Inception

The September 30 issue of Nature ran a piece about research sabotage at the University of Michigan, where a postdoc in a particular lab who deliberately ruined a fellow grad student's work by poisoning her cell culture media, among other things. Sadly, research sabotage is not unheard of, although in many cases it's an act of desperation.

A while back, one of my cohort members was talking about self-sabotaging labs, or labs that consisted mostly of postdocs. She called them self-sabotaging because of the intense competition between the members -- whoever has the best idea or approach to a problem gets funded. That's not to say all labs that have a lot of postdocs work that way, but sometimes intense competition fuels jealousy, which in turn leads to wrecking other people's work.

But where to draw the line? One of my friends went to a conference last year where the people present were so scared of getting scooped (having their ideas stolen) that they refused to interact with each other. Research is all about ideas... figuring out the right questions to ask in light of what's already known. And the best way to figure out if you have a good idea or not is to bounce them off the right people. For my case, it would be my labmates and my advisor. For the independent scientist with their own lab, it would be other people in the field. However, unless you already have decades of experience in the field, how would you know who would turn out to be a good collaborator versus someone who could scoop your ideas? Where do you draw the line at how much of your ideas to share versus what to keep hidden?

It would be an impossible ideal to have scientists collaborate with each other all the time. Grant money is tight and hard to come by, awarded to those with the best or most promising ideas...but unless you're a reclusive genius, good ideas are hardly the work of one individual. Which brings back the question... where does one draw the line between keeping it a secret and collaborating with someone else? Are there ways to minimize getting scooped?

***
In the movie Inception, the main character (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) states "what is the world's most dangerous parasite? An idea...it will consume you."

More from the other side of the podium

I'm teaching again this term -- a lab class on animal physiology, full of overachieving premed students. It's a bit of a contrast compared to some of the stuff I had to deal with last term, but then again, it could be because my incoming schpeel was a bit different. I don't think anyone is super prepared to teach the first time around; no matter how prepared I thought I was, it still got to be a bit nerve-racking to stand up in front of 20-some kids and go through everything you expect out of them.

Even though it's a lot smoother this time around, I still see some of the nervousness creeping in. I'm teaching two sections, and sometimes I feel a lot more prepared for the second lab group. I write a list of stuff I want to cover in every class, but I tend to rush through things in the first class and go a lot slower (and cover more info) in the second. I'm hoping it'll get better as the term progresses.

*****
I told my advisor in August that I was interested in mentoring an undergrad research assistant, and he's been forwarding all these emails he's been getting from assorted undergrads looking for lab positions. Since they're going to be primarily working with me, I get to interview them and send the ones I liked to my advisor.
It was a little weird being the interviewer and not the interviewee; I had a few questions written down, but it wasn't just recording their answers -- it was gauging their interest in terms of voice inflections and body language. But while I was sitting there observing them, I'm pretty sure the reverse is also true. Just felt a little surreal being the person looking for a helper, and not the one looking for a helper position.

Anyway, I forwarded the resumes of two students to my advisor. He'll be interviewing them later and I'll probably start mentoring soon. :)

on staying motivated

Research at times can be tedious, and sometimes it's easy to lose motivation, especially when I have to repeat experiments because I completely screwed it up the first time. Even if I didn't screw up the experimental setup, it can get mind-boggling just thinking about what there is left to get done... and on some days it's hard just to get started.

I was talking to one of my friends (in a different department) a while back, and she was considering switching labs due to the lack of positive results --among other reasons-- and she asked me how I stay motivated about my work. Granted, I go alternate between super-productive mode and sloth mode, but I think the days I go into sloth mode are the ones where I start losing track of what the overall goal is.

Sometimes I'll get motivated by reading other papers that relate to the topic at hand, especially if it's a well written one. Other times it could be an episode of Planet Earth, or spending some time with people who have no idea what I'm talking about. And by "no idea" it means they studied something completely different or they don't even want to hear about my work.

A college friend of mine (who now works overseas) was a history and poli sci major, and now works in a business-related field. We have this unspoken rule on "no talking about science" which I think we've done a pretty good job of following. It's refreshing in a sense because (1) face it, talking about science 24/7 is dull and (2) I don't have to turn into a robot.

Don't get me wrong... I love biology and what I work on, but I don't want it to end up defining me. I think the two key components to staying motivated about research is to remind myself of the big picture (easier said than done) and to maintain my ties to my science-hating friends. I mean, my friends who would rather talk about something else. (Adam, come back to the States! I owe you coffee!)

I hope I can keep those two things in mind the next time I come home all cross-eyed from doing more than 100 dissections...

the road ahead

I'm currently three weeks into my third year of grad school, and I'm asking myself how long it's going to be before I get enough meaningful data for my first paper, how many papers I need to graduate, and whether or not I can graduate on time (I'm aiming for May 2013). I'm currently unsure if I'm on track or behind; it just seems like everyone I know has more data than me...and by "everyone I know," I've pretty much limited it to other lab members. I want to get more data in a shorter period of time, but sometmes it can be difficult to strike a balance between being efficient and being high-quality.

I'm also in the middle of designing experiments for my thesis proposal. I finally got my thesis committee formed and the first committee meeting scheduled, but I'm not really sure what to expect. I'm guessing it's going to be a lot of questions on experiment design and controls (like prelims), questions on the validity of results (like prelims), and probably questions on the field as a whole (like prelims). My advisor send back some comments on my experiment design, and while his questions are quite valid, I sometimes wonder howcome I missed seeing it myself. In other words, the blanks I have to fill are a lot more obvious when they're pointed out to me by someone else. While this is all part of the learning curve in grad school, I sometimes wonder if (1) I'm a slow learner; (2) there are so many things that need to be considered in experimental design that it's mind-boggling, or (3) it's actually not mind-boggling.. it's just hard to see what else is important aside from the immediately obvious.

The good thing is I don't have to take classes anymore, so fall term is just a continuation of summer research. Right now it just seems like a long, hazy road ahead...

hamster wheel

I would really like to get some meaningful data.

If the research question was "what happens when you add A to B," I'm currently stuck on getting enough A and B to put together. It's monotonous, but necessary, and it makes me feel like I'm on a research treadmill: working, but not moving forward. I guess as long as I'm not falling backwards off the treadmill, it'll be an improvement from last year already.

There's a lot of little things that need to be taken care of before I make any REAL progress... like figuring out what the normal patterns of gene expression are in the frog before I go in and mess it up with chemicals and the like. Since I'm currently in this stage (normal expression), I don't feel like I'm really contributing anything until I can go in and mess it up. And when I say "mess it up," I expect to see some dramatic changes.

...which is really not how science is supposed to work. Just because we think something is going to happen doesn't mean it will. And just because something happened, doesn't mean it's important (statistically significant). Several times last year, I'd get mini panic attacks when I got my results and they were contrary to my hypothesis or weren't significant enough to support the hypothesis. So next time I do things, I should probably stop panicking afterward... unless the results are skewed because the machine died (knock on wood).

Going back to making progress, if I look at what I did last year and how many times I had to do that obnoxious cloning experiment, I guess I can say I got stuff done. The only thing is that I really don't want my research progress to be broken down into years...


I really need data.

Year 2 in review

I really need to write in this thing more often. There's one more month left before the second year of grad school is done, and before I forget, I figure I should write this schpeel now rather than two months late.


I hear from older/former grad students that the first year is emotionally the hardest, while the second year is academically so. First year, you adjust to new surroundings as well as a switch in lifestyle. Second year is when you get a permanent advisor, a general thesis topic, and a taste of grant-writing and presentation-giving (rawr, prelims).

First year wasn't really that bad; I had projects that I was interested in, but I didn't feel as much pressure to get good (functional/reproducible/publishable) results as I did this past year. I spent a lot of second year perfecting lab techniques -- like trying not to get 0% yield -- and REALLY understanding the topic at hand. Now that I think about it, I probably didn't see the big picture side of things until two or three months before prelims, when I pretty much shut down and went into hibernation with a giant stack of papers.

In retrospect, I thought the prelim process (and by "process" I mean just the oral exam) was a lot of anticipation, which scared everyone into studying. I thought my committee asked reasonable questions, all of which pertained to the mock grant I wrote. I thought it was tough, but fair...and I only say this because I passed in the end. :)

***
I'm kinda glad second year is over. My friend and I were talking about what that former grad student told me, and we both agreed that while first year wasn't too bad, second year was academic and emotional challenges rolled into one. For one thing, I know several people who just left their programs because they lost interest or decided that it wasn't their calling. I know others who have been diagnosed with depression and are currently seeking therapy. When news like that goes around, it's a bit of a morale crusher, especially since these things seem to always come by surprise.

I'm sure that people applying and entering grad school know all about the academic challenges; in the end, you're supposed to discover, or "add on to existing knowledge," if you will. You can't tell if a promising project at first might lead to a dead end later on, and even if you do get good results, you can only say that they "suggest" or "don't seem" to be part of some larger picture. Nothing is ever known for SURE.
On the flip side, I'm not sure how many entering students know about the emotional challenges that come as well. I'm not just talking about personal problems, but also dealing with lab-related issues outside of lab. There's been several instances in second year where results could make or break my day. Several times during second year, I'd spend a good two hours setting up some experiment, and have the whole thing go to waste because after I got the results, I realized that the negative control had gunk in it. Add that to me waging war with the qPCR machine and the pH meter, and the end result is me complaining on the phone to some very uninterested person at 11pm. They start wondering if I have a life and mind outside of lab. The answer is yes, but it depends on whether or not I'm away from Ann Arbor (not that often).

***
So here goes into third year... as Sherlock Holmes once said, "Data, data, data! I can't make bricks without clay."

reflections on teaching

Last week I sent out an email to my students asking them to fill out course evaluations, which are now online. Like all instructors, I pressed for written comments instead of filling in bubbles ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree," since most of them are probably going to fill in "neutral" for every single question. I'm kinda curious as to what they have to say about me, although I'm not going to be surprised if they all say I'm some sort of cruel dictator and a walking advertisement for my lab.


My intentions have been driven by interest in the subject matter, especially when it came to the frog module (and metamorphosis!), but it's hard for me to recognize that not everyone who's taking the class is going to be in love with thyroid hormone-dependent changes in morphology. A lot of the time during the metamorphosis unit I pushed for "correctness" based off of what I learned in lab (like particular signaling pathways, changes in the timing of metamorphosis, past and current research findings) without caring about whether or not it was TMI for the students in the class. At the same time, I justified it to everyone by saying "metamorphosis is cool and everyone should learn about it."

It's been less than two years since I was in undergrad (I graduated April 26, 2008), but I feel like I'm starting to forget about the undergrad work ethic and the expectations that come with it. As an example, I had to grade 22 term papers on various chemicals and how they caused developmental defects. If someone were to just look at the class average, they might say that (a) my class doesn't know how to write a term paper properly, or (b) I'm a harsh grader.

I admit I was a little harsh in grading the term papers. I never graded undergrad papers before, and the only thing I knew about science papers was the stuff I read in journal articles and the comments my advisor gives me on my own writing. I remember writing science papers in college, but they were few and far between, and it's not like I kept any of my work. So the only thing I was really going off of was what I experienced the past year of grad school.

When writing my prelim grant proposal, I was really careful about what stuff to omit and what stuff to include. The rule of thumb was that if I didn't want to be questioned extensively on something, I didn't mention it. The same rule applied when I was prepping for my seminar, and I used this rule of thumb extensively when I was grading the term papers for my class. A lot of the comments I wrote on their papers involved them mentioning some term and not defining it, which really got me confused (and possibly a little frustrated in trying to decipher what they were saying).

Anyway, it's been a fun, abeit sometimes frustrating, experience. One of the students (a guy who acted like a smart-ass at the beginning of the semester) wrote a short note at the end of his lab report which said "I had loads of fun this semester. I hope I wasn't too much of a pain!" I thought it was kind of amusing. :) As for the frustrating part, I think it makes for really good stories.