0 comment Wednesday, April 23, 2014 | admin
I've run my plans for my collaboration by my advisor, who seems very amenable to them. Good. However, I was unsuccessful in convincing him to negotiate the terms of this collaboration on my behalf. He feels that it's too soon to worry about authorships, etc. In some sense, I agree. We're really at the "let's take a look and see if this technique is even going to work for you" stage. It seems a little premature to designate and delegate all the nitty-gritty...I mean, who knows if there even will be a paper out of this. CPI is a genuinely good person and several previous interactions uphold this character judgment. I have no concerns about getting screwed in this particular instance.What does concern me is GrAdvisor's blase attitude about these sorts of things in general. On the one hand, I think it's great that he's never had his ass handed to him by someone he trusted. (I'm assuming that this is the case since he assumes that this sort of thing never happens. Heh. Ass.) On the other hand, in my reality this does happen. To a lot of people. Way more often than it should. And he just doesn't see it, so he doesn't believe that it's real. This colors his judgment and sometimes I think that he gives me bad advice because of it.I recall asking him about getting a post-doc contract settled at one point. I think I phrased it as "how do you protect yourself from someone making you an offer and then not following through?" He looked at me like I'd grown a third eyeball and said that such a thing would never happen and I shouldn't waste any time worrying about it. Ironically, not long after we discussed this, it did happen. To someone I know. It's great that he's never been on the receiving end of that kind of crap - it gives me hope that there are plenty of trustworthy people in science. But the naivete kinds of slays me. I just can't assume that everyone I interact with is deserving of my trust. I'm glad I've got other people and experiences to turn to for advice on this sort of thing.