When nasty peer review goes into the open...

in the august journal Langmuir, over the concept of the Gibbs adsorption isotherm (GAI).

It started with a paper (a group from Eindhoven) commenting on these 2 papers (by a group at Emory), and which then elicited a response from the Emory researchers.

The opening salvo (as the paper abstract no less) from Eindhoven:

Recently, some arguments were published that cast doubt on the validity of the Gibbs adsorption isotherm. The doubt was on whether the often visible linearly declining part in the surface tension versus logarithm of concentration plot of a surfactant solution, just before the critical micelle concentration, really represents a situation of constant adsorption. Those published arguments are partly of a conceptual nature and partly based on experimental evidence. The conceptual arguments appear to be based on a misunderstanding of the theory, while the arguments based on experimental evidence stem from an inaccurate treatment of these data. Our conclusion is that none of the relevant arguments put forward are valid. The experimental evidence, if properly treated, is in line with the Gibbs theory.

Ouch. Surely you won't expect the Emory group to take such a punch in their face without a counterpunch of their own. And so they did:

In the preceding paper, Laven and de With defend the classical Gibbs analysis. If one ignores their ad hominem comments (see, for example, their abstract), then what remains is a deceptively authoritative text devoid of any additional experimental data. In response, there is no need for us to repeat in detail all our experimental evidence.Only two experiments, based on conductivity and monolayer data, will be discussed briefly to illustrate the general tenor of the Laven and de With arguments.

Wow. The knives are out in the open for blood. I see nasty peer reviews all the time, but this is the first time I have seen such reviews become publicly archived and indexed as articles on a reputed peer-reviewed journal.

Who reviewed those two papers, and the Editor went ahead and have them both published with such word choices? Most of us tend to think of journal papers as the type to read in order to fall asleep, but this goes to show they can be exciting in a way...

Yay

:D

I am now motivated to tie up my loose ends here as a postdoc and write my remaining papers. Then pack my bags, get onto a plane and start a new adventure (to be on the other side of the fence).

The best quote ever (modified slightly):

The biggest problem at this point is trying to fit my whole life into two suitcases and a backpack. Not a simple task, as it turns out. But there is something incredibly cathartic about shedding most of your worldly possessions for the sake of hopping on a plane and starting anew, bringing only my research and teaching skills, my laptop and some souvenirs of my past life as a postdoc. I’m pretty stoked that my life is going in this direction now; I hope it’s as fruitful as it is exciting and new.

I now feel like Charlie, having just won a coveted Golden ticket to the Chocolate Factory.

Willy Wonka: "Now, hats, coats, galoshes over here. But hurry, please, we have so much time and so little to see. Wait a minute! Strike that. Reverse it. Thank you."

It has been quite a month.

"How do you get a TT position?"

It's very easy. You first excel as an undergraduate to earn a place in a top-tier graduate program. You then spend roughly 5-7 years in penury while learning one's craft and honing one's research skills, and then writing a doctoral thesis. [...] And no, this does not mean cutting and pasting from wikipedia. Then another couple of years slaving away in someone else's lab broadening your skillsets. Finally you must compete with several hundred equally qualified candidates for one of the dwindling numbers of tenure-track positions.

So yeah, it's very easy. ... Really. It only takes a decade or more of effort and a fair amount of brain power.

Last but not least, it helps to be a fox rather than a hedgehog these days when hunting for academic and industrial jobs, especially in the hot fields like nanotechnology, energy and green technology.

Moving on, but where?

My current postdoctoral grant will end in a few months' time. (In other words, I have to find a new job soon.) My advisor was unable to get my funding extended, in spite of the excellent results (5 research papers in high impact journals of my sub-field and 1 patent) that have come out of it. Seasoned readers of this blog can probably figure out the reasons.

But that is not all. As a faculty candidate, I had earlier this year made it onto the final (on-campus) round of a well-regarded Midwestern university in a state that has been making the news for the wrong reasons with regard to 'fiscal responsibility'. Then came the following email from the department chair:

Hello takchek,
The (state) legislature has announced plans to cut (the university's) funding by $XX million as part of the 2011-12 state budget proposal. The university has decided to put the hiring of faculty on hold for now and it is not clear when we can resume the process. I will keep you informed of any changes in the near future.

Regards,

A one-two punch in the span of a week. How is that? Just when I thought things cannot get "curiouser and curiouser", the advisor received two separate emails (also in the same week) from different collaborators asking if he can recommend grad students or postdocs to work in their labs.

I have issues with both. The first lab is based in the Middle East, in one of the Gulf states. With the current upheaval in the Arab world, my folks are strongly dissuading me from going.

The plus side is the money. I will see a pay jump of about 2.5 times of my current income, and it is tax free. Work for a few years, then take the money and decide what to do next.

The total compensation package includes a tax-free 12-month base salary, and a benefits allowance that covers relocation, housing, initial furnishings, utilities, transportation (automobile purchase loan), health insurance, child(ren) education, end-of-service benefit and annual leave travel.

The research theme in the second lab will be on the sesquestration, removal and storage of radionuclides from contaminated waters. While there are the obvious health issues of working with radiation, the skills acquired will be highly valuable as shown by the ongoing nuclear crisis in Fukushima.

Or I should just quit research now. Am sick and tired of this dog and pony show.

Nevada Public Higher Ed Going Bust?

I wonder how the whole situation is going to play out for UNLV-Singapore if the University of Nevada system is to declare bankruptcy.

More details here and here.

Faculty Senate President Cecilia Maldonado had prepared a statement to read. In it, she said she was sad and angry and sick.

She said she was sick of political ideology. Sick of people who attack faculty salaries. Sick of hearing that Nevadans don't value education. Sick that this same debate about whether higher education is a "cost" or an "investment" has been going on for 20 years.

"I'm sick that we never seem to learn our lessons," she said.

Maldonado said the cuts will make it difficult to recruit and retain talented faculty and students.

She began to cry, then composed herself and continued, saying the higher education system should impose cuts elsewhere to save UNLV.

The room broke into applause when she was through.

Hat tip: Leiter Reports.

Incidentally, I watched Idiocracy on DVD last night. It scared the hell out of me because that really seemed to be the way the whole society is moving towards, with the all too frequent assaults on academia (see above, and my previous posts) and a rising anti-intellectual movement.

Virginia's state government seems to be bucking the trend of higher education cuts though.

The plan, which has broad support in the state's General Assembly, is meant to fulfill his goal to increase the number of Virginians with college degrees by 100,000 during the next 15 years, and in particular the number who earn degrees in science and technology.

"These reforms will help us attract new employers to Virginia and better prepare our citizens to fill the jobs that already exist in the state today," Mr. McDonnell, a Republican, said at a news conference in January, announcing the proposal. The cost of the legislation, which has not been determined, is an investment in the state's economic future, the governor said, arguing that higher education returns more tax revenue to the state than it costs.

When Scientific Research and Higher Education become just Political Football

A mere two years after the passage of the economic stimulus package by a Democratically-led Congress, the now Republican-controlled House of Representatives have started swinging their budget cutting axe at scientific research and higher education.

One point stood out in the midst of all this "fiscal responsibility" talk:

The House bill does not specify cuts to five of the Office of Science's six programs, namely, basic energy sciences, high-energy physics, nuclear physics, fusion energy sciences, and advanced scientific computing. However, it explicitly whacks funding for the biological and environmental research program from $588 million to $302 million, a 49% reduction that would effectively zero out the program for the remainder of the year. The program supports much of DOE's climate and bioenergy research and in the past has funded much of the federal government's work on decoding the human genome. - Science , 25 February 2011: Vol. 331 no. 6020 pp. 997-998 DOI: 10.1126/science.331.6020.997

Do the terms Big Oil, Creationism/Intelligent Design come to your mind?

In other somewhat related news, tenure rights are being weakened in Louisiana and state legislatures are trying to have greater control over how colleges are run. It is hard not to see that there seems to be some sort of a coordinated assault against academia (presumably since many academics are seen by the Republican right as leftist liberals).

Lawmakers are inserting themselves even more directly into the classroom in South Carolina, where a proposal would require professors to teach a minimum of nine credit hours per semester.

"I think we need to have professors in the classroom and not on sabbatical and out researching and doing things to that effect," State Rep. Murrell G. Smith Jr., a Republican, told the Associated Press.

Are they attempting to turn research universities into trade/vocational schools? Or are they confused about the different roles the educational institutions play? There are research-focused universities and primarily teaching colleges.

March of the Teachers

Protests in Wisconsin

Very appropriate for current faculty candidates. The (always awful) academic job market is getting worse, and many universities nationwide are either instituting hiring freezes or continuing more layoffs. (A proposed bill in Utah goes further - banning tenure.)

The brightest star burns out the fastest

One of my undergraduates (let's call him D) sent me an email over the weekend announcing that he will be taking a leave of absence from the university starting this week for the rest of the academic year. Apparently he has trouble coping with the stress of school and the college had recommended that he take a break from campus. D is the best among the undergrads in my lab - meticulous in record-keeping, dedicated, smart and hardworking. He is strong in both understanding the theoretical concepts and a hands-on person with good tactile sensitivity (especially with thin-tissue slicing). Everyone has high hopes on him graduating with honors and continuing to medical school.

Perhaps I should have known. He changed somewhat after coming back from the Christmas/New Year holidays - started growing a goatee, taking unannounced breaks from the lab during critical experiments, and wearing differently. His choice of clothes has somehow switched from light colored T-shirts with jeans to black shirts and pants (with an accompanying trench coat).

In light of the recent events in Arizona, the university has also started a more aggressive approach towards reporting of students, staff or faculty who show critical signs of mental stress to the campus mental health services. I wonder if that office had played a role in him taking a break from class. I hope he gets well soon.

Alka Selzer: Acceptance Letter Ad

Funny ad on TV. College is expensive, and tuition costs have been rising more than inflation.

Working with some nitrogen compounds

I always laugh whenever I see a new paper (JACS or Angewandte Chemie notwithstanding) describing the synthesis of and/or new/novel nitrogen compounds that are either some kind of superfuel (read: large ∆G) or so rare that precious little previous literature can be found on them.

There are reasons why you hardly read about them or why they are not in widespread use in industry already.

The reason that one gets our attention is that compounds with lots of nitrogens in them – more specifically, compounds with a high percentage of nitrogen by weight – are a spirited bunch. They hear the distant call of the wild, and they know that with just one leap of the fence they can fly free as molecules of nitrogen gas. And that’s never an orderly process.

...And thermodynamically, there aren't many gently sloping paths down to nitrogen gas, unfortunately. Both enthalpy and entropy tilt things pretty sharply. - Derek Howe

I like Ancient Hacker's summary on slashdot:

Rocket fuel was a big research area in the 1950's. Dozens of very good chemists spent a whole load (hundreds of millions of 1950-size dollars) trying to make better rocket fuels.

( One of them wrote a informative and funny book about that time and place ).

The short summary is: Yes, you can make higher oomph rocket fuels and oxidizers with more oxygen in them.

But a lot of the formulas are impractical as:

(0) They were already discovered years ago, and discarded, but chemists don't like to write up their failures, and researchers don't like to read old moldy research summaries anyway.

(1) They're waaay too expensive to make, even for military uses.

(2) They are highly toxic, even more toxic than the widely-used hydrazines, which can kill you in several interesting ways.

(3) They're so unstable, you have to keep them under impossible conditions, like no sound, no vibrations, no light, and under a part per million of crud in the perfectly-smooth and unscratched nickel-plated tanks.

(4) They can't be stored for more than a day or so before the fuel or oxidizer starts decomposing itself or the tank walls.

(5) Too many of the researchers were vaporized while handling the stuff. Literally. Truly. Completely. That tends to make it hard to find substitute researchers to continue working with the same stuff.

(6) For military applications, you need a fuel that can be handled by raw recruits, stored for many months, be pumped quickly into not always totally clean rocket tanks, kept in those loaded rockets for days to months, and tolerate wide temperature swings. These requirements alone disqualify a large percentage of really zippy fuels and oxidizers.

The odds are pretty high against this "new" compound being all that new, or it passing the basic requirements for fuel or oxidizer.

One of my side projects in Grad School was funded by NASA and we were handling hydrazine to test their viability for use in micro-reactors. That was one nasty little guy to deal with on a daily basis, and we all had to wear dosimeter badges on our lab coats in addition to two layers of gloves, sleeve protectors and rubber boots. And yes, the whole setup was inside a fume hood with the sash lowered all the time.


Be grateful this isn't your PhD project.

Oh, and Merry Christmas to those of you celebrating the Yuletide holiday. Stay warm and safe!

Edit (25 Dec): A nice youtube video of shock sensitive nitroglycerin:

Paper by SMA researchers gets retracted due to self-plagiarism

First time I have seen this happen to the SMA folks.

Of course it will not be reported on the SMA homepage, or will it?

The above article, published in Applied Physics Letters, has originally reported the growth of ZnO nanorods on GaN using hydrothermal synthesis without any catalyst. Some initial results, including scanning electron microscopy, x-ray diffraction, photoluminescence, and transmission electron microscopy were also discussed in the article. After a few months, we wrote another paper, i.e., Ref. 1. In this paper, we explored in more detail the properties of ZnO nanorods. However, there are some overlapping parts which included the introduction and Figs. (4 out of 12 figures). This unintentional negligence in repetitive data extraction and omission of cross reference to the published experimental results, leading to the unexpected ambiguities and inconveniences to the readers, have constituted the authors full obligation to apologize and to spontaneously retract the above article to uphold the publication protocol.

It took them five years to retract their 2005 publication.

Want money? Wow your sponsors

The main purpose of your application is to convince the Committee on Research Grants that supporting your proposal would be a good use of (their) funds. Your proposal will be read by panel members who are experienced professionals, but who are not necessarily experts in your particular field. Because they are evaluating proposals competing for limited funds, they must be critical and skeptical; only the best proposals will be funded.

Your number one job is to capture their interest. If you describe an important problem and then explain how you intend to solve it, you convert the reviewer from a skeptic into an advocate for funding your work. If, after reading your proposal, a panelist still asks "So what? Why is this important?", or, "What's the problem being addressed?", or "Can these objectives be achieved using these techniques?", then you have NOT been successful in your proposal. One good way to pre-judge how well you have gotten your points across is to re-read your application (before submitting it), putting yourself in the position of a reviewer. Or better yet, ask another person to read it from that perspective. When you look at your proposal from the point of view of the reader, you will see why it is so important to describe the problem you are addressing or the hypothesis that you plan to test. Without this firmly established, it is pointless to tell the panel all the things you will do in the field or lab. Don't stop there, however!

The logical next question is "Is that problem or hypothesis significant enough to be worth working on?" One way to assess this is to ask yourself, "Assuming I am successful in doing everything that I say I will, how many (of the relevant) scientists would want to hear the results?" If you conclude, "not many" then you need to rethink why you chose the project and explain its importance more convincingly. Don't feel that you singlehandedly need to solve the most pressing problem in Science - the scope of any project must be limited to what can be realistically accomplished - but do worry about how your results will contribute to the solution of a fundamental problem in your field, or why your field area is ideal for addressing a significant regional or topical problem. If your project is part of a large project, in the US or overseas, make sure that your part is clearly defined. Once you have established the significance of your project, outline what you will actually do - ie your research strategy. Make sure that you explain to the reviewers how these steps will lead you to answers to the questions you have set out to solve. This is the time to be specific: don't leave it to the panel to decide whether your research plan will answer the questions, tell them how it will! As for the budget, you should show the committee that you have carefully investigated possible expenses and have planned a realistic budget.

-Adapted from a Grant proposal writing guide created for the Committee on Research Grants at the Geological Society of America

Actually the above guidelines apply to most real life situations when we are begging others for favors or jobs.

1. State a problem.
2. Explain how or why it is important to solve this problem.
3. Show how you can solve the problem (and the benefit to your sponsor) if you get the favor or money to do so.

Waiting season

I hate the competition. It's crazy and it's driving me nuts. Got this in my mailbox today (from one of my target schools, a Public Ivy):

Dear takchek,

Our faculty search committee is continuing to review applications, and I am pleased to let you know that you are one of our ‘semi-finalists’ for whom we have written references for letters of recommendation (about 30% of the total pool). It will likely be January or later when we invite the shortlisted ‘finalists’ for on-campus interviews. I hope to have the opportunity to meet you soon, and I wish you all the best in your continued professional development.

Best regards,

Chair, Faculty Search Committee

The worst part is how hopeless I am in the selection process. The whole recruitment exercise is a black box, and all I can do is to wait and hope for the best. Argh!

Edit (29 Oct): This article is so timely.

Maybe you're finishing your Ph.D. or wrapping up a postdoctoral appointment. The days are grueling. Writing up results, planning for a dissertation defense, or trying to get work published is not only intellectually exhausting but can also take a physical and emotional toll. Yet in the middle of one of the most challenging periods of your life, you have to go on the job market.

That means putting a smile on your face, tidying yourself up, and talking about your research as though it's the best, most exciting project in the world. It means pretending that you're not absolutely terrified. It's no wonder that going on the job market can feel like an ordeal; it's the equivalent of putting on a suit or a cocktail dress for the last mile of a marathon.

...But as one job candidate put it, the "storyline" you have to convey is, "I am an appealing candidate."

Hire me!

Hits and Misses

The past 6 months has been a crazy one for me in my work. Supported by an army of serfs bright, motivated undergraduates, I collected enough *interesting* data to submit manuscripts to several different high-impact-factor peer reviewed journals. This is my most productive year so far. We got the first one accepted quickly after making the minor revisions requested by the anonymous reviewers. The second submission was to one of the Glamour Mags, and our manuscript was rejected.

Dear takchek:

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to Glamor Magazine. Because your manuscript was not given a high enough priority rating during the initial screening process, we were not able to send it out for in-depth review. Although your analysis is interesting and novel and your application represents a tour de force in (your sub-field), we feel that the scope and focus of your paper make it more appropriate for a more specialized journal. We are therefore notifying you so that you can seek publication elsewhere.

We now receive many more interesting papers than we can publish. We therefore send for in-depth review only those papers most likely to be ultimately published in Glamor Magazine. Papers are selected on the basis of discipline, novelty, and general significance, in addition to the usual criteria for publication in specialized journals. Therefore, our decision is not a reflection of the quality of your research but rather of our stringent space limitations.

We wish you every success when you submit the paper elsewhere.

Sincerely,

Associate Editor, Glamor Magazine

This rejection, more so than most rejections in my life so far (love, job, scholarship, certain university admission applications etc)is particularly hurtful not only because it is one of the holy trinity of Glamour Mags in the vanity field of science but also because of the huge amounts of time, money, manpower, intellectual and physical efforts spent in generating, collecting and presenting the data and one which my advisor had high hopes on getting accepted.

You might then ask: Does it really matter where this manuscript is published? Why do I care so much?

This is the first reason. And the second: I have submitted my applications for tenure-track positions at two of the Ivy League schools.

There is always hope.


From Chemjobber.

The video that all prospective PhDs should watch

Self-explanatory.

Mixing humor and heartbreak, Naturally Obsessed: The Making of a Scientist delves into the lab of charismatic professor Dr. Lawrence Shapiro, and follows three irrepressible graduate students on their determined pursuit of a PhD and scientific success. As if the pressure of scientific discovery isn’t enough, the students are also competing in a worldwide race to be the first to publish their findings. Their challenge: to decipher the structure and mechanism of AMPK, a tiny protein that controls the burning and storage of fat. Their road to success: years of trial and error, unflinching dedication, rock-climbing, rumors of pickle juice, and the music of The Flaming Lips.

Whistleblowers suffer from collateral damage too

Science reported the case of Elizabeth Goodwin, a former UW-Madison associate professor of genetics who pleaded guilty to a charge of scientific misconduct for falsifying data in a grant application to the NIH.

What is interesting (and sad!) though is not so much about sentence meted out to Goodwin (most likely just a fine and a ban from receipt of federal grants for 3 years), but the fate of her ex-students (ie. the whistle blowers):

The university praised the students for having done the right thing. A university investigation subsequently concluded that Goodwin had falsified data on grant applications and cast doubt on three papers, all of which were later cleared of any problems. Goodwin resigned. But the outcome for several students, who were told they had to essentially start over, was unenviable. One, Chantal Ly, had gone through 7 years of graduate school and was told that much of her work was not useable and that she had to start a new project for her Ph.D. (The reason wasn't necessarily because of falsified data but rather, Ly and the others thought, because Goodwin stuck by results that were questionable.) Along with two of the others, she quit graduate school. Allen moved to a school in Colorado. Just two students chose to stay at UW.

One of those who left reflected about the case in the Science story published in 2006. "Are we just stupid [to turn Goodwin in]?'" Sarah LaMartina said. "Sure, it's the right thing to do, but right for who? ... Who is going to benefit from this? Nobody."

The system as is right now is heavily tilted to the PI's favor. Principal investigators have too much power over the fate of their graduate students' and postdocs' scientific careers.

The PI has the power to direct the efforts of his/her students and postdocs, choose their projects, set their hours, tell them who to work with, decide whether their data is worth keeping or suitably labeled as junk, decide whether, when, and by whom their results are presented, and so forth. The PI controls all the resources the graduate students need -- funding, training, even access to other faculty in the department.

Even if he/she is to fall in disgrace, the students and postdocs won't be able to get away unscathed, as this episode demonstrates. A professor in my PhD institution once gave us (then 1st year grad students fresh out of college) this piece of advice:

"Your relationship with your PhD and postdoc advisor is most important, even more so than your spouse, especially if you stay within the scientific community. You can divorce the latter, but your link to your advisor(s) is permanent. So make sure you choose the right one."

NIH Grant Proposal Writing and Review

The key to bread and butter for academics running research labs...Begging for money isn't that simple as you think it is just by holding out your hand, certainly not when there are so many other beggars scattered all around lusting after the same pot.





For those of you further down the pecking ladder (and thus less painful to get out while you are still able to do so), it is best in your interest (and sanity) to ask to start getting involved in the begging process as early as you possibly can.

The truth about doing research in Grad School and beyond

Credit: Boingboing and Chemistry Blog.

The term "lab rats" doesn't come out of nowhere. Again, it is very important to choose the right adviser.

The cartoon below would be a good response to the last part of Carreira's letter:



Afterall, Guido seems to be doing well at Novartis after leaving Caltech.

Edit (30 June): A Boston Globe reporter spoke with Erick (Now at ETH-Zurich). He now claims that is a joke.

Reached by email at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, where he runs a lab, Carreira said that the letter has been circulating for a dozen years, and he expressed frustration that it has surfaced again in such a public way. It has caused him to receive "many e-mails that have been threatening and downright inhumane," he wrote. In response to questions about the letter's authenticity, and a request for a more general comment, he forwarded an email that he had sent to an earlier correspondent. It said, in part:

"I wonder whether you would think it fair to be judged on the basis of a letter 14 years old, especially when the comments and rash judgments are made without knowledge of the context or the circumstances surrounding the individuals involved. Indeed how does anyone out who is so quick to pass judgement and who is coming to conclusions know that it is not part of a 14-year old joke (or satire as you state) that backfired? ...


I am quite sure everyone has at some time or another an e-mail, photo, letter, note, or comment that when taken out of context can be used to create whatever monster one wishes to envisage. After all no one is perfect. Is it really fair to be haunted by these endlessly? I do not know how old you are, but can you really say you have done nothing you would rather forget about and not be reminded of 14 years later? I like to think people grow and change."

In this note and in a shorter one to me, Carreira said that he had been advised by a lawyer not to comment on the validity or the context of the letter. (I asked him a follow-up question about the oblique suggestions that the letter was some kind of joke, but he has not yet replied.)

I certainly don't think any person on the receiving end of such a letter will think it is satire, or funny at all.

*

Another one (Bob Tjian was then a professor in biochemistry at Berkeley when this memo was circulating amongst the grad students in the department in the mid-90s):

To: All Lab Members
Fm: Robert Tjian
Re: Dismal Attendance at Group Meetings and Slack Work Ethics

From now on, I or someone designated by me will take attendance at group meetings starting at 9:10 am. If you are not there, I will not sign your salary sheets. Also, if you haven't noticed the number of people working on weekends and nights in the lab is the worst I've seen in my 17 years. The frequency of vacation, time taken off and other non-lab activities is bordering on the ridiculous. In case you forgot, the standard amount of time you are supposed to take is 2 weeks a year total, including Christmas. If there isn't a substantial improvement in the next few months, I'll have to think of some draconian measures to "motivate" you. I also want to say that the average lab citizenship and community spirit of keeping the lab in functioning order is at an all-time low. Few people seem to care about fixing broken equipment and making sure things in the lab run smoothly. If the lab were extremely productive and everyone was totally focused on their work, I might understand the slovenliness but productivity is abysmal and if we continue along this path we will surely reach mediocrity in no time.
Finally, those of you who are "lame ducks" because you have a job and are thinking of your own nibs, so long as you are here you are still full-fledged members of this lab, which means participating in all aspects of the lab (i.e. group meetings, Asilomar, postdoc seminars, etc.)
I realize that this memo won't solve all the problems. so I am going to schedule a meeting with each one of you starting this Saturday and Sunday and continuing on weekends until I've had a chance to speak with everyone and to give you a formal evaluation. Sign up for an appointment time on the sheet outside my door.
This is the first time I've had to actually write a memo of this type and I hope
it's the last time.

Robert Tjian

Two more letters from Paul Gassman and Albert Meyers, with excellent information about standard expectations of grad students and postdocs.

Academia (Tenure) as a Profzi Scheme

The headline hogging news to affect academia (at least in the US) this past weekend is the Amy Bishop Anderson tenure-denial mass murder case. Much had been discussed about about her sanity and intentions, and I won't dwell into them.

But it has brought to the forefront the issue of tenure for professors (the ultimate prize for all academia-focused postdocs and grad students). Even getting a tenure-track assistant professor position these days is highly competitive. Anecdotal stories by faculty search committees across a wide spectrum of disciplines tell of 500 - 700+ applicants per advertised vacancy.

A friend of mine, in his 4th or 5th year as a postdoc, was recently told that there is nothing else that he can do to improve his chances for a faculty job but to publish in Science or Nature. This was not for a job at Harvard or Standford[sic] or anywhere close. It came from people well towards the end of their career, who are sitting on the hiring committees and who have never ever published in Science or Nature.

Unrealistic expectations and pressure...

- Foreign and Female in Science

I chanced upon the webpage of someone who turned down a Singapore NRF to be an assistant professor in South Carolina (as of Feb 2010). He had a Science paper as a 1st author coming out of his postdoc in a respected lab and many others in well regarded high impact journals. Yet for all his efforts he only accepted a position at the University of South Carolina. No offense to South Carolina, but if someone who is highly productive with a Science paper can only get an offer from South Carolina then what about the rest of us with no Science or Nature publications?



On a side note, it is telling that Singapore's supposedly 'prestigious' research fellowship ranks below that of a tenure track assistant professorship at a second-tier American university. Why else would he choose not go to Singapore with a guaranteed seed funding of up to US$1.5 million in the first three years? I certainly do not think SC would be able to match Singapore's cash offer. Most US research faculty start-up packages in the sciences/engineering are usually in the region of about US$300K - 600K for up to five years.

*

Edit (24 Feb): Scientific American published a highly critical assessment of the state of the US academic job market.

Many Applicants, Few Academic Posts

The competition for science faculty jobs is so intense that every advertised opening routinely attracts hundreds of qualified applicants. Most PhDs hired into faculty-level jobs get so-called “soft-money” posts, dependent on the renewal of year-to-year funding rather than the traditional tenure-track positions that offer long-term security.

...But scientists are not generally recruited from the average students, Salzman notes, but from those with the top scores, of whom America has large numbers. Compared with the products of Asian secondary schools, American students “are free thinkers,” says Vivek Wadhwa of Duke and Harvard Universities. “They didn’t spend the last 12 years of their lives memorizing books…. They’ve spent the last 12 years dealing with real problems and solving them. [In America], you can walk up to your teacher and tell her that she’s wrong or he’s wrong.” In Asia, he continues, “you wouldn’t dare do that.”

...The American approach of temporarily funded labs staffed largely with student and postdoc labor offers several important advantages. It enlists the finest talent at the nation’s great universities in projects that meet national priorities set by the funding agencies or by Congress. It permits flexibility in selecting studies and researchers and the opportunity for rapid changes in direction because the grants are for specific purposes and last only a limited number of years. It elicits the best ideas and best work from highly motivated scientists because it chooses the grantees through a competitive system of merit rankings done by peer committees composed of academic experts in each field who serve as part-time judges. It frees the government from owning the labs and managing their staffs. And it allows federal dollars to do double duty—produce research results and provide education and support for the graduate students and postdoctoral associates who work on the projects in labs run by professors who pay them out of the grants.

This system produces superb science, but it has several serious drawbacks from the standpoint of recruiting and retaining scientists. First, it makes the funding of any particular lab inherently unstable and dependent on winning repeated grants and renewals, which places individual careers at the mercy of annual competitions. In times of very tight federal budgets, such as the present, this means that many labs, and even many well-established scientific careers, do not survive. Second, it produces not only educational opportunities and research results, but also a constant stream of newly fledged young researchers who need opportunities to start their own careers. “The way that U.S. staffs its labs puts so much pressure on the system to absorb the continual new cohort. And we haven’t had much luck in absorbing it,” says Georgia State’s Stephan.

Yale Undergraduate Recruitment Musical Video

Hilarious.

Selecting undergraduates to mentor

A few weeks ago, I made the decision to take in a couple of undergrads and have them work directly under me in the lab. Regular readers of this blog might be able to guess my reason for doing so. It is not altrusic intent on my part, although I must state that this arrangement will be a win-win situation for all of us involved (if the research results and their lab performance turn out well). They will get the research experience along with strong recommendation letters for grad school and a small stipend, and I will get some help in my experimental work and substantially more to write about in my Teaching Statement. I am fortunate the advisor is agreeable and supportive of my decision, and sees this as a necessary step for my professional development as a future faculty.

That said, I set a relatively high bar for my applicants. I did not want any average Joe or Jane - I used the GPA (imperfect as it may be) as the first cut-off, basically restricting myself to the top 20% or so of the cohort. This group is also the one which is most likely to get admitted to the top-ranked departments. Then, to sieve out those who weren't serious about working or putting on their thinking caps in the lab, my applicants had to submit and complete a written exercise along with a resume listing the relevant coursework taken and grades obtained. Finally, they had to pass my interview. I focused on their academic ability, motivation, and commitment to put in time and effort in their work. I want them to succeed, and their success will reflect my success as a mentor.

A fellow postdoc friend in the neighboring lab thought I was crazy to set so many conditions. He operates on more of an open-door policy - basically allowing any interested undergraduates (GPA > 3.0) to volunteer in his lab for a few weeks and then offering those who do a good job the option to get research credits or for a lucky few - to become paid undergraduate research assistants. "You won't get anyone!" he howled, but I got the students who met my criteria within a week of putting out the advertisement. Too many in fact, and I had to reject some excellent candidates. I felt weird to be sitting on the other side - deciding on who gets into the group or not.

*

Many moons ago, I worked in an organic chemistry group in my undergraduate institution for 3 semesters. The postdoc I worked under was a hard driver. I remember spending my first few months in the lab just washing glassware, and this was a few years before Philip Yeo's now infamous comment that people with basic science degrees would qualify only as test-tube washers in A*star. I progressed from just doing the washing to doing the grunt work in mixing reactant solutions, preparing suspensions, purifying and separating intermediates using a rotovap and packed silica columns, and analysing the samples using TLC and 1H NMR. In return for my (hard) work, I got an A for the research credits that counted towards my major GPA, strong recommendations for grad school and a stint in another university for a summer of more research work.

Part of my labor went into a Science paper that the postdoc published with the professor a year after I graduated. There were just the 2 of them in the list of authors. My name did not even appear in the 'Acknowledgement' section, although to be fair I did not make any intellectual contribution to the publication. I was just a 'lab tech' following the postdoc's instructions.

Sometimes I look back and wonder - I was this close in getting my name to a Science paper as an undergraduate.

*

Note: To those of you who have never heard of Nature or Science, Jorge Cham does a good job illustrating scientists' obsession with having at least one paper published in either one: I, II, III.