If you're not currently addicted to Evernote, I pity you.
Yes, this is meant to sound inflammatory. I am not overselling how much more in control of all the crazy things that go on in my life with the use of this technology.
What is Evernote?
Evernote is an application that allows you to create "notes," in which you can type information, take and attach an image, record and save an audio file, add reminders, draw images or annotate and tag notes with labels to categorize them. Also, like a billion other things but that's the gist. It's available for iPhone, iPad, PC, Mac, and online.
Here's some reasons it's amazing for scientists:
1. All those notes/tips/protocols that I lose in my haphazardly organized and bulk lab notebook? Yeah, I took pictures of those motherfuckers and now they're stored electronically forever and I can find them whenever.
2. It offers incredible functionality within a web browser and allows me to "clip" things I select online directly to my collection in a snap.
3. It can scan handwritten notes and makes that shit searchable.*
4. If you imported pdf files, the content is searchable. No more creative file names, no more organizational mishaps or printed stacks of articles.*
5. I've been using it to put together my thoughts/ideas on data analysis, manuscript design, and graphs.
6. You can share the notes with people through links or by email.
7. A note is almost instantly synced to every device on which you have the software, including the web version.
Beware: You will start using Evernote for all of teh things, all of teh time.
It's also awesome for recipes, music/restaurant recommendations, prescriptions, remembering where you've parked, and just about anything for which you'd like to stash some information to rapid retrieval later.
I've been pretty mum here about the fact that I've recently moved and changed jobs.
I think it's because I now realize how much I want to share the "how I got to what I am now" before I spend too much time talking about the straight-up details of my new job.
University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) was my first postdoctoral position following graduate school, and it has been pretty great. I generally like my coworkers and my work, Austin is beautiful and vibrant, and I got to live with my bestest favorite person (from whom I was separated for the immediately preceding two years while we finished graduate school shit). While here I've met some incredible people, officiated some incredible roller derby with the incredible Texas Rollergirls (fourth in the world, what, what!), and tasted some incredible food. Unfortunately, I've also done some incredibly trying work setting up a new lab, paid an incredible amount in parking costs, and placed an incredible number of miles onto my leased car.
More recently, funding became an increasingly pressing issue: my PI's grant is ending, and despite good scores on an NIH R01 grant, it will be unclear for months yet if there would have been money to support my continued work in the lab. I applied to become a research educator for the awesome Freshman Research Initiative at UT, but funding is tight, and the program did not have funds to support new "research streams."
This, and the rapidly approaching end of the lease on our condominium forced the hard question: Can I commit to another year in San Marcos, locking in a long commute for both myself and the love of my life, without a guarantee that I would be employed during that time?
So, a few months ago, I started hunting for jobs in San Antonio. After all, my fiancee's permanent position was in San Antonio and I was already skating there once or twice a week with the Alamo City Rollergirls. In June I blogged that looking for academic positions was comically complex. . I know that I love doing science in the lab everyday, but the counterintuitive expectation that successful scientists leave the bench to become administration, teachers, and managers just felt stupid. I wanted off that tract, and I wanted off badly. Desperately unsure about what I wanted, I reached out to a lab that had posted a technician position, for which I was ridiculously over qualified.
But then I met this scientist and he was all human, and it was like, what do I want again? Because working with these people could be pretty awesome. Sure, it's another huge academic leap from one discipline to the next, but the cost-benefit was so disparate compared to my situation with UT-Austin: guaranteed funding, carpooling to work with the fiancee, and only a short drive from roller derby practice. We could live in a city near things and people, have social lives, and visit nice restaurants without spending more time in the car than at the table.
So, I started a new job on August 1 at the University at Texas Health Sciences Center San Antonio while still working (albeit long distance) with the group at UT-Austin. I was pretty entrenched at UT-Austin position, my exit was swift, and I had a lot of people with which I had to coordinate all of these changes (remember all of my undergraduate assistants?). The undergraduates with which I was working are now finishing some of the behavior that I help start before I left. It's so strange stepping away from a project before its natural conclusion, hoping that those I left behind pick up the slack. I know that they can, but I've never had to test that trust so completely in the past.
And like that, I know relatively nothing again. I'm a behavioral neuroscientist in an electrophysiology lab that uses patch clamp to examine dopamine signalling in a myriad of systems. It's a bit like starting graduate school or starting the last postdoctoral position - it's an opportunity to demonstrate that I'm adaptable. At least, until it all starts over again, again.
I was actually seeing someone else at the time, but that ended abruptly after about a year, during the summer following my first year of graduate school. It was my first serious relationship, but it'd been a rocky and stressful one. I spent a week in my apartment, scoring animal behavior on my TV (to my cats' amusement) in my hot, un-air-conditioned duplex while watching seasons of Charmed that I'd been loaned out from the nearby library. It may have been one of the most pathetic phases in my then-25 years.
My graduate school frenemy finally goaded me out of my shitty home and out to a weekday concert in our small, semi-southern town. IT WAS AWESOME. Hippies were dancing! Some industrious people moved a couch into a public park! It was so packed that you would have sworn that every person within 10 miles was in attendance. I ran into this totally cute guy that had been in my Psychopharmacology course the semester before, and he was sporting a fabulous beard and had pretty eyes. Tall, dark, and handsome? Yes, please.
The following summer, we were living together and celebrating these free and public 'sunset' concerts by hosting cookouts with our circles of graduate school buddies, most of which were couples. It was great - I could binge eat and drink with all my friends. In fact, one of the craziest but best memories was the cookout we hosted to celebrate a dissertation defense, which still managed to occur despite a major, power-outage-causing storm. We and all our friends congregated at our house immediately following the afternoon's hurricane-typhoon-tornado-like storm, and wandered the neighborhood, gape-mouthed at all the fallen trees, destroyed homes, and battered cars. Then we started drinking, emptied the freezer's contents onto the grill, and drank and ate everything we had on hand.
At the end of the summer, my handsome man then moved to Tuscon to complete his pre-doctoral clinical internship at the VA hospital there. It was fun going on the road trip to move him there and set up his home, but it was really hard to leave him and our kitty Sterling Hayden there to return to our small town graduate school. I had two years to finish, and I was scared our relationship wouldn't survive 1000 miles of separation.
When your best friend, boyfriend, and sole roommate moves across the country, your entire life changes. In hindsight, I'm pretty surprised that the relationship survived (spoiler alert). At first, our graduate school friends were okay about my pseudo-singlehood, but the changed dynamic quickly saw my social calendar opening up. A new co-worker's long-distance girlfriend then met me and supposedly thought I aimed to pursue her boyfriend (I did not, at all), and openly despised me. Then, my friends had to choose between this couple (the guy was nice, she could be fun, but was high maintenance) and myself. Before long, I was only getting phone calls to meet up at the bar for drinking after everyone else went on group dates. It was a friend-style booty call and I wasn't loving it.
I befriended a much-younger, but much more crazy, fun, and single friend, and four months after my best friend soul mate boyfriend moved away, I again had a close friend with which I spent most of my time. Sure, I drank and partied more than I have - or probably ever will - but it was awesome and exactly what I needed. I'd felt so slighted by my paired-up graduate school friends. Later, my friendship with her was probably the final push that severed my connections with a number of these graduate school friends (by no means all, but at least one), but I had already given up on being a meaningful member of that social group. Didn't need them, didn't want them. Not only had they been replaced, I'd upgraded.
It was with bemusement that I learned, in the ensuing three years since all these shenanigans went down, many of these same couples found themselves in similar long-distance situations with their significant others. In fact, I believe it has struck ALL of them (thanks, Facebook and gossipy academics). I'd be lying if I said that I didn't get some smug satisfaction that these people had to face the same trials and tribulations that I faced - without their help. I hope their friends were better selected than many of my own.
It's really, really, hard to be in this type of situation. In many ways, it feels a little bit like your significant other is dead, because all the things you once did together are not only now done alone, but stink with the frequent and painful reminder of your heightened social isolation. Just like the day my frenemy dragged me out of the self-induced solitude following the breakup, you sometimes need friends to help you cope with this huge and meaningful life change. I didn't really get that - I was mostly on my own.
Furthermore, what transpired also highlighted the notion that many of your 'friends' in graduate school are your friends more so because of your shared environment, common academic interest, and/or proximity than meaningful emotional connection. These connections are predominantly out of necessity. Most of them will become just some person with whom you once had some (graduate school) shit in common with, and they'll never be part of your life again. The precious few that defy that categorization are probably now some of the best friends you could ever have.
If you're not already reading Lifehacker everyday, you're missing out both as a scientist AND a human being.
The header on the website is literally "Tips and downloads for getting things done."
Lifehacker has helped me bend technology to my whim, find great deals on products or services, and solve small but meaningful annoyances in my everyday existence. I read it everyday, even if only glancing, because it is that useful of a resource.
But for even for scientists, sometimes life needs to take the front seat.
We just moved into our San Antonio townhouse (before the complex was completed with their renovations or turned on the air conditioning). It's been a flurry of angry cats, drywall dust, and achingly painful flea bites in our 85 F degree abode.
Seriously. It's incredible how many colleagues I've seen struggle and dredge through an experimental goal that requires the implementation of new or different techniques. Sure, they've probably read some scientific articles on the topic, but seldom do I witness fellow researchers reaching out to their colleagues for help when they're struggling.
In my postdoctoral fellowship, my research focus went from preclinical traumatic brain injury with rats (in a Psychology program) to functional adult hippocampal neurogenesis (in a Neurobiology department). It was a huge leap into much harder bench work with which I wasn't familiar - which meant that I had to reach out to the undergraduate technician in the lab to learn these techniques. The other postdoc didn't need this type of tutoring, so I quickly felt like an idiot, and I think that still kind of sticks with me even today.
Not many scientists will tell you this - but working in science is essentially a commitment to frequently feeling like a moron. For example:
I have done something so profoundly dumb in an experiment that I am briefly yet frequently certain I have multiple personalities that hate one another.
One time I returned an animal cage following behavioral testing, but did not notice that an animal was missing from its cage. Turned out that the animal was in my private testing room for the entire weekend, and I didn't realize it until I found shredded paper towels in the middle of the floor, Monday morning. CT-15 was fine, but freaked out, and honestly, so was I. What kind of bonehead does that, I thought.
I have struggled with lab techniques and let it go on longer than I should have because PRIDE.
I didn't learn PCR and gel electrophoresis until my postdoc, and I was able to hide my troubles with genotyping until the laboratory technician left his position a year later. And then it still took four months for me to go from "recipe-following automaton" to "sufficiently proficient scientist." The undergraduate assistants understood more about the process than this postdoc did, so I avoided that shit like a shameful plague.
More often than not, experimental results are the opposite of what I would have predicted, despite all the science things I thought I knew on the topic.
The first study I did in graduate school demonstrated that a vitamin effective in young animals as a treatment following TBI (traumatic brain injury) was completely ineffective in middle aged animals. The finding was so surprising that my master's thesis wound up being a study of the effect of age on that drug's efficacy. This is a normal progression of experimental investigation in science, but it's not difficult to interpret it as being incorrect or even moronic in your scientific predictions.
It can be really painful to admit that something is difficult for you, even more so when the people around you, your peers, don't seem to have the same troubles. We're all competing for the same grant money, recognition, and success. So you don't say anything about your struggles, you don't ask for help, and something that is a frequent and necessary task in your scientific endeavors turns into a monster of an undertaking. At least it did (and still can) for me.
The too frequently unspoken truth in science is that as a group, we all rise and fall together (in a lab, in a research group, in a department, in a university, in a field, etc). If one of us makes a major breakthrough in methodology or technique, all of us might benefit from it. If one of us secures funding, there's more support for the rest of the team, or another piece of equipment. If one of us expands their professional network to include rich or powerful people, all of us might now have a powerful friend-of-a-friend.
Putting together a great team of a lab is important for each member's benefit. This is true for both social and professional climate, but I'm talking specifically about professional development. For the sake of the team, each member should seek to be open, considerate, thoughtful, and dedicated. It needs to be a safe place to ask for help or advice without fearing judgement and persecution. It allows its members to play to their strengths, and others to support them with their own, symbiotically.
In science, as in life, it's best to forgive yourself for your failings, and move the fuck on, preferably with your friends.
Did you know you could search online your and your colleagues' salaries if you work at a state-funded institution? Me neither. Not until recently.
I noticed something when I searched for my salary and the salary of the other postdoc in my lab. We finished our PhDs within two months of each other, and I joined the lab roughly a month after he started. I come from Psychology, he from Physiology. We both wanted to join a lab that was out of our comfort zone, so we converged on adult hippocampal neurogenesis as our focus. He's an awesome person and I have mad respect for him as a person and a scientist.
And his yearly salary is $1,000 more than mine.
I'm curious why this is the case, as the most obvious difference between us is our genders. I haven't come up with another convincing factor in this discrepancy.
Baby, watch your back. I'll be watching mine much more closely in the future.
*Edited: The title is actually a reference to Nellie McKay's song "Baby Watch Your Back" but it's not on Youtube and here's another one of her amazing songs.
For those that don't know - Big Brother is a reality TV competition that runs in the summer, airing three days a week. Approximately 13 people get locked in a camera-filled house without entertainment, outside contact, and limited access to resources. Over the course of the show, contestants compete for power, luxuries, and survival. Housemates vote each other out of the house until only two individuals remain. The winner is selected by a group of the most recently 'evicted houseguests,' making Big Brother a complex social, physical, and mental game.
I realize that many people think that reality TV is trash, but I would argue that Big Brother is psychologically fascinating. Because of a lack of outside stimulation, contestants quickly become immersed in the environment, frequently citing that they forget that the house is brimming with more than 60 cameras. There's some alcohol available, but things rarely devolve into a Bad Girls Club-level meltdown and the drama doesn't feel as exploitative as therapy shows for vulnerable people and doesn't make people sick. What makes Big Brother amazing is that you can watch as people become increasingly entrenched in the mind-warpingly intense game.
The game is so different in every incarnation that here is a brief description/commentary of the previous season's winners (that I've watched):
2012: Ian - awkward young dude who managed to outwit (and piss off fewer people) his Big Brother mentor, the infamous previous winner Dan.
2011: Rachel - Vegas resident with an obnoxious laugh and in-your-face attitude that used both brains and brawn to win despite being in an unpopular 'show-mance.'
2010: Hayden - Strong, handsome fraternity-type dude who forged a strong alliance and used it to easily navigate into the final three.
2009: Jordan - perhaps the most clueless contestant to win, the adorable houseguest bumbled to half a million dollars by the end of the summer by staying likable.
To become the winner, it takes a combination of physical, mental, and social gaming. As briefly touched upon above, winners come to that end using a myriad of strategies. I find it positively fascinating. So might the 6 million people that tune in for every episode of the people that pay more than $15/month to watch the uncensored, 24-hour live feeds. There's an after-hours cable show featuring action from within the Big Brother house.
There is at least one blogger that is making money by soliciting donations for covering the live feeds, and their coverage is good enough that I'm considering supporting them financially.
If you're into psychology or behavioral neuroscience, Big Brother is worth a watch as a fish bowl of human behavior. You can easily discount it as cheap reality TV, but that sort of closed mindedness might be a bit shortsighted. After all, as researchers we have ethical and logistical constraints from ever doing anything with the experimental realism that is evident in that house. Zimbardo (omg! not dead!) would get a kick out of it.
When I am at work, I am making a conscious choice to be a scientist rather than a derby girl, a future wife or best friend. Much like many other scientists, I have frequently made this choice for about 60 hours a week for much of my scientific career. While this sacrifice is commonly borne with a stamp of pride, there appears to be mounting evidence that this level of dedication could have a deleterious effects on productivity, creativity, and quality of the work and seldom leads to a healthy emotional or personal life.
How many scientists:
1) Brag about missing major life events in the name of science?
I skipped [major holiday with family] so that I could run an experiment.
2) Have talked about family obligations or responsibilities as though they're an unreasonable drain of one's time?
:::scoffs:::I have to go babysit [my own child].
3) Talk about how much they work and how stressed out they are?
I'm so stressed out that I grind my teeth during the little time I'm capable of sleep.
Part of the problem is that this is the culture of science and it's run in a way that's counterproductive to effective stress management and efficacious productivity. I'm stressed out, producing crappy, not-significant research, and sacrificing the little time I have to enjoy the things I enjoy to drudge along and feel this way.
How many career scientists have strained family relationships, or worse, have severed them altogether from the strain of scientific study and participation in this culture? How many of these people spend many of their years alone because their dedication to their work makes it difficult to find or maintain healthy or meaningful interpersonal relationships? How many people opt to pass on seeing their loved ones because of their commitment to scientific inquiry?
How many of them come to regret these choices?
I wish the culture of science didn't promote these sacrifices for the sake of science valor with a smear of pride. Perhaps then a retrospective account of a career in science wouldn't sound so much like a sad story borne by an unfortunate soul, driven by a slavish commitment to improving or informing the world in some noble way. I've hardly seen any movies where that's worked out in any way that seemed positive (The Saint?), forget any real life instances.
We mostly work to live... until we live to work...
At every lab meeting, I track how much time one of my colleagues speaks.
Yes, I am a jerk.
No, I don't care.
In graduate school, lab meetings were held sporadically - but not at all for most of my graduate school career. This is a probably a large reason as to why I find anything but the "Reader's Digest" version of the whole affair absolutely excruciating.
And why I time my colleague in our lab meetings.
Content-wise: This person struggles with saying anything clearly, effectively or efficiently. They use lab meeting to think out loud to themselves. They don't think through their presentation's narrative and then I end up watching them sort through old presentations and graphs looking for the "one".
We hold data meetings every other week - and this person speaks for about a half hour at each gathering.
It is the water torture of lab meetings.
So... I bemusedly count. Because the alternative would be to dread the whole thing and bitterly stare at the otherwise nice individual while they talk about their work.
...
Did I mention that they gave a more formal project update using a Word document? It was ridiculous. I could hardly hold back the humored and amazed smirk as they slowly and awkwardly scrolled through their graphs in Word.
Do your labmates and/or co-workers a solid and make that presentation quick, obvious and to the point. We'll thank you for it.
The people who do the neuroscience are the least appreciated and nurtured resource in science.
Here's why:
We never bothered to map out success.
Few labs have documented, readily available, and shared protocols. This usually means that people learn technique from an oral tradition. Strangely, oral tradition is an inexact method and seldom lends a deeper understanding of technique that a career scientist needs to troubleshoot, should things go awry (as they usually do).
Superiors/senior scientist advisors seldom establish clear goals for success for more junior scientists. Sure, projects come and go, but more long term goals (18- or 24-month long, or even 4- or 5- year long career-related landmarks) might lend better career perspective for scientists who frequently can't think far beyond the current experiment.
We expect a level of devotion that's religious to qualify for respect.
Unless you're an undergraduate (and sometimes even that won't help), your PI expects you to be at the bench during business hours and toiling on everything else before and/or after that work. Usually more.
People who pass on family commitments or personal needs in the name of scientific work wear these sacrifices like a badge of honor, whereas someone who strives to achieve a work-life balance is considered less dedicated. Recently, a co-worker of mine declared that they had to leave work early, at 5 p.m., to "babysit." I couldn't help but scoff. "I don't think it's babysitting if it's your own child," I mused.
I've been involved in roller derby since my third year of graduate school (that's nearly four years, including the two years I've been in my postdoc). Both of my superiors have reacted to my involvement in that community like it's the most insane thing they've ever heard. When I told one about making the team, he reacted like I had just told him that I was from outer space.
Professional conferences and workshop cruelly test your endurance in front of your peers (read: competition). For example, the annual meeting for Society for Neuroscience starts on a Saturday and runs through Wednesday. Talks start at 8 a.m. each day, and continue for 5 to 60 minutes, with more than a dozen ongoing sessions as any given time. Posters are presented in shifts, with hundreds simultaneously available for viewing. At 5 p.m., the at-conference bustle largely ends, but socials, meetings, lectures, and socializing (i.e., drinking) commence and continue into the morning hours. There are also several programs/events that precede or follow that main event. A couple of years ago, I spent a whole week at the SfN annual meeting in Washington, DC. It was so grueling that I skipped the last day of the conference in favor of spending the rainy day writing a manuscript and considered it a day "off."
We suck at communicating, but especially "thank you."
Everyone's been busy in the lab, using up the aliquot of this, the last of that, and spilling it on here. Sometimes, you fail to replace things or clean up after yourself before someone else also needs that resource. Both parties have the choice to be classy team players or unnecessary dickheads about the situation.
Dealing with equipment or facility issues can be a comedy of errors as each lab member independently discovers the issue or missing resource. A scientist could be royally screwed if they haven't accordingly planned ahead (which is probably most).
Periodically, the PI tries to show their appreciation for the lab team by providing food or drinks. It'd feel more meaningful if there was any real forethought, creativity, or commitment to it. Sure, they bought the food, but seldom is the act concurrently presented with an actual "thank you." It feels more like a tribute to an angry god than a team coming together to celebrate the group's efforts.
Team building and respect for one's peers is heavily undervalued and largely nonexistent.
Scientists, who appear to have a higher incidence of social awkwardness than the general population, work in groups that are hardly encouraged to communicate with one another. Without careful moderation, they won't actively challenge that difficulty. There needs to be a leader for or in the lab itself, aware of the social and functional culture of the lab. The chaos of every-awkward-(wo)man-for-themselves can easily devolve into shitty science work.
As a behavioral neuroscientist who works with operant chambers, I needed to quickly build up a competent crew of undergraduate assistants to help with the testing so that I could dedicate more time to the other things I need to learn, master, and accomplish as a postdoc. I solicited, interviewed, and trained an army of assistants with which I am excited to work everyday. It's a ton of front-end work and double checking that if implemented properly, pays major dividends in team member contributions. Because of them, I am frequently able to accomplish twice as much work as I would on my own and their efforts are a major factor in my scientific throughput. I get the feeling that my PI wouldn't agree with me, however, despite requisitioning my most senior assistant to take over a project dropped by someone under his own supervision.
Thinking is seldom considered to be productive, and haphazardly doing without thinking is generally promoted by the get-it-done-yesterday culture of science.
It wasn't until my fourth year of graduate student that an advisor demonstrated the importance of reading and thinking. It blew my mind! I had been focusing all my efforts on doing science with very little reading or understanding of science to guide it. Too few advisors and mentors encourage thinking about science in a creative way, especially when that time could be spent doing science.
I love having young science minds around me in the lab because I can't possibly espouse their worldview after 7 years of scientific devotion. Too few scientists solicit, or even value, the viewpoint or opinions of their fellow scientists. As a behavioral neuroscientist for seven years, I have developed firm opinions about how to get the best possible behavioral data out of my animals (obey their light cycles, avoid wearing or using perfumed products, approach animals with a calm, loving, but firm hand). Not that anyone would ask, however, so good luck with doing a cognitive task at the cusp of animals' day-night cycle while sporting that Axe body spray.
Likewise, my colleagues have strengths in techniques and fields that I don't know anything about. I wish asking for their help or opinion didn't feel so much like a confession of idiocy, even though it is completely normal and reasonable that I'm not the foremost expert in everything I do. Isn't having more smart people attacking a challenge better than fewer? Problem solving can be a funny thing - a novice could approach a problem with creative insight that a specialist in that field might not observe. Likewise, an expert might understand limitations with precision that can help modify a solution to fit the parameters at hand. Now that's fucking teamwork!
The only scientists you see working alone are in movies or TV, and they are generally "mad genious" scientists, and not in a good way (THERE'S AN ENTIRE WIKIPEDIA PAGE??!). I can think of villains whose desire for fame, money, or power drove reasonable people to extreme ends. Sure - real science isn't a Hollywood movie, but it's also not completely unlike its depiction in films, either.
I firmly believe that while science is an academic endeavor, it is too seldom considered to be a group or team venture. I think failing to recognize and act upon this can make good, rigorous, and thoughtful scientific work more difficult to accomplish, and we already have enough barriers to that outside of what we scientists can directly control.
Thank you for making a job search in academia/research the world's cruelest scavenger hunt.
As a neuroscientist. I have used some of the following sites to look at positions:
Professional Society page (Sfn's Neurojobs, APA)
University-specific HR page (Research, Staff, Administration positions)
Research-specific Department page (Postdoc positions)
Academic Unit Page (Professor and Lecturer positions)
So I've had this behavioral soap box just sitting here and I don't feel like I've abused it at all, and that's a crime.
Something that scientists hardly ever is do is slow the eff down. That exact issue is what lead to severe burnout for myself this spring, possibly culminating in writing a blog about neuroscience because I needed some catharsis from a stressful and sometimes abusive science career.
For the last year, I've managed a large mouse colony, learned to assemble, troubleshoot, and use operant touchscreen-equipped chambers, coordinated a crew of more than a dozen undergraduates, and completed *8* behavioral experimental projects (each requiring 4 months to run) in that time. Do the math - my crew has completed 32 months of projects in about 18. That doesn't even include the 50-ish pilot animals we ran during that time - each for at least six months.
This would be ridiculously productive if being productive in science was purely who finished the most studies - but it's not. The work that you publish and present is the true measure by which your productivity is measured in science. The quality of this work is a big factor in that judgement, and the rush to finish work before someone else publishes that technique or finding can frequently results in slap-dash work of questionable standards.
Why do you think the hashtag #overlyhonestmethods exists?
So I have a ridiculous and soul-crushing amount of data and it wasn't until I turned off the damn chambers and killed all of the trained animals that I was able to make myself stop. Now my PI and I are finding way more cool stuff (where cool stuff = possibly publishable data) than we've noticed in two years. It could lead to several meaningful publications of the behavioral correlates of adult hippocampal neurogenesis. Isn't that the point of all this?
To boost productivity in science - and not just perceived productivity - may actually mean spending more time idly or even at other pursuits.
It's shocking how infrequently this topic is broached in the workplace. Things that seem like they would improve productivity (i.e., working more) probably hurt output. Like one of my graduate school mentors, Greg Rose, impressed upon me - too little time in science is spent thinking. If we spent more time thinking critically about all aspects of our work, and ensuring that the endeavors we undertake are done so with a rigorous dedication to high quality technique, a lot less time, effort, and money would be wasted.
In an increasingly competitive science talent market, publication counts are much more highly valued than moral fiber. Who reads your work or what publications print your manuscripts really matters when you're fighting for an important or influential job [read: a position ineligible for a student discount]. Unfortunately, the only thing that's truly publishable is a study boasting significant differences or relationships among variables. The standard used to guard the term significant - a p-value less than 0.05, is a arbitrary value which dictates that 95% of the time, a 'significant' effect will be a true and valid thing, and 5% of the time it will be an anomaly. Having the designation of being !STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT! is also usually the only way to get your findings to your peers whatsoever.
This system sucks balls for several reasons:
1) You might find the cure for cancer, cure for AIDS, but unless your study makes the statistical cut, it's probably going to become a story never told. That treatment that dramatically improved symptomology for a large proportion of individuals in a study? Not valid unless you've got that coveted asterisk (*) over some graphs.
2) This case-by-case system does not account for data/studies in the aggregate. A small effect, which emerges consistently in a number of studies with variable statistical power (possibly due to methodology limitations), might actually be a real relationship, but current statistical standards might prevent that connection between meaningful variables.
3) Studies that have nonsignificant findings are just as informative as studies that do demonstrate significant differences. In a culture where only select information (i.e., significant findings) are disseminated to the scientific community, this means that the same mistake (i.e., null findings) is bound to be committed time after time. It's a waste of time and money to allow studies with null findings to quietly die rather than be shared among the community.
4) This system sometimes forces scientists to make hard choices between success (publishing statistically significant findings) and all-out truthfulness. Statistics can be easily misleading or twisted to suit the purposes of the author. This is accomplished because the emphasis in training is in area-specific knowledge and methodology, rather than an in-depth understanding of the appropriate use, implementation, and interpretation of statistics.
You see, when the scientific and statistical culture requires a "threshold," i.e., an arbitrary and difficult statistical standard to fulfill [i.e., p<.05], those in the culture are incentivized to twist data any which way to publicize their work [i.e. get published]. Until the accepted guidelines and statistical methods are questioned at a basic and fundamental level, science will continue to see in a fucked up and sad grainy black and white picture of what the (probably) messy and vivid technicolor "truth" actually is.
I've been in science just long enough that my desire to succeed (read: publish) tests my desire to tell the unabashed and naked truth. I've run numerous behavioral studies based on an educated guess of what interplay between variables should look like based on previously published work, only to find following examination that differences or relationships were not statistically significant. In order to someday secure the "ultimate" goal of becoming a successful scientist and/or professor, I need to publish my work.
If only statistically significant work is publishable, rather than rigorous work regardless of outcome, it is reasonable that one would be tempted to fudge findings. In the intensely competitive field of science, a career that often requires a slavish commitment to work that forces many people to make a hard choice between personal happiness and only possible success, it also seems reasonable that talented individuals might opt out of this career path with such a bleak outlook for success.
They don't tell you this shit in graduate school. I wish it could be talked about more.
There are certain things about my scientific upbringing that sometimes makes me feel like a curmudgeonly asshole.
One of these things are privileged and un-self-aware* assholes who have only ever known labs that are flush with $$$BUX$$$ and take those conditions for granted.
I, however, spent a couple years in a lab when funding was scarce. I fought for, and eventually won, a teaching position to guarantee that I would be paid during the summer months in graduate school. Soon thereafter, my advisor was awarded a sizely grant, and we were suddenly a rich and powerful lab in our department. That didn't change how I approached my science work - I constructed the bulk of the behavioral testing apparatuses used in my dissertation study from abandoned materials found in the next door lab.
When I started in my current lab for my postdoc, we had substantial start up funds. Slowly, my active frame of mind has changed, but my perspective hasn't. Now, if I need something to complete my work, I simply order it without substantiating any of it to anyone, including an administrator. It was strange and new, but also amazing and liberating. Still - not something I planned to embrace mindlessly.
In fact, I switched to and learned a whole new statistical program because it was the cheapest through the university's IT department. I also negotiated aggressively with the vendor of our behavioral testing equipment - a system on which the lab invested more than $50K - to send us various free extras at every opportunity. Another major source of cost in an animal lab - the animals themselves - is often a poorly managed expense. With the help of my student assistants, I've been able to effectively manage and cull animals, keeping the smallest necessary group of animals.
Science is ridiculously expensive and the further the money goes, the further the science goes.
Now, as our current funding situation becomes increasingly dim - I'm even more thoughtful about how the lab spends its money.
So today, when I overhear a new graduate student flippantly declare that the lab needs to put forth $300 for statistical software on their personal computer, when it's available on numerous other computers in the lab, I pause. They probably don't know that it's possible that they got a position in the lab through the department's financial resources (rather than from the PI's funds) or that three of his coworkers are potentially losing their funding/jobs in only a few months. The Ivory tower of academia, it's sometimes called. And it is.
Even so, money is one of those taboo subjects in science - no one really talks about it. Sure, the PI is usually thinking about it, but few make a conversation out of it. Especially in the current funding climate, it appears that the predominant strategy is apply as often as possible and count the moments until the next grant review and score cycle. And probably pray, too, if they believe in that sort of thing.
* Yeah, I'm going to make up words. I use logic. Follow it.
Dear everyone who's applied to or for anything ever:
Label the files that you email to someone in a way that would make the file names in someone else's possession make ONE MODICUM of sense.
For example, if you send me an email, and attach a resume(or CV), these file names make me want to reject you without further thought:
resume.doc myresume.doc
This annoying little thing makes my frustrated mind over-value the resumes of people that actually put their name in the file. It's such a dumb little thing, but when there's a stack of applicants for a position, you might be surprised what people use as their selective criterion.
Like that one time, when someone forgot to spell check their email to me, and called me Dr. Swam.
... And then I stupidly and mockingly posted the above on Facebook, and now some of my roller derby family (lovingly?) call me Dr. Swam or Swammy.
Because of my need of organization, I have now accepted that I will forever be in charge of cleaning and putting things away - both at home and in the lab.
FML.
Now, I'm not saying that my lab mates are filthy pigs - in fact, I have a great lab family and I really like them. It's just... that there's a pervasive culture of not putting things away. In my experience, the outlook is poor for getting people to put their lab equipment away after it's been cleaned and dried. That minuscule area by the sink is constantly brimming with tools to be autoclaved or put away. It's literally limbo for lab tools.
Once a week, I've now resigned myself to putting things away. Sometimes I need to, because it's the only way I can place my used tools there to dry. Sometimes I'd prefer to postpone whatever science I have slated for the day in favor of the mindless indulgence that is organizing. Sometimes I do it because I have undergraduate assistants around me almost all of the time, and they need to be taught how to be good lab citizens.
There's absolutely nothing harder than trying to get a lab member to change a bad lab citizen habit. It's easiest to pretend it never happens, and hope that you can eventually have more good than bad lab mates. Maybe you can approach a poor citizen individually, and appeal for considerate behavior. ...And sometimes you let it roll, suck it up, and clean up after them silently. Not all lab mates are perfect or permanent, and sometimes it's easier to simply wait for the ticking time bomb to explode (or graduate, because that happens sometimes).
So today, I raise my glass to my lab mates. I put away your shit like a bitch.
I wish I could have an honest conversation with a professor who's written at least 20 recommendation letters. Maybe 50? ....100?
Wait, how many letters will a professor write in their time? That got scary fast.
Whilst attempting entrance to graduate school, I had a letter writer fail to send promised letters. I apparently wasted time completing tedious applications and a boatload of money during my college-induced poverty because some dickhead lied to my face. The part that made it so excruciating was that he was not the only asshole liar to exploit my work in academia. I'd spent my junior year of college managing research assistants and collecting human-subjects data for that asshole's graduate student. His student absconded with the data to a post-doctoral position in Texas somewhere and never again responded to correspondence. Upon hearing the issue, his advisor agreed to write letters in his stead. Note: agreed to. NEVER ACTUALLY DID.
Now, in full disclosure, I am *JAZZED* that things turned out the way they did. Apparently so glad that I have completely forgotten the name of the graduate student who was the ultimate culprit in the above debacle. During my senior year I worked in a lab with amazing researchers (Gerald Wasserman, Mandy Bolbecker-Hosking). I later joined Mike Hoane's lab at Southern Illinois Unviersity as a graduate student and fell in love with traumatic brain injury work in the following application cycle. Met my future husband, fell in love roller derby culture with some people in Southern Illinois, blah, blah, blah. Birds singing, sun shining, everything is perfect and wonderful.
...Yet there's still a little salt in my soul about that damned letter.
I needed a crew of assistants to help with operant chamber testing, and that's now ballooned out to more than a dozen assistants. Most people balk at the number assistants, but these rad miniscientists substantially increase the quality and throughput of my research. There's a time trade-off for me - management, recruitment, retention, and enrichment requires substantial effort, but it's VERY worth it, in my opinion.
My recommendation letter guidelines:
1. I honestly assess their letters' potential content to the apprentice (while working together or when asked for a letter, but preferably the former).
2. Apprentices provide as much notice as possible, with a plan in place, ao I can easily complete the letter and send it.
3. I supply a copy of the letter to the apprentice following its submission.
It's my belief that if you're going to train or be trained someone, there is ideally a commitment to doing so well. It would be easier for one to know how they could excel if the rubric on which they will be graded is clearly described. Mandated for courses, unheard of with research assistantships.
As the discipline of Neuroscience matures and becomes a recognized and established independent academic entity, I'm excited to see how the recommendation letter evolves. Research involvement whilst and undergraduate is an increasingly necessary component to admittance to Neuroscience graduate programs (as well as many others). Maybe the recommendation letter culture can sustain a similar evolution.
As a behavioral neuroscientist, the bulk of my scientific data comes directly from the actions of animals. My experience thus far is predominantly from my graduate training in preclinical traumatic brain injury with rats. The tasks I perform with the animals can be as hands-off as activity monitoring (a motor and anxiety measure where the subject is simply placed into a box) or as intimate as forelimb placing (significantly restraining the animal and moving them about a plexiglass plate to stimulate their whiskers to examine reflexes). Despite the 'intimacy' of the task, handling and becoming familiar with the animals is a standard practice before using animals in a study, although its implementation differs wildly across researchers and is seldom mentioned in Methods sections.
The primary goal of handling is to make the animals familiar enough with the handler/researcher that they can satisfactorily perform the behavioral tasks that will be asked of them. At first, this means acquainting the animal with simply being touched, as many animals sit in tiny boxes without social stimulation of any kind as they await use in a study. Later, handling can mean manipulating the hands and feet of the animal, or even getting them used to being held in one's arms.
But when I first started working with rodents, I was told not to get too emotionally close to the animals. "Don't get attached," was uttered on dozens of occasions by lab members at every level of training. Indeed, the practice of endearingly naming one's subjects is usually the sign that one isn't long for the scientist career.
Sure enough, I named one of my first subjects, a female retired breeder, because of her insatiably sweet yet voraciously intelligent behavior. Sure, "Number Seven" sung in a baby voice isn't a name by the strictest definition since its true label was AS-7, but I loved this animal. Just as everyone had told me not to do. When the day came to sacrifice the animal, my first on my own, I tried to hide how difficult it was for me. I shut the door after I was finally able to administer the euthanasia agent. I shut the door and I cried as I watched the animal die.
It would be almost three more years before I would bestow nicknames on animals again. But this time, I'm much more conscious of what that endearment means. Since then, I have been passionate - nay, outspoken - about how important it is to treat these precious animals with care, rather than data-producing meat sacks. When given the opportunity with my postdoctoral position, I was quick to insist that basic animal care include more enrichment items (for example, we now use nestlets and paper mouse houses). I insist that animals are never singly housed, unless necessitated by health concerns.
I fear that the dire need to produce research littered with p-values below .05, we forget that scienceshould be the pursuit of truth. If our animals are truly modeling the human phenomena, we need to commit to that by treating them as preciously. Anything less is a conscious disassociation with sufficiently rigorous research. Why do some researchers forgo enrichment items for their animal subjects? Because the improvement of the reprehensibly impoverished environment is sufficient to endanger hopeful significant differences among experimental groups.
Scientists shouldn't be so afraid to not find significant differences that they allow subpar care of their animal subjects. I dream about a science that embraces and supports good, rigorous, and creative work. I also dream about manuscripts that write themselves. Sigh... another day, another day.
About two years ago I had sushi with a mentor, shortly after I finished my PhD and was preparing to set up operant chambers for mice in a fledgling lab. She told me to get undergraduate assistants IMMEDIATELY.
"But I don't even know what I'm doing, yet. I've never run or programmed systems like those" I balked.
She wove me off, dismissively. "Trust me."
Spoiler Alert: She was absolutely right. I now have 16 assistants.
Here are some things that I have learned in the five semesters during which I have accepted undergraduate assistants:
First and foremost:
Be pro-choice. Be the master of your own destiny and select your own assistant(s). Sure, entertain others' opinions, especially if your boss wants to contribute to this decision, but be clear that your thoughts matter. This is someone in whom you're probably going to invest a lot of time and effort. This person might someday be a representative of your lab, training, or institution. You want to do your best to ensure that that goes over well.
Applications and Interviews
1. Planned graduation date matters. I view a one-year commitment as the minimum any assistant should expect to invest in a worthwhile research endeavor. Better yet, anyone who spends even more time with one lab is more likely to develop independent skills, run an independent project, or just become familiar with scientific culture.
2. Motivation influences effort and even type of lab involvement. Whether a student plans on making application to medical/dental/pharmacy school or graduate school can be a major indicator of what approach they will take to their research assistantship. More of my graduate-school aspiring students are interested in running their own study than my m/d/p-school aspiring students.
3. Informal interview. Would this person get along with the other personalities in the lab? Did this person do any 'homework' before coming in to talk about also working on our science? What kind of person or team member would they be like?
Training
1. Train once, check twice, and repeat until their efforts are satisfactory. Poor performance by a student can be attributable to poor training and guidance, too. Don't forget that.
2. Paperwork sucks but creating an easy guide/tracking/system to knocking it all out is key.
Involvement
1. Say please and thank you. A lot.
2. Be reasonable. Things happen, people get sick, life falls apart, people mess up. I'd rather that none of that stuff affects any of my work, but when it inevitably and reliably does, I roll with the punches. Healthy, happy, relatively-relaxed and secure assistants make better learners and team members. Only get uptight about these things if a worrisome pattern emerges, and then deal with it head-on.
3.Establish regular, clear, and frequent communication with each of them individually.
4. Make time to sit down with each assistant individually, about once a semester, to examine goals, situation, plans, and whatnot. It goes a REALLY long way.
5. Keep your PI in the loop. Better yet, try and make them part of it, if time permits*.
I invest a substantial amount of time ensuring that this working relationship is meaningful and functional for both parties. I think that's made very competent, happy, dedicated assistants that I can count on for semesters to come. This semester, I graduate the first of my amazing assistants, and I have to admit that I do feel a little bit proud for them. The last year felt a bit like watching grow up, at least in science.
And like them, I try to be constantly learning about what I can do to become a better scientist, mentor, and supervisor. You know, like a boss.
