Nature tua kee

One of the neighboring lab's graduate students is defending her PhD thesis next week. Her advisor sent out the dissertation defense notification to the whole department with a pdf attachment of the student's Nature Nanotechnology paper.

It seems to me that the student has just one publication to show for her PhD work. If that is really the case, then it isn't impressive at all frankly speaking (Nature Nanotech notwithstanding).

Yeah, call this a case of Nature envy.

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."

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.

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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.

Difference between going to Business School vs going to Graduate School

A JC classmate and I graduated from college the same year. He went on to Business School two years after I started Grad School, and received the MBA 2 years before I got my PhD.

He is now at a major investment bank that survived the bank failures of 2008 and is set to receive record bonuses for this year. I am an academic postdoc, and have just received email from Payroll that my income for the next year 'may be subject to a temporary reduction due to the extreme financial emergency facing the University'.

His base salary alone is about 4 - 5 times what I am earning now. Sure we can both say our work suck, but hey at least he's better compensated than me, and he has bonus payouts. I will be lucky if I don't get a paycut.

We had identical O- and A-level grades. Such is life and the options we chose earlier have financial consequences.

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.

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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.

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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.

Are you a thinker or do-er?

Many of the grad students I have encountered over the years can be broadly classified into 2 types - the thinkers and the do-ers. Thinkers refer to those who are typically strong in the academic theoretical concepts, and are very much at home playing with complex mathematical equations and the like. Do-ers on the hand, are more comfortable building machines/equipments from the ground up and are very much hands-on, somewhat like those 'garage scientists' we used to read about when young. The research groups that the grad students choose to join very often mirror their status as a 'thinker' or a 'do-er'. Rare are the few who are both 'thinker' and 'do-er'.

Most of the Singaporean students I met here in the US are more of the 'thinker' type, and I suspect it has a lot to do with our academic background (majority with 'A' level qualifications) - the 'A' levels stress more on theory than practicals and the fact that most Singaporeans don't have the luxury of having a 'workshop' room in their house. Plus we are more used to buying what we need off the shelf.

Using myself as an example - as an 'engineer' I did not build my first working machine (a unique 3-flow heat exchanger) until my undergrad senior year capstone project as part of a 2-person team. It was a steep learning curve to say the least - we were given only 5 weeks to

1. get a prototype up and running
2. provide analytical solutions that predict the steady state temperature profiles of all 3 fluid streams and
3. verify the temperatures experimentally.

You can imagine the sense of accomplishment I felt when everything worked as it should (which is not always the case in research).



That said, I am still more of a thinker than a do-er although the years of being a grad student and now a postdoc have made me into more of a do-er.

If the Nobel Prizes in the Sciences are like the Peace Award...

You can be a laureate in your first year of Graduate School (and with no publications yet to your name)!

Parody taken from Greg Mankiw's blog:

First-Year Grad Student Wins Nobel Prize in Economics!
From the Associated Press (with some light editing):

Pfuffnick's Nobel Economics Prize triumph hailed by many

LONDON — The surprise choice of first-year graduate student Quintus Pfuffnick for the Nobel Prize in Economics drew praise from much of the world Friday even as many pointed out the youthful economist has not yet published anything in scholarly journals.

The new PhD candidate was hailed for his willingness to tackle difficult problems, his commitment to improving the economic system, and his goal of bringing efficiency and equality into harmony.

Professor Paul Krugman of Princeton, who won the prize in 2008, said Pfuffnick's award shows great things are expected from him in the coming years.

"In a way, it's an award coming near the beginning of the first year in grad school of a relatively young economist that anticipates an even greater contribution towards making our economy a better place for all," he said. "It is an award that speaks to the promise of Mr Pfuffnick's message of hope."

He said the prize is a "wonderful recognition of Pfuffnick's essay in his grad school application."

No prizes for coming second

I got my first rejection for an academic faculty position. It is a brutal world in academia, and there is no difference between the 2nd place or last (especially when there is only ONE opening). At least I got a rather detailed rejection letter, instead of the generic thank you for your application type. I wonder if it is so because of my PhD advisor (they are friends).

To: takchek
Subject: Re: My application

Hi takchek,

I am sorry to have not communicated with you earlier, but we were still in the process of making decisions. Your application made it to the final top five (out of about 650 candidates), but we had only money to bring in one person from out of state (Ed: seriously?!), unfortunately, so I was not able to invite you up for the final campus interview and visit.

Your application was very strong and the committee was quite impressed by it, and especially by the relevance of your previous research work and your proposed plans fit nicely the focus areas that the department has targeted. Ultimately the final decision was made based on both research experience and the candidates' clear commitment and evidence of excellence to undergraduate teaching (Ed: my Achilles' heel) at a leading liberal arts college.

I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors.

Sincerely,
Chair, Faculty Search Comittee

The section below pertains to Philosophy, but it applies to the physical sciences and engineering as well (to the best of my knowledge). I was most likely penalized for the 3rd point, and will need to improve on this to be competitive.

How did we prune our field from 637 to 27? An important selection criterion was holding a Ph.D. from a good university. Members of our department earned their Ph.D.s at Columbia, Harvard, Oxford, and University of London. Additionally, City College is known as the “Harvard of the Proletariat,” with distinguished alumni that include nine Nobel Laureates, more than any other public institution in America. Our faculty members are expected to live up to this legacy.

A second criterion was research and publication. We looked not only for quality and promise of quantity, but also for originality. Creativity and individuality are assets for philosophers. We did not want candidates who merely parroted back what they had been taught at graduate school.

Third, we needed evidence of undergraduate teaching ability as well as versatility. We offer a broad range of electives to a diverse student body; a narrow focus does not serve our pedagogic needs well. Most applicants submitted extensive teaching portfolios including syllabuses, reading lists, student evaluations, and observations by senior professors. We looked for evidence of outstanding teaching ability, variety, and potential for curriculum development.

Finally, we wanted evidence of administrative service. Ideally, the candidate would also possess some ability to raise research funds, although this is not too prevalent among philosophers. Even so, a good many applicants had raised funds: either minimally in the form of postdoctoral fellowships, more broadly for organizing conferences, or most notably for research projects (either solo or collaborative).

Sigh.

Tales from the Lab IV

Two emails make me feel like...a brain on a stick...or a monkey.

Publication of our findings is vital to the group – this is how we are evaluated by our peers, our funding sources, and by our potential employers. Although we have had several of our papers appear in 2009, all were submitted in 2008. So far, in the first half of 2009, we have submitted only a single paper. I suspect we have been focused on proposals, and that is necessary, but now I would like to urge each of you to press forward on moving our projects towards publication and writing and submitting papers.

and

I just walked past the break room and found the door open and food strewn about. This is completely unacceptable, and really sends the wrong message to anyone walking by – whether they be faculty and students from other groups or schools, or visitors or funding opportunities. The room must be closed and locked when unoccupied. Food must not be visible. Unless we adhere to such limitations, we can no longer have a break room.

Choosing a Graduate School/Postdoc Advisor

A friend of mine, M., went to see his graduate faculty adviser regarding the search for a postdoc position. Like many of his fellow competitive overachievers coming out of that group, he wanted to go on to an equally 'hot' lab and suggested several possible names to his adviser.

A few names on the list were immediately crossed out. Not because they are doing bad science, but rather they are well known to be lousy mentors. The adviser then listed out two well-known examples (in chemistry) of how choosing the wrong type of adviser (no matter how eminent in the field he/she is) can potentially lead to devastating consequences - Hellinga at Duke and E.J. Corey of Harvard.

And we should know better. Last fall, one of our classmates hanged himself. His death was a shock to everyone in the department ("shock" is an understatement), and his adviser later sent out an email to the department graduate student body:

Dear Graduate Students,

You have already received the sad news regarding the death of our colleague and friend C. I was informed last night, and this morning the department chair informed the graduate students, staff, and faculty.

I wanted to follow up further with you, since many of you have expressed your kind sympathies and concern in this regard.

This tragedy occurred at C’s home most likely over the weekend but was only discovered yesterday. I will let you know any additional information if his family feels it appropriate to do so.

As you may be aware, C was doing well in our group. He successfully defended his PhD proposal last year and became a PhD Candidate. He had just returned from the [subfield] symposium in Michigan, and was getting ready to present his latest results at the [national conference] in November. This tragedy therefore cuts short a promising career.

We should all keep C and his family in our thoughts and prayers. I will be in touch with C’s family after I receive information from the Dean of Students. We shall inform you of memorial services, as well as how we may express condolences to his family. We are already planning to do so both as a department and through my research group.

Regards,

C got his BS from MIT, and like Jason Altom, he was "bright, outgoing, likably confident, intellectually mature, and with an inner reserve of self-reliance that is indispensable to any researcher working on the cutting edge." Another friend A. who was in the same group as C but who has since graduated and now a postdoc elsewhere recalled crying almost every week in her first two years and feeling depressed after the group meetings. Apparently getting called 'stupid', 'idiot' and screamed at during such meetings was to be expected.

...And the fundamental inequality in power between an adviser and a student requires responsibility and even psychological astuteness on both sides. The graduate student is agreeing to be pushed to his intellectual and physical limits by someone he barely knows.

A paragraph in the NYT piece puts it so succinctly:

Graduate study in the sciences, however, is a very unsentimental education. It requires the intellectual evolution from undergrad who can ace tests of textbook knowledge to original thinker who can initiate and execute research about which the textbooks have yet to be written. What is less often acknowledged is that this intense education involves an equally arduous psychological transition, almost a second rebellious adolescence. The passage from callow, eager-to-please first-year student in awe of an often-famous faculty adviser to confident, independent-minded researcher willing to challenge, and sometimes defy, a mentor is a requisite part of the journey.

Modern Science is One Big Pig Trough

And not just academia (administrators, faculty, postdocs/grad students) is beholden to it. There is also a huge related industry (annual sales in the billions of dollars) led by the lab equipment suppliers. So if you are one such company, how do you go about getting some of that stimulus money?

You trawl the top-ranked academic journals and send out unsolicited advertising emails to the authors of recent publications.

Dear Dr. takchek,

I read your paper in (kick-ass high impact factor in its subfield journal), and I wanted to send you a short note on recent technology that may be of interest.

We have been working with a number of research leaders in Nanomedicine and nano-drug delivery research looking to quantify nanoparticles in live cells. This effort led to the development of a novel system called "complicated-sounding name that only specialists in the sub-field understand (with acronym)"...Insert the advantages and coolness of this new technology...and must end with your targeted audience in mind...This technology has been specifically designed for use in nanomedicine, nanotox and related nanoscale investigations.

We are actively involved in supporting funding and grant submittals for the NEW (April 2009) Obama funding at NIH and NSF. If you are considering applying for some of the NEW $8.2 billion of grants for equipment PLEASE let us know. We can help!

Best regards,

On the other hand:

NIH received ~21,000 applications for the stimulus funds. They expected 1,500 and predicted 200 Challenge Awards will be offered. So the rejection rate could reach 99%. (Science, 2009, 324, 5925, pp. 318 - 319)

Amazing Depressing eh? I think it is easier to get into Harvard college than to win one of these NIH Challenge Grants.

Reach for the Sky? Nah, Go for the Low Hanging Fruit Instead

I am getting disillusioned with Science. Apparently I have not seen the 'light' despite ~5 years of Grad School. There is only one metric to measure productivity and success at this stage: number of publications. So no high-risk, high-reward/failure "fishing expeditions". Go for already established projects which will pay some quick dividends. All the more so if I am a young postdoc still trying to land my first faculty job or a research position in a National Lab (with the field getting so ridiculously competitive and crowded) anywhere.

Tales from the Lab III

Someone stuck this bumper sticker to the lab door's window:

Biodiversity is Nature's way of telling us it's OK to be different.

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My lab has an Aldrich bottle labelled "Synthetic Sea Water". I am more familiar with seeing "Distilled water" or "Deionized water" bottles lying around.

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A couple of grad students and postdocs in my department and allied ones are starting an "Organic Reaction Mechanisms" club.

Dear colleagues,

In order to keep our synthetic chemistry skills sharp, Dr. X is going to start a mechanism club. The point is to broaden our synthesis knowledge through mechanisms. It will be an informal thing, and we will try to make it fun. If necessary, we may even lure you with beer.

Several of you have already expressed interest, and I would like to invite all of you to join. It seems that Wednesday evening would be a good day/time, but I encourage input from all of you. Please let me know if you are interested, and if Wed. evening would work for you (of course I'm not talking about tomorrow). I know that there are people that I forgot to include, so feel free to tell your coworkers.

Thanks,

Imagine that. A group of students and postdocs starting a club that attempts to make understanding reaction mechanisms fun. Talk about having geeky fun.

Woohooo!

Presidential namesake

One of the new grad students in my current group has the same last name as a former US president (from the 20th century, now deceased), although I am not sure if they are related. There might be a chance though, given that she attended the same highly selective university (for undergrad) as him, hailed from the same state, and that the surname is quite rare in this country.

No Secret Service agents hanging around though, and I doubt federal protection will cover the great-grandchildren.

Hmm...I will ask soon, once I get an opportunity to do so.

Edit (9.30pm): Turns out she is not.

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

Oh the weather outside is frightful,
But the fire is so delightful,
And since we’ve no place to go,
Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

I love the music stations for blasting out the christmas songs whole day long. They bring out the holiday cheer. The best thing to do will be to snuggle up in bed and read a good book. The Tales of Beedle the Bard, anyone?

Isn't it amazing? Just a few days ago I was sweating it out in a hot and humid urban jungle in south east Asia, and watching bikini-clad babes frolicking about by a beach.

More Tales from the Lab

Over the Halloween weekend:

A friend was running this life/death assay on (some mammalian) cells. Cells which are dead will stain red; live ones will stain green. Then what she got was two sets of cells - one group staining both red and green, and the other doesn't stain at all.

We called the first set the living dead, and the second the ghosts.

Later she found out that she didn't add enough of the fluorescent dye.

Grad School is...

5 years of research blood, sweat, toil and tears (literally) distilled into a 150-page document (and 4 publications), 35 minutes of powerpoint presentation, and 1 hour of intense grilling by 5 experts in the field. The hope is that you will convince them enough to accept you into joining their ranks and sign the thesis approval form at the end of it all.

With this, the time has come for me to move on to the next stage of my academic career. It has been an enjoyable experience, from 1st year to admission to candidacy to ABD to final defense.

I am a little disappointed "that the heavens didn't part with trumpet-playing angels descending to announce this monumental occasion". And it had been unseasonably cold this past week.

Anyway, so long and thanks for the Ph.D.! (I like this written piece by Ronald T. Azuma). If only I knew what I know now 5 years ago...hindsight is always 20/20, but the walk down this path has enriched my life greatly somewhat.

One chapter closes, and I look forward to the next one which is about to start soon. I can finally embark on a research career. As my advisor said: "Grad school is just a nursery for budding researchers. You ain't seen anything yet."

The 9 common types of PIs

J.W.Yewdell, Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology 9, 413-416 (May 2008)

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Writing a research statement/proposal is taking far longer (and more difficult) than I had anticipated. How would you know/guesstimate how much you can accomplish in the next 3 - 5 years? It's like writing fiction.

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NTU is on an aggressive hiring spree for my discipline. The department concerned wants to expand by another 20% over the next 5 years.

On (potential) bondbreaker from China

An email to the graduate student body was sent out last week, giving us the names of the incoming class of 2008 and the previous institutions they attended (similar to this). There is this person from one of the Singapore universities. She is obviously PRC (I don't think Singaporean Chinese have names spelled like hers, but I could be wrong), and a google-search of her name + university showed that she had topped her undergraduate class recently.

I wonder if she is one of those foreign MOE scholars who broke/is breaking bonds to come to the US for graduate study. I intend to find out when she arrives on campus in the fall.

Now you know why there is so much ill-will and resentment by the Singaporean students towards foreign undergrads in NUS/NTU/SMU when it comes to this topic of foreign MOE scholars (leeching off the goodwill and generosity of the Singaporean tax-paying public).