I don't care, I love it

I ordered a free informational poster today from a pipet company with the pure intent to use it as decoration in my home.

http://us.mt.com/us/en/home/supportive_content/news/GPT-Poster2010.html

Packed and all eyes turned in

You're going to freak out about this.

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.

OMGWTFBBQ

Say something, say something, anything. Your silence is deafening.

If you need help, ask for it.

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.

Baby, watch your back

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.

Big Brother is this Behavioral Neuroscientist's crack cocaine

I am addicted to Big Brother.

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.

I can say I hope it will be worth what I give up

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...

Time goes by SO SLOWLY

I have a confession:

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.