No More Behaving

Why does it take 10x as long to put together a figure as it does to generate the data that go in it?Why does everything work the first time, not the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 5th time, but maybe (if you're lucky) the 10th, 17th and 22nd second time? Now that I've recognized the pattern, can I just get a pass on useless repetitions 2-5? (And maybe 6-9, 11-16, and 18-21 while we're at it?)Why can't successful data be evenly distributed over time? Why must it always be feast or famine? Check that -- Biblical flood or famine?How does GrAdvisor always know to ask me for something exactly one day before I am finished with it? Does he think that I'm just sitting on data until he asks for it? His timing for this is uncanny and I fear that it's eroding my credibility...can't you give him something else to think about for the final 24 hours of my efforts?Are you trying to fuck with me?

Labels: Queries, Science

Girly-girls are too girly to be taken seriously as intellectuals and scientists...and other women think so too. Seriously!?!?!? Are we not past that yet people?Sorry, I'll back up a minute...Dr. Isis is taking a lot of flak for being a girly-scientist. Seems that there are a few women out there who really don't like her promoting a feminine caricature because apparently this threatens their validity as scientists. Seriously!?!?! I call bullshit on all these people. I myself am not a particularly girly girl (I'm much more the jeans and t-shirt, camping on the weekends type), but I do see my more girly colleagues struggle to be taken seriously as scientists. I have refrained on several occasions from advising friends to not speak in a high-pitched voice or wear such youthful effeminate clothes when presenting their research. My first impulse is to say these things because I know that the perception of these very competent female scientists is sometimes compromised in the eyes of others due to these stereotypes. But it shouldn't be, so I shut my mouth and all those people who weren't expecting cute little grad student in a skirt to blow their narrow little minds with some kick-ass science - I say to you, prepare for a paradigm shift cuz ya got one coming to ya.I was not prepared to see such blatant woman-bashing from another woman. Renee says in the comments: But here's the thing; I don't actually hate women- I hate female culture. And I think this is what most people mean when they say that they hate this or that group. There are male and female cultures. There are black cultures. There are Hispanic cultures. I don't like most black people not because of their skin color, but because I don't like hip-hop and dancing. I don't like most women because I don't like shopping and romantic comedies. I do have female and black friends, however, because they don't belong to those cultures; they belong to my culture, which involves sci-fi, anime, and board games. Simply put, adding female culture to your blog alienates people who don't belong to/appreciate that culture. Obviously it's a matter of taste. Should that reflect on you as a person/scientist? Honestly? I think female culture also looks down on math and science, much the way that black culture does. The kind of girls I went to high school with that would post pictures of shoes on their blogs definitely looked down on me, that's for sure. So if you add female culture to a post, for me, it makes me take you less seriously, simply because of that association. Sorry. Deal. For the most part, the judgment is accurate (people use top-down processing for a reason; it's effective). If you add geek culture to a post, I'm 10x more likely to take you seriously- partially because geeks have a reputation for being smart, and partially because I am one. Wowzers. I hate people who are not like me. I tried to respond to this but I am so angry at this unabashed display of hate toward women (not to mention black people), that I am incapable of composing a rational response at the moment. Maybe later when I've calmed down. In the meantime, ScientistMother says it best.

Labels: Science

When my alarm went off this morning I was dreaming a new cloning strategy for some vectors I've been working on. I was lucid enough to determine that this was in fact a valid cloning strategy and that it would actually circumvent some of the more complicated steps in my previous strategy. Thus, I decided it would be beneficial to turn off the alarm and finish dreaming the cloning strategy to its conclusion.A few minutes later, BH snuggled up for some sexy-time. I wasn't done dreaming the last step of the cloning strategy at this point.......................so I rolled out of reach.OMG WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME!!?!??!?!???!?!???!?! (In my defense, I wasn't fully awake yet, but really.)Science is making me frigid.

Labels: Science, Sleep

I am in an abusive relationship with Science. No, really.My love affair with Science began like all love affairs do - attraction, infatuation, thinking that everything is just perfect. Science was charming and exciting and fulfilled my every desire. It even surprised me, gave me nice things data, made me want to spend more and more of my time with it.Then just when I was hooked, things took a sinister turn. Science dealt me a low blow. All the things that I loved about Science suddenly weren't there. The bottom fell out. The Science I knew and loved was replaced by a monster, who made promises about fantastic data and shiny publications, and then turned around and gave me failed experiments. Science told me all kinds of rotten things about myself and made me think that I didn't deserve any better. My self-esteem suffered and I thought about leaving, but my identity was so entangled in this relationship that I didn't think I could.Then, just when I was ready to throw in the towel, things changed again. Oh, I'm so sorry, said Science. I've been such an ass. I've treated you so badly. I didn't mean it. I swear. Things will be different from now on. And they were...for a while. Experiments worked. New projects flourished. Everything was peachy.And now I'm in the downward swing again. I've been through enough of these by now to recognize the pattern for what it is. I know if I threaten to leave that Science will come running back and apologize yet again. And I will take it back.Science is a master manipulator. We've become unhealthily co-dependent. I know this, and I stay anyway.

Labels: Science

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.

Labels: Party, Science

ShinyNewEquipment is IN THE BUILDING!!And it is sooooo niiiiiiiice.I'm still a little bummed that it's the sub-optimal (for my purposes) rather than the super-optimal model, but it still eleventy times better than I was using before that I will get over it being not exactly perfect. Someday, when I am a grownup scientist I'll get the super-optimal one for myself. (Santa? Are you listening? I've been a very good scientist, and plan to continue along the same veins, so if it's alright with you let's just skip Christmas for a few years and bank all those presents for one of these when I get my own lab, ok?)I'm looking forward to spending a lot of time with this thing in the near future. Hopefully BH won't get jealous.

Labels: Science

Just saw this at Toaster's. If you're not already frequenting his blog, get on it!The Relatively Straightforward Common Biotech Method: Step 1: Break it and compare that to that that ain't broke, then supplement the broken stuff to the level of that which ain't broke and compare again. If breaking it resulted in nothing, or less, happening, then what you broke might be causing that effect to happen in the first place and you may develop sweaty palms.Step 2: If supplementing what's broken to non-broken levels restores the effect, then what you broke is probably causing that effect and you may start fidgeting uncontrollably.Step 3: But, if you've also broken other related stuff and not seen the same pattern, then you can say that what you broke is causing it to happen (to the best of our current knowledge!) and you may then do a happy marshmallow dance of victory.See, science is eeeeeeeasy.

Labels: Instruction Manual, Science

I have spent the better part of a day on the ridiculous stupid new progress report format mentioned in the post where I complain about my Hated Data Set. This new format for progress reports (the thing we turn into administration upon completion of twice-yearly thesis committee meetings) requires a written time line for completion of projects/manuscripts way down to the nitty-gritty stuff like a list and description of all the figures in the manuscript I am eventually planning to submit (yes, all of the manuscripts I plan to submit), including an estimated time for completion on the figures that are not yet finished. This actually very helpful for the manuscript that I am nearly finished with (Anticipated Date of Submission: February 2009)...I discovered that 5 of my 9 intended figures are done and 4 are very close (Estimated Time to Completion of each figure: December 2008). This is good news and it makes me look very organized and as if I know what I'm doing.But WTF am I supposed to write for the "manuscript" that will eventually hopefully come out of Shiny New Project? I have just finished doing some pilot analyses and have discovered that the tools we have really aren't optimal for what we originally intended to do with this technique. There are lots of other cool things to do with this technique (and some not-quite-as-fun workarounds for the original question), many of which I enjoy, but I feel sort of like I do at the end of a long week:What's for dinner tonight?...hmmm, I don't know...let's look in the fridge...well, I've got an eggplant...what can I make with an eggplant?Which is a fine way to approach cooking I think but it's not a great way to approach science. You don't look at your tools and say "what can I build with this?"You develop a question and a hypothesis and say "what tools do I need to answer this?"To reiterate...I need to include in this time line "details" of ongoing projects that will lead to a second data paper. But I don't know what Second Data Paper is going to be about now. The Shiny New Tool for Shiny New Project is not as good as we thought it would be for answering Shiny New Question. Which means that if we want to use Shiny New Tool as the foundational technique for my next paper...we need to come up with a different question...which is a stupid way to do science.But GrAdvisor luuurrrrrrrvvvvvssssss Shiny New Tool because it makes Shiny New Data in Sparkly Video format. [I can just see him rubbing his little hands together and licking his lips...ooooohhh, shiny!]. Therefore, he wants to know what we can do with Shiny New Tool. Now, I'm with GrAdvisor on this one -- Sparkly Data are great (and might land a decent paper in better-than-decent journal) plus I really actually like this Shiny New Technique. But I don't have a question upon which to apply it! Figure 1: Representation of GrAdvisor examining Sparkly New Data.Gah! If it weren't for stupidly overly specific time line format, I could show some of my preliminary Sparkly Data from Shiny New Technique and my committee would be drooling all over the sexy technique and sparkly data just like GrAdvisor does, then explain how Shiny New Technique is not quite optimal for addressing original hypothesis but that it could be useful for getting at questions A, B, and C. They would be predictably impressed by Sparkly Data, enough to let that nebulous "experimental plan" slide for a bit until I can develop it into something better.And for the record, I think that requiring a detailed list of figures for a manuscript that is not yet a twinkle in its author's eye is kind of ridiculous. This project is just learning to crawl right now and you want me to tell you what it will look like when it graduates from college? Give me a break!But thanks to the stupid new format I have to lay it all out on paper, and having done so this project looks like a wild goose chase right now. I'm not excited about the fact that it makes me look as if I have no idea what I'm doing or how to develop a hypothesis-driven project. Ugh.

Labels: Cooking, Science