with the things I have positive feelings about. There will be a second post about the negative feelings, and perhaps a third post in which I will attempt to reconcile the two.
Here are, in my opinion, the positive valences of academic science:
Pure pursuit of truth/knowledge/information
Science, in it's purest form, is a way of knowing. There are other ways to approach what we do not understand about life, the universe, whathaveyou. They also have value. But science is somewhat unique in that it precludes a particular background or set of beliefs. It requires only the ability to observe, to ask questions, and to design and conduct tests that determine the answer to those questions within the rules of logic. Human beings on the whole are capable of participating in such pursuits.
While unique backgrounds and perceptions and beliefs may vary between individuals, and indeed may enrich the pursuit of science by contributing to new directions or approaches (see the creativity section), science does not require that participants begin from an untestable assumption. Everyone's walking around with untestable assumptions floating around in their head, and being untestable, they are likely to vary from one individual to the next. As such, it is difficult to achieve a unified line of questioning the way things work if we are forced to start from disparate untestable assumptions. Science does away with this problem. Assume nothing, or at least assume nothing that you cannot test. For this reason, science is most inclusive of all participants and all pursuits of knowledge through observation. This pursuit is not limited to academic science, but as a basic researcher I appreciate that my choice of what to question and test is not constrained by whether my findings will produce a drug or a profit (this gets into the independence section).
Independence
I'm a basic researcher. And I love basic research. Many of my readers know what it means to be a basic, rather than applied, researcher but in case some do not I'll briefly define and then we can get into why this makes me happy and why I feel it allows me to be relatively independent.
Basic research is one half of a dichotomy, the other being applied research. Applied researchers are always looking to use scientific findings to improve something. There is always a next-in-the-pipeline intention for their finding. The basic researcher is looking to learn something new with no pre-defined intention for the application of the findings. Basic researchers are asking questions motivated by curiosity and a simple desire to know. They are operating on the assumption that more information is inherently a good thing even if we don't know what we're going to do with it yet. Findings from basic research projects can often be applied, but that is not the motivation for beginning that line of questioning in the first place. [As an aside, I would say that our current funding regimes are placing a lot of emphasis on applied research, and even asking basic research to be justified in terms of benefit to human health (NIH), which is not inherently a bad thing.]
I like basic research because it fits the way my brain works. I get curious about stuff and I just want to figure it out. I don't need to know how to cure cancer but I want to know how the disease works. If figuring out disease mechanism allows some applied researcher to develop a new treatment, great! But I prefer to work on my science without a pre-defined end goal. I think that academic science supports this kind of curiosity-driven pursuit of knowledge more than say, industrial science where the driving force is product development and profit rather than "hmmmm, I wonder how this works." There's a great need for good applied research both in academia and industry. I just prefer basic research, and I think it is better supported within the Academy than it is in other scientific environs.
Creativity
This is so closely tied to what I just wrote for the independence section that I am struggling with how to express this. Again, this is closely related to my preference for basic research. I want the freedom to pursue my curiosity and all its whims (independence) and I also want an environment in which this can be approached from many directions. Science, at it's heart, is a very creative discipline. We are always having to come up with new ways to look at things, new ways to ask questions, new ideas about how things might be related and new hypotheses to test. Without creativity science would never move forward.
One of the keys to maximizing creativity is to get as many different and diverse minds working on a problem as possible. As I described in the first section, as finite individuals we're always using our own unique perspectives to approach a question. Not all of them will be the best approach to answer the question. Therefore, having multiple approaches via collaborative efforts between diverse individuals (see the community section), as well as individual flexibility and creativity to come up with new approaches offers the best chance for answering the questions that we ask. I thrive in this kind of dynamic environment and I crave it. I think that creativity is an integral part of any kind of science, but it is less hindered by end goals in the case of academic basic research than in other applied or profit-driven sectors.
Community
I like this idea of a people from a gazillion different backgrounds coming together under a universal method of thought to figure shit out. It makes me all warm and fuzzy. Because really, where else do you have a global network of people who are committed (in theory at least) to discovering the truth, through objective inquiry, without agenda? I think that science, when practiced purely, is humbling. I love Hermitage's metaphors for her academic position -- monks, orders, all in the service of Supreme Science (incidentally, if you haven't read her blog you really should - she's hilarious). I like the idea that academic scientists are (in theory at least) more interested in discovery than agenda. I like that we by and large share reagents, even across national borders and sometimes at considerable expense, because discovery is more important than politics and profit in academia.
Now, before PhysioProf and the rest of the cynics come over here and trash my starry-eyed romantic notions of academic science, do keep in mind that there is a second post in the works about the negative valences of academic science. These romantic notions are the reasons that I got into academic science in the first place. I suspect that they are the reasons that most currently practicing academic scientists wanted to be scientists too. As my advisor is fond of pointing out, nobody gets into this business for the money. Some may do it for the prestige I suppose...but even then, big fish in a small pond really. You might be well-known in the Academy, but probably not outside your discipline, even less so in the general public. So I don't think that fame and fortune are primary motivators for people who go into academic science. I think it's a passion for discovery, the chance to do something that no one has done before, the pursuit of truth using a set of rules that is universally inclusive of anyone who wants to join the game.
I'm disappointed that this post is not turning out as eloquently as I would like it to, which is in part why it has taken me so long to write. I hope that some discussion here will help me to better clarify these ideas.
In the meantime, I'll leave you with this quote from the NYT, which pretty much sums it all up for me:
"It requires no metaphysical commitment to a God or any conception of human origin or nature to join in this game, just the hypothesis that nature can be interrogated and that nature is the final arbiter. Jews, Catholics, Muslims, atheists, Buddhists and Hindus have all been working side by side building the Large Hadron Collider and its detectors these last few years.
And indeed there is no leader, no grand plan, for this hive. It is in many ways utopian anarchy, a virtual community that lives as much on the Internet and in airport coffee shops as in any one place or time. Or at least it is as utopian as any community largely dependent on government and corporate financing can be."
Monday, February 9, 2009
Operant Conditioning (warning, this post is a beast!)
Some time ago I approached GrAdvisor about a particularly problematic data set. I proposed that the technique that we had been beating the dead horse with was just not going to yield any results no matter how long we flogged it. He agreed. He asked what I wanted to do with this data set instead. I proposed some other fairly well established techniques to get at the same question, but he didn't like any of these...and wouldn't say specifically why not.
This was a bit frustrating. All the other techniques I proposed were perfectly valid ways to approach said question so what gives? Too expensive? No current expertise in the lab? It's not like we haven't gotten around these obstacles before so WHAT exactly is wrong with them? I asked him these questions and the guy completely blew me off.
He said, "AA, you're restricting yourself. Think harder." And then ended the discussion. Um...what? Think harder? Like I don't think hard enough about my dissertation project as it is?
I took this to mean that he felt that my proposed approaches were too conventional, so I did some more research and then proposed some newer, more novel techniques with the caveat that they had not been proven in our system.
"Do you think these techniques would be better?" I asked.
"No, that's not it either," he said. I paused, hoping he'd then enlighten me in his infinite wisdom as to what, pray tell, it might be. Nuthin'.
"OK, I guess I'll have to think more 'outside the box'....."
"It's not that far outside the box," he snapped.
Right. So I spent another week or so wracking my brains (and those of my colleagues) trying to figure out what the hell magic number he was thinking of. I did eventually come up with one more out-of-the-box technique, but I still to this day have no idea if it was the one he wanted me to guess.
WTF, right? I mean, it was a total waste of time for me to spend my days trying to read his mind if there was indeed something very specific that he wanted from me. I don't expect him to hold my hand and I don't want him to tell me what to do all the time. But I think that it's reasonable to give specific requests if he actually expects me to meet his specific demands and expectations.
I see this kind of set-up-to-fail communication going on all the damn time lately. What is up with this?
I really think that it just comes down to convenience. It is easier to tell people that there is a problem and just leave it at that, than it is to specifically define our expectations. Plus there's the added benefit with the convenient option of congratulating ourselves on being soooo smart and having it alllllll figured out while Flunky over there flounders around because they don't know what to do since they are not as clever as our wonderful selves.
Why the fuck do we do this? I mean really, isn't the goal of most interpersonal communication to get to a point where we are in agreement or at least on a similar level of understanding? I would argue that this is precisely the point of most communication. And yet, so often we're going about it as if it's some kind of contest in clairvoyance. I bet you can't guess what I'm thinking! No? Yay, I win! Except I didn't win if the communication didn't move the larger picture forward. Me being clever enough to hide what I'm thinking from someone else means that NOBODY wins, because whatever we're talking about just doesn't. get. done.
Is it really sooooooo bleeding difficult to put our egos aside in the interest of effective communication?
I mean sure, we all live in our own heads to some extent and if we're really being honest with ourselves we are each the most important things in our own lives. As such, it's pretty easy to get wrapped up in the need to protect our egos. It's easy to assume that any criticism that comes our way is a character attack rather than a suggestion about our work. Sometimes the two are so intertwined that it's hard to let them stand alone.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. How do we communicate most effectively so as to accomplish our goals? Are our goals the real motive in determining how we choose to communicate with one another?
I've been thinking about this for a number of reasons:
I have a fair bit of personal experience in implementing these techniques. I've trained a fair number of working animals to do their jobs successfully (mostly horses, a few dogs). I taught horseback riding lessons to more people than I can possibly remember, and in college I earned spending money by tutoring kids in various subjects, elementary through high school. So I've done a fair bit of teaching/training, and while I am by no means an expert, I like to think I am fairly good at it.
Because I see effective communication as essential to doing my job (scientist, but also teacher, trainer) well, and because I think that poor or misguided communication is the absolute number one contributor to my frustration and my advisor's when I don't meet his expectations, I want to talk about good communication.
Let's start with a simple example. If you want someone to execute a specific behavior, what is the best (i.e., most efficient) way to achieve a successful outcome? Maximizing the rate and probability of success is the foundation of operant conditioning (OC). OC is the technique used by behavioral scientists to train animals to perform a specific task that can later be used in an experiment. Most lay people are familiar with OC if they've ever been to SeaWorld. This is how they train dolphins and killer whales. It also works on any other species with a neural network, from sea slugs to humans. Basically, it goes like this:
The key to successfully achieving the desired result as a behavior pattern is setting the subject up for success, so that they get the reward early and often. This quickly co-opts reward pathways and establishes the desirable behavior as the default action. Failing to elicit the desirable response early and often usually leaves everyone involved very frustrated, and frequently fails to pattern the desirable behavior.
Let's start with some simple illustrations of this principle:
Scenario 1: Trainer teaching dog to sit
What did the dog learn here? Nothing! He still doesn't know how to sit. Why? Because there are a thousand ways NOT to sit, and only one way to do it right. The dog has to essentially guess at what the trainer is asking and what are the odds he's going to guess right? One in one thousand.
Let's try again:
Scenario 2: Teacher wants child to write her name.
I'm not going to bore you, dear reader, with any more examples. I think you can probably see how clearly defined expectations, positive reinforcement for desired behavior, and constructive criticism to improve the things that aren't quite there yet are essential components to effective communication, and achieving desired results. I think it's also not hard to extrapolate the benefits of applying this kind of communication to conversations with our colleagues, mentors, mentees, manatees, whathaveyou.
But lest you think that I am being too hard on mentors, teachers, and trainers...the responsibility for implementing effective communication is not theirs alone. It gets complicated in these and other relationships in which the balance of power and authority is not equal. In part, because one person has something that the other one needs and this places the less powerful person in a vulnerable position. It's easy to become defensive, to assume that any criticism is a character attack or an unreasonable demand, when you're vulnerable. The trouble is, that's when we most often miss out on the real gems of constructive criticism. We're too wrapped up in our own hurt feelings and protecting ourselves from these powerful critics to hear some really useful shit.
But who's responsibility is it to make sure that everyone's behaving like adults in these situations? I say, nobody's but our own. Because let's face it, that's the only person that we've got any control over anyway. On the other hand, when I take on the role of the more powerful person in the exchange (either by being the keeper of information, or by trying to solicit change) I do think that I have a responsibility, both to myself and to whomever I'm interacting with, to make my expectations clear, to give positive reinforcement where it's called for, and if offering criticism to ensure that it's constructive. Why does the responsibility fall on me? It's not like I should single-handedly be the communication police.
JLK have been talking about this sort of peripherally in our email exchanges -- whose job is it to educate the public about science? Whose responsibility is it to increase public science literacy? I would say, that since I have taken on the role of "scientist" (in this interaction that makes me the more powerful holder of information) that places some responsibility on me. Does that mean I am obligated to engage and respond to every Joe Public out there on all matters scientific? Of course not. The idea that one person should be obligated to educate everyone else out there is preposterous. However, I am invested in science education because a more scientifically literate public means that they get what I'm doing, they support more research funding, and I can do my job better. Everybody wins. This is why I talk to creationists and IDers about evolution, if I think that we're actually having a conversation rather than a contest. [There are of course some people who won't engage on this level, and these are the exceptions. I don't talk to them because I know that they're not really interested in what I have to say, and nothing I say is going to make a damn bit of difference so I don't waste my time and energy.]
I don't owe it to anybody but me. Because ultimately I'm the one who stands to gain, whether I've gotten the information I need or whether I've changed someone's mind for the better. At the same time, I owe it to myself to have the maturity and humility to hear constructive criticism for what it is even if my ego objects, because if I don't I've missed out on a big opportunity to make things better for myself.
So I guess my point is that, in spite of the fact that we're the ones who stand to gain from an ego-free communication, maybe we should all make more of an effort to realize that it's not all about me and my ego all the damn time, whether we're in a position of power or on the other end of things. It's not about me being the almighty scientist who is always clever and right. It's not about making sure that every else acknowledges my poor put-upon student self. I am ultimately the one who stands to benefit from an effective exchange so I owe it to myself to check the ego at the damn door and focus on the information rather than the pissing match.
This was a bit frustrating. All the other techniques I proposed were perfectly valid ways to approach said question so what gives? Too expensive? No current expertise in the lab? It's not like we haven't gotten around these obstacles before so WHAT exactly is wrong with them? I asked him these questions and the guy completely blew me off.
He said, "AA, you're restricting yourself. Think harder." And then ended the discussion. Um...what? Think harder? Like I don't think hard enough about my dissertation project as it is?
I took this to mean that he felt that my proposed approaches were too conventional, so I did some more research and then proposed some newer, more novel techniques with the caveat that they had not been proven in our system.
"Do you think these techniques would be better?" I asked.
"No, that's not it either," he said. I paused, hoping he'd then enlighten me in his infinite wisdom as to what, pray tell, it might be. Nuthin'.
"OK, I guess I'll have to think more 'outside the box'....."
"It's not that far outside the box," he snapped.
Right. So I spent another week or so wracking my brains (and those of my colleagues) trying to figure out what the hell magic number he was thinking of. I did eventually come up with one more out-of-the-box technique, but I still to this day have no idea if it was the one he wanted me to guess.
WTF, right? I mean, it was a total waste of time for me to spend my days trying to read his mind if there was indeed something very specific that he wanted from me. I don't expect him to hold my hand and I don't want him to tell me what to do all the time. But I think that it's reasonable to give specific requests if he actually expects me to meet his specific demands and expectations.
I see this kind of set-up-to-fail communication going on all the damn time lately. What is up with this?
I really think that it just comes down to convenience. It is easier to tell people that there is a problem and just leave it at that, than it is to specifically define our expectations. Plus there's the added benefit with the convenient option of congratulating ourselves on being soooo smart and having it alllllll figured out while Flunky over there flounders around because they don't know what to do since they are not as clever as our wonderful selves.
Why the fuck do we do this? I mean really, isn't the goal of most interpersonal communication to get to a point where we are in agreement or at least on a similar level of understanding? I would argue that this is precisely the point of most communication. And yet, so often we're going about it as if it's some kind of contest in clairvoyance. I bet you can't guess what I'm thinking! No? Yay, I win! Except I didn't win if the communication didn't move the larger picture forward. Me being clever enough to hide what I'm thinking from someone else means that NOBODY wins, because whatever we're talking about just doesn't. get. done.
Is it really sooooooo bleeding difficult to put our egos aside in the interest of effective communication?
I mean sure, we all live in our own heads to some extent and if we're really being honest with ourselves we are each the most important things in our own lives. As such, it's pretty easy to get wrapped up in the need to protect our egos. It's easy to assume that any criticism that comes our way is a character attack rather than a suggestion about our work. Sometimes the two are so intertwined that it's hard to let them stand alone.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. How do we communicate most effectively so as to accomplish our goals? Are our goals the real motive in determining how we choose to communicate with one another?
I've been thinking about this for a number of reasons:
- I'm involved in a protracted process of training DangerDog to respond to other dogs with something (anything) other than fear-aggression. Interspecific communication is difficult for obvious reasons.
- I've been frustrated by my complete and utter lack of ability to read GrAdvisor's mind, and his inability or unwillingness to see the problems in our communication.
- I've had some conversations with a friend regarding her frustration with her significant other's behavior, in which she wants him to do what she wants, but doesn't want to tell him what she wants. Does anyone else think that this is messed up?
- JLK and I have been having some interesting discussion via email about education and public science literacy (which I may post excerpts from in the future), which has me thinking more about science education (I topic that I am passionate about, but do not discuss much here for reasons that I will make clear in the long awaited posts about my ambivalence...they're still coming, I swear).
- I've also been following some rather snappy exchange going on in the blogosphere which is riddled with miscommunication from all sides.
I have a fair bit of personal experience in implementing these techniques. I've trained a fair number of working animals to do their jobs successfully (mostly horses, a few dogs). I taught horseback riding lessons to more people than I can possibly remember, and in college I earned spending money by tutoring kids in various subjects, elementary through high school. So I've done a fair bit of teaching/training, and while I am by no means an expert, I like to think I am fairly good at it.
Because I see effective communication as essential to doing my job (scientist, but also teacher, trainer) well, and because I think that poor or misguided communication is the absolute number one contributor to my frustration and my advisor's when I don't meet his expectations, I want to talk about good communication.
Let's start with a simple example. If you want someone to execute a specific behavior, what is the best (i.e., most efficient) way to achieve a successful outcome? Maximizing the rate and probability of success is the foundation of operant conditioning (OC). OC is the technique used by behavioral scientists to train animals to perform a specific task that can later be used in an experiment. Most lay people are familiar with OC if they've ever been to SeaWorld. This is how they train dolphins and killer whales. It also works on any other species with a neural network, from sea slugs to humans. Basically, it goes like this:
- Subject performs desirable behavior.
- Subject receives reward.
- Subject associates reward with desirable behavior, and so continues to perform desirable behavior.
The key to successfully achieving the desired result as a behavior pattern is setting the subject up for success, so that they get the reward early and often. This quickly co-opts reward pathways and establishes the desirable behavior as the default action. Failing to elicit the desirable response early and often usually leaves everyone involved very frustrated, and frequently fails to pattern the desirable behavior.
Let's start with some simple illustrations of this principle:
Scenario 1: Trainer teaching dog to sit
Trainer: Sit!
Dog: [lies down]
Trainer: No! Bad dog!
Trainer: Sit!
Dog: [stands up]
Trainer: No! Bad dog!
Trainer: Sit!
Dog: [Oh, fuck this!]
What did the dog learn here? Nothing! He still doesn't know how to sit. Why? Because there are a thousand ways NOT to sit, and only one way to do it right. The dog has to essentially guess at what the trainer is asking and what are the odds he's going to guess right? One in one thousand.
Let's try again:
Trainer: Sit! [Guides dog's butt to meet ground, then gives reward.]What did the dog learn? Putting my butt on the ground gets me a treat! Sweet! I'm going to do that all the time! Success - it's easy.
Dog: [Huh. Treats! How do I get more?]
Trainer: Sit! [Guides dog's butt to meet ground, then gives reward.]
Dog: [Right on!]
Trainer: Sit!
Dog: [Puts butt on the ground himself, collects reward - Sweet!]
Scenario 2: Teacher wants child to write her name.
Teacher: Can you write your name?What did the child learn? Certainly not how to write her name! The child learned nothing, except maybe that it's hard and stressful when the teacher asks you to do something.
Child: Hmmm...I know that names look like a bunch of lines [scribbles lines on page].
Teacher: No, that's wrong. Try again.
Child: [Scribbles lines on page with a different colored crayon.]
Teacher: No, that's not right either. Try again.
Child: I don't want to anymore.
Teacher: Can you write your name? It looks like this [Prints child's name on paper.]That did the child learn here? Not just how to write her name. Also, that she doesn't need to be afraid of making mistakes, and that the person asking her to perform this task is going to help her out. Success all around!
Child: [Makes attempt to copy what she sees.]
Teacher: Good! You wrote all the right letters...do you see how the "R" I drew has the round part on the this side and the "R" you drew has the round part on the other side? Can you write your name again with an "R" that matches mine?
Child: [Writes name again, with the "R" in the right direction.]
Teacher: Great job! That's exactly right! Do you want to practice writing your name some more?
Child: Sure! That was fun!
I'm not going to bore you, dear reader, with any more examples. I think you can probably see how clearly defined expectations, positive reinforcement for desired behavior, and constructive criticism to improve the things that aren't quite there yet are essential components to effective communication, and achieving desired results. I think it's also not hard to extrapolate the benefits of applying this kind of communication to conversations with our colleagues, mentors, mentees, manatees, whathaveyou.
But lest you think that I am being too hard on mentors, teachers, and trainers...the responsibility for implementing effective communication is not theirs alone. It gets complicated in these and other relationships in which the balance of power and authority is not equal. In part, because one person has something that the other one needs and this places the less powerful person in a vulnerable position. It's easy to become defensive, to assume that any criticism is a character attack or an unreasonable demand, when you're vulnerable. The trouble is, that's when we most often miss out on the real gems of constructive criticism. We're too wrapped up in our own hurt feelings and protecting ourselves from these powerful critics to hear some really useful shit.
But who's responsibility is it to make sure that everyone's behaving like adults in these situations? I say, nobody's but our own. Because let's face it, that's the only person that we've got any control over anyway. On the other hand, when I take on the role of the more powerful person in the exchange (either by being the keeper of information, or by trying to solicit change) I do think that I have a responsibility, both to myself and to whomever I'm interacting with, to make my expectations clear, to give positive reinforcement where it's called for, and if offering criticism to ensure that it's constructive. Why does the responsibility fall on me? It's not like I should single-handedly be the communication police.
JLK have been talking about this sort of peripherally in our email exchanges -- whose job is it to educate the public about science? Whose responsibility is it to increase public science literacy? I would say, that since I have taken on the role of "scientist" (in this interaction that makes me the more powerful holder of information) that places some responsibility on me. Does that mean I am obligated to engage and respond to every Joe Public out there on all matters scientific? Of course not. The idea that one person should be obligated to educate everyone else out there is preposterous. However, I am invested in science education because a more scientifically literate public means that they get what I'm doing, they support more research funding, and I can do my job better. Everybody wins. This is why I talk to creationists and IDers about evolution, if I think that we're actually having a conversation rather than a contest. [There are of course some people who won't engage on this level, and these are the exceptions. I don't talk to them because I know that they're not really interested in what I have to say, and nothing I say is going to make a damn bit of difference so I don't waste my time and energy.]
I don't owe it to anybody but me. Because ultimately I'm the one who stands to gain, whether I've gotten the information I need or whether I've changed someone's mind for the better. At the same time, I owe it to myself to have the maturity and humility to hear constructive criticism for what it is even if my ego objects, because if I don't I've missed out on a big opportunity to make things better for myself.
So I guess my point is that, in spite of the fact that we're the ones who stand to gain from an ego-free communication, maybe we should all make more of an effort to realize that it's not all about me and my ego all the damn time, whether we're in a position of power or on the other end of things. It's not about me being the almighty scientist who is always clever and right. It's not about making sure that every else acknowledges my poor put-upon student self. I am ultimately the one who stands to benefit from an effective exchange so I owe it to myself to check the ego at the damn door and focus on the information rather than the pissing match.
Friday, February 6, 2009
Gomni
JLK sent me this meme because she is bored and she doesn't think that I have enough to do. I'm not tagging anyone because I don't have time to figure out who's already done it and who hasn't. If you want to do it you can say that I tagged you.
RULES:
a) Put your MP3 player, iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle
b) For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
c) YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS
d) Tag at least 5 people
e) Everyone tagged has to do the same thing (no they don't, actually)
f) Have Fun! (Step f is not required)
a) Put your MP3 player, iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. on shuffle
b) For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
c) YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS
d) Tag at least 5 people
e) Everyone tagged has to do the same thing (no they don't, actually)
f) Have Fun! (Step f is not required)
1. IF SOMEONE SAYS 'ARE YOU OKAY' YOU SAY?
“Music is Math” -- Boards of
2. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?
“Teeth in the Grass” – Iron & Wine
That’s right! I’m fierce, so look out!
3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
“Two Things” – Jaga Jazzist
Well actually, there’s more than just two things….
4. HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
“Gumboots” – Paul Simon
5. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
“Turn
What can I say? I’m a bad influence.
6. WHAT'S YOUR MOTTO?
“Get It Like You Like It” – Ben Harper
Yup. That’s about right.
7. WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
“Loose Ends” – Sergio Mendes with Justin Timberlake, Pharoahe Monch, will.i.am
Geez, I hope not.
8. WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
“Strat Hear” – Kid Koala
9. WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
“Be Little With Me” – Stars of the Lid
10. WHAT IS 2 + 2?
“
11. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
“Te Solte Le Rienda” – Maná
12. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
“Amen Omen” – Ben Harper
I hope that’s a good thing.
13. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
“Stubborn Beast” – Jolie Holland
Already am.
14. WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
“Feeling Good (Epic Mix)” – Huff & Herb
15. WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
“All That You Give” – The Cinematic Orchestra
16. WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
“El Lado Oscuro De Mi Compadre” -- Terrestre
17. WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
“Tribulations” – LCD Soundsystem
Well, I did choose to go to grad school (I thought it’d be fun!) so I guess that’s fairly accurate.
18. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?
“Who Knows Where The Time Goes” – Eva Cassidy
Ain’t that the truth.
19. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
“You Don’t Know How It Feels” – Tom Petty
20. WHAT DO YOU WANT RIGHT NOW?
“My Lovemixdown” -- Alexandroid
21. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
“Fish For Nails” -- Laika
22. WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
“Gomni” – Ali Farka Toure with Ry Cooder
Monday, February 2, 2009
An interview with AA...
Cath@VWXYNot? posted a very cool meme over at her place. And she's passed it on to me...here's the rules:
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me" AND leave your email address (or blog link) in the comment! I will interview the first three commenters to ask for it. I love you all but I've got a paper to get out people!
2. I will respond by emailing you (or commenting on your blog with) five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions. (If you don't have a blog, I can post your answers here).
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Cath: Exactly which parts of academia are you ambivalent about?
AA: This is a good question and I'm glad that you asked Cath! I've meaning to post about this since the inception of this blog but have just not gotten around to it. I started to answer it here and it's turned into a tome. So I'm going to have a post (or a series if necessary) tomorrow or in the very near future to address this fully because it deserves that kind of attention.
For now, let this suffice: when I refer to being "ambivalent" I don't mean it in the more contemporary/colloquial/conventional use of the word. I think that many people use the word "ambivalent" to mean "oh, I could take it or leave it" or "I really don't have any strong feelings either way". Corollary: "I just don't care that much."
The actual definition of the word is what appears in the blog header (in case it's hard to read I'm reiterating here):
This is quite the opposite of the popular usage. What it really means to say that I am ambivalent, is to say that I am conflicted about academia. In the same way that someone who is ambidextrous is equally strong or adept with either hand, I have equally strong feelings (both positive and negative) towards academia.
You've asked what exactly I am ambivalent about and I haven't exactly answered that...but I promise that I will in a subsequent post tomorrow. Or else very soon.
Cath: Did you generate your header image yourself? What is the staining for?
AA: Oh, I wish! The images are Optical Projection Tomography (computer generated) models of mouse embryos. I love this picture -- it relfects my passions for imaging and embryos. I found the image via teh googelz. Another variation of this image was originally posted on the Wellcome Image Award website. From their page:
Cath: If you had to choose, would you rather be deaf or blind? And why?
AA: I think that I'd rather be deaf than blind from a purely pragmatic standpoint. Blind people lose so much more independence - they can't drive for one...not that I do much of that, but it's really nice that I can. Also, I really really love imaging...hard to make a career of that if you can't see. On the other hand, I would desperately miss music -- I used to play a variety of woodwinds...don't have the time anymore so I satisfy the need to hear music with an iPod. I suppose if I were blind I could always listen to radio transmissions for SETI like that guy from Contact, which would be pretty awesome though not quite as cool as some of the emergent imaging technology.
Cath: Do you think you'll keep blogging when you graduate and move into the next phase of your career?
AA: Oh hellz yeah! This has been such a cathartic experience for me (and I only started a few months ago -- I don't know how I survived without it)! I really love this little conrner of the blogosphere and all the people in it. It's been incredibly encouraging to find out that there are other people out here who are struggling to make the whole science/life thing work (in the many ways that this may be manifest)...and generally succeeding! It's great to know that I'm not crazy...or at least that I'm not alone in my madness. I've had PI blog-friends offer me post-doc positions without knowing my real name or what I do, just on the strength of my communications here and that makes me feel like I am valued outside of the data that I can produce, which is pretty refreshing. I've received more support and good advice here than I imagined I could expect from many of the people in my real-life research-hat environment. Most importantly, I've made a lot of good friends here and I'm not about to give that up! I've got hope that at some point I can offer the same kind of support and relative sanity to someone else trying to swim up this fish-ladder so maybe I'll be able to return the favor.
Cath: What would be your perfect Sunday?
AA: I am happy to report that I recently had one. Sunday is my super-sacred gardening day. Because I live in a sub-tropical sort of city, this is possible pretty much year round, though significantly more tolerable in "winter" months. [I have to say though Cath, being a PNW born-and-raised girl I am exceedlingly envious of your shoe of the week. Not something I would have a chance to wear here though :(] Sometimes I have to go into the lab on Sundays (don't get me wrong, most of the time I love my research...but I love it a lot more if I get to have one day a week when I get to think about something else entirely). This last Sunday I didn't have to go into the lab. Instead, I got to completely rework the last hideous remains of the previous home-owners' garden and turn it into a lovely little tropical corner. Or perhaps I should say that I got to supervise while BH sweated buckets doing the actual work. Last Sunday BH and I slept in, then when we finally got up, I let the pets outs into the yard while he made coffee. We sat out on the deck drinking coffee and enjoying a rare day of perfect weather, then without any prompting at all BH brought out his crowbar and saw and extracted the repulsive suburbanite boxwood shrubs that were making a sorry attempt at concealing the ugly siding of a closet addition (for which I am NOT complaining), so that I could replace said offensive shrubs with a few palm trees, elephant ears, Monstera, Philodendron, and croton, and some canna lilies too. BH dug all the holes to put them in as well. He's fantastic. I don't tell him often enough. It is much prettier, and in a few weeks after all danger of frost I will be planting some very exotic pepper plants in amongst the stuff that is already there. Then we went to a little get-together with some of our favorite friends...didn't watch the game at all but that's really not what we were there for. That's pretty much a perfect Sunday. If you'd asked about a perfect weekend I might have had a more adventure-filled answer, but that one day a week of relaxation and un-science stuff is just so wonderful.
Thanks for the interview!
1. Leave me a comment saying, "Interview me" AND leave your email address (or blog link) in the comment! I will interview the first three commenters to ask for it. I love you all but I've got a paper to get out people!
2. I will respond by emailing you (or commenting on your blog with) five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions. (If you don't have a blog, I can post your answers here).
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
Cath: Exactly which parts of academia are you ambivalent about?
AA: This is a good question and I'm glad that you asked Cath! I've meaning to post about this since the inception of this blog but have just not gotten around to it. I started to answer it here and it's turned into a tome. So I'm going to have a post (or a series if necessary) tomorrow or in the very near future to address this fully because it deserves that kind of attention.
For now, let this suffice: when I refer to being "ambivalent" I don't mean it in the more contemporary/colloquial/conventional use of the word. I think that many people use the word "ambivalent" to mean "oh, I could take it or leave it" or "I really don't have any strong feelings either way". Corollary: "I just don't care that much."
The actual definition of the word is what appears in the blog header (in case it's hard to read I'm reiterating here):
a state of having emotions of both positive and negative valence or of having thoughts or actions in contradiction with each other, when they are related to the same object, idea or person (for example, feeling both love and hatred for someone or something [i.e., grad school, or academia]). (blue text is my addition)
This is quite the opposite of the popular usage. What it really means to say that I am ambivalent, is to say that I am conflicted about academia. In the same way that someone who is ambidextrous is equally strong or adept with either hand, I have equally strong feelings (both positive and negative) towards academia.
You've asked what exactly I am ambivalent about and I haven't exactly answered that...but I promise that I will in a subsequent post tomorrow. Or else very soon.
Cath: Did you generate your header image yourself? What is the staining for?
AA: Oh, I wish! The images are Optical Projection Tomography (computer generated) models of mouse embryos. I love this picture -- it relfects my passions for imaging and embryos. I found the image via teh googelz. Another variation of this image was originally posted on the Wellcome Image Award website. From their page:
Incidentally, I notice that the image has been copyrighted since I first acquired it (eep!), so it may not be in my header for much longer. I'm going to at least properly credit the image in a prominent place near the header...does anyone know if that will satisfy copyright laws? I hate to take it down because it's so freakin' cool.Mid-gestation mouse embryo
The new technique of Optical Projection Tomography (OPT) helps to reveal the internal structures of stained whole embryos and small pieces of tissue without the need for cutting sections. The mouse embryo shown here has been stained to show parts of the nervous system in green, the floor of the spinal cord and other tissue in blue and the heart in red. Unstained tissue appears grey. The OPT technique enables different elements of the staining patterns to be revealed in more detail using the computer to selectively remove overlying tissue. This process can be observed in the accompanying on-screen animation.
Optical Projection Tomography image by James Sharpe.
Cath: If you had to choose, would you rather be deaf or blind? And why?
AA: I think that I'd rather be deaf than blind from a purely pragmatic standpoint. Blind people lose so much more independence - they can't drive for one...not that I do much of that, but it's really nice that I can. Also, I really really love imaging...hard to make a career of that if you can't see. On the other hand, I would desperately miss music -- I used to play a variety of woodwinds...don't have the time anymore so I satisfy the need to hear music with an iPod. I suppose if I were blind I could always listen to radio transmissions for SETI like that guy from Contact, which would be pretty awesome though not quite as cool as some of the emergent imaging technology.
Cath: Do you think you'll keep blogging when you graduate and move into the next phase of your career?
AA: Oh hellz yeah! This has been such a cathartic experience for me (and I only started a few months ago -- I don't know how I survived without it)! I really love this little conrner of the blogosphere and all the people in it. It's been incredibly encouraging to find out that there are other people out here who are struggling to make the whole science/life thing work (in the many ways that this may be manifest)...and generally succeeding! It's great to know that I'm not crazy...or at least that I'm not alone in my madness. I've had PI blog-friends offer me post-doc positions without knowing my real name or what I do, just on the strength of my communications here and that makes me feel like I am valued outside of the data that I can produce, which is pretty refreshing. I've received more support and good advice here than I imagined I could expect from many of the people in my real-life research-hat environment. Most importantly, I've made a lot of good friends here and I'm not about to give that up! I've got hope that at some point I can offer the same kind of support and relative sanity to someone else trying to swim up this fish-ladder so maybe I'll be able to return the favor.
Cath: What would be your perfect Sunday?
AA: I am happy to report that I recently had one. Sunday is my super-sacred gardening day. Because I live in a sub-tropical sort of city, this is possible pretty much year round, though significantly more tolerable in "winter" months. [I have to say though Cath, being a PNW born-and-raised girl I am exceedlingly envious of your shoe of the week. Not something I would have a chance to wear here though :(] Sometimes I have to go into the lab on Sundays (don't get me wrong, most of the time I love my research...but I love it a lot more if I get to have one day a week when I get to think about something else entirely). This last Sunday I didn't have to go into the lab. Instead, I got to completely rework the last hideous remains of the previous home-owners' garden and turn it into a lovely little tropical corner. Or perhaps I should say that I got to supervise while BH sweated buckets doing the actual work. Last Sunday BH and I slept in, then when we finally got up, I let the pets outs into the yard while he made coffee. We sat out on the deck drinking coffee and enjoying a rare day of perfect weather, then without any prompting at all BH brought out his crowbar and saw and extracted the repulsive suburbanite boxwood shrubs that were making a sorry attempt at concealing the ugly siding of a closet addition (for which I am NOT complaining), so that I could replace said offensive shrubs with a few palm trees, elephant ears, Monstera, Philodendron, and croton, and some canna lilies too. BH dug all the holes to put them in as well. He's fantastic. I don't tell him often enough. It is much prettier, and in a few weeks after all danger of frost I will be planting some very exotic pepper plants in amongst the stuff that is already there. Then we went to a little get-together with some of our favorite friends...didn't watch the game at all but that's really not what we were there for. That's pretty much a perfect Sunday. If you'd asked about a perfect weekend I might have had a more adventure-filled answer, but that one day a week of relaxation and un-science stuff is just so wonderful.
Thanks for the interview!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
