Special Victims: the "she had an affair with him" accusation

The other night, I caught up with a friend whom I hadn't seen since before the holiday. Let's call her Mariah. Mariah is married, has a child, and likes her job. She generally seems in good spirits when I see her. So I was surprised when she needed to unload a story of frustration.

Mariah was complaining about some mutual acquaintances, and saying how she heard that ThisOtherGirl "had an affair" with OlderGuy (who is sort of a mentor figure in this situation).

Which just sounded like nasty, unfounded gossip to me.

Not to defend ThisOtherGirl, since I don't know her very well, but I tried to explain that I think this is something people often say about women they don't like.

Mariah said, "Oh, I didn't think of it that way. And now that you mention it, I'm not sure I trust the source."

When Mariah said that, I suddenly realized I knew exactly who the source was, and I knew he wasn't reliable. So it was probably just gossip.

But Mariah is really struggling. She wants more mentorship than she is getting, and she is looking for a reason why.

It reminded me a lot of the favoritism I witnessed in academia, and the office politics I've seen since I left.

Because what if OtherGirl is actually being harassed by OlderGuy, but everyone else is misreading the situation? It's so much easier to choose the default option of blaming the woman, like she was asking for it. Or trying to sleep her way up the ladder.

----

I was still thinking about this today when I watched this new episode of Law and Order: SVU .

SPOILER ALERT: I can't really say what I want to say without ruining it a little bit for you, so if you watch the show, go watch it first, and then come back. We'll still be here. 

----


Read more »

On science and pre-meds

In one of the comments on my last post, lost academic wrote:

why MAJOR in science if you really just want to be a doctor and don't want to screw your chances?

I can only tell you from my point of view, what I did and why.

1) why major in science

Because science is quantifiable.

I loved writing. I loved my humanities classes. I loved that my homework was curling up with a book and underlining my favorite parts, making notes in the margins.

I loved getting writing assignments. It never felt like work. It made college feel like summer camp.

But I hated grades. Getting graded on my writing always felt personal. It was all so subjective. What seemed to appeal to one professor was hated by another.

When I got a B+ or an A- in my humanities classes, or god forbid even a B-, on a paper I wrote, it wasn't always clear why. Even to the person who gave me the grade. I was baffled when I asked a professor or TA what I could do to improve my writing. They always hesitated, rarely gave useful feedback.

They said my writing was fine.

Sometimes, if I pushed hard for suggestions, they said they didn't like the premise (my hypothesis offended them somehow) or felt I was making "wild claims" (ha! and now I'm a blogger!).

I couldn't figure out what they wanted me to do differently when the assignments were vague and the feedback even more so.

Ironically, this is also where I got stuck in my wannabe career in science.

I wanted to improve. To me, the fun in school was improving, mastering, making progress. That was also the fun in research.

Nobody told me what I was missing. I'm still not sure. The subjective part, somehow. The likability, whatever that is.

Science classes were fine. They were predictable, formulaic. I knew how to do science. I knew how to study for it. It was fascinating in its own way, and some classes were better than others, but the format was always the same: sometimes graded homework, sometimes quizzes, always exams.

I read the books, I took notes, I did the problems in the books, I reviewed my notes, I took the exams.

Rinse, repeat. It was fine. I was learning. I enjoyed the stuff I was learning. Knowledge was power.

But I have to admit, I look back at the stuff I wrote in college and think it sounds somehow smarter than anything I write now. Probably because of what I was reading at the time. In my humanities classes.

if you really just want to be a doctor

Because I didn't just want to be a doctor. I wanted to study human disease. Grad school was one option; med school was another. I also considered trying to do an MD/PhD.

What if I didn't get into med school? Grad school seemed like a viable backup option.

I was interested in anatomy, in diseases of all kinds: genetic, aging, communicable.

But I wasn't interested so much in working directly with patients. I thought about studying pathology. I did not consider being an EMT or a nurse as a viable option.

There didn't seem to be much work for humanities majors. Everyone I knew who majored in the humanities was determined to get into med school or law school or grad school or business school.

Here's the thing: not all of them got into med school or law school or grad school

In the end, I decided I'd rather go to grad school. And I got in. Pretty easily. So I went.

I was actually kind of baffled when people didn't get in. I knew my grades were not spectacular, and neither were my GREs. I didn't win a lot of awards or fellowships.

All I had was some lab experience. And I did that mostly to keep from dying of boredom.

and don't want to screw your chances

And therein lies the rub. Most of the students I knew who obsessed about grades did not obsess about learning. I didn't want to be one of them.

I had already spent four, no five, years being harassed about my grades so I could get into a college deemed worthy enough by my parents to ensure my future success.

And look where that got me!

I just hated the idea that school was about report cards, just like I hate the idea that science is about impact factor. It never made sense to me, and you'll never convince me that it's a better reflection of quality or productive output than taking the time to actually read the fucking papers.

I also felt like med school was the military. Like I would have to fit a mold more tightly than I would ever have to fit if I went to grad school instead. The culture of it turned me off.

Ironically, some of my favorite people in the world went to med school and came out... still themselves. But now they're MDs. Then again, they always had better grades than me.

And, I was always secretly really rebellious. I think it's just been building up over the years. Lately I feel more rebellious than ever before. Like, fuck it all, it's all a bunch of bullshit.

This was years before Fight Club came out, but even by the time I was finishing college I had already figured out that I am not my report card. I am not my job. I am not how much money I have in the bank. I'm not the car I drive. I'm not the contents of my wallet. I am not your fucking khakis

Smartening up: who would ever wanna be king?

Got this Coldplay song stuck in my head. Seriously though, it's relevant.

Random tidbits from the trenches: Special Quitting Research Edition!

• Friend is leaving her postdoc, early on. I think it's very smart to get out now. I hope she can find something that pays well, but at least she likes her parents enough that she wouldn't mind living with them if she had to.

• Another friend is planning her escape from grad school, and debating what to do next. Not research, she says. I don't blame her at all, but it's really a waste. She's one of the most talented people I ever worked with.

• Another friend is graduating, and his wife is planning to leave grad school when he defends. They're both planning to look for non-science careers. The husband has been reasonably successful with a supportive advisor, but disheartened nonetheless by some of the things he witnessed going on in the lab (data faking, among other things). The wife has been struggling pretty much from the beginning, with an unsupportive advisor, in an unsupportive graduate program.

• Another friend says she's ready to try applying for industry positions again, but this time plans to go for sales rather than science. She's gotten the impression that despite her PhD and postdoctoral work experience, she can't get a position as a scientist, but she might be able to get something that capitalizes on her science background on paper while mostly utilizing her social skills to do the actual work.

• Wife of another friend is leaving her assistant professor position. Rationalizations include that her husband can make more money in his non-science career, but they'll have to move. Also, she wants to spend more time with their baby. She already took maternity leave; the husband stayed home for a year because he could work from home, but she does lab research. Seems to me that the countries with 9 months-2 years paid maternity leave (e.g. Sweden, Canada) should have a better chance of hanging onto women's careers, but I don't know if that's actually true.

• Another friend just quit a postdoc to take a higher-paying non-science job. Ironically, that same day we learned that a coworker in the same lab was making 20% more salary all along. Why? No particular reason. No fellowships of any kind involved. Just the usual nonsense: nobody checking, nobody talking to each other, nobody negotiating, and nobody getting paid what they're worth.

• Another friend quit a tenure-track position, again due to a two-body problem, and left to go back to school for something different.

Note that this list includes 5 women and 3 men, all with more or less the same number of years in grad school, plus or minus postdoctoral experience.

Anyway it's sad to me because in all of these cases, these are smart, talented people who just feel like it's a dead-end: that no matter how hard they work, achievement is not rewarded, and there's no work-life balance at all.

And this is all happening right now. In a way, it's encouraging to see that people are wising up (yay, wisdom!).

Can't wait to see what happens next month. Tune in to see if we have another edition of Smartening Up!

Or, remind me. Who knows what I'll be doing next month.

Science is great: Just don't major in it

Yesterday I read an article about the layoffs at ABC. The author wrote that about 400 people were laid off, and interviewed one guy in particular who said he was 58 years old, had a family and "a dog who likes to be fed" and no idea how he was going to be able to get a job at his age, at a time when journalism is disappearing and the economy is still pretty shitty.

This got me thinking about how journalism, such as it used to be, is dying. I recommend checking out this blog if you don't know what I'm talking about.

Why does it matter that journalism is dying?

For one thing, I see universities going the same way: to be replaced by the internet. We should be paying attention to what is happening to journalists, because the same thing will happen to academic faculty.

Another reason to pay attention is that among the many so-called Alternative Careers science graduate programs love to tout, Science Journalism is usually listed as one of the top options.

But clearly, that's not going to absorb all the scientists leaving with masters degrees and PhDs.




I regularly receive articles about pharmaceutical and biotech layoffs. Yesterday I read one that said no one is really sure how many scientists are out of work right now, or whether it's better or worse than it was two years ago.

Really? No one is tracking this?

I regularly hear NIH and NSF saying that PhD-holding scientists supposedly have among the lowest unemployment rates, but that may be completely apocryphal, and it sounds like nobody actually has the numbers to back it up.

Which would not surprise me, considering that no one was tracking postdocs at all until about 5 years ago. How could they possibly know? There isn't exactly a strong biotech-wide union.




What else is among the top "alternative careers" touted so widely as a solution for the overflow of PhDs who can't get academic tenure-track positions?

Teaching in public or charter schools, maybe. Sure, we need more science teachers. But where is the money for that going to come from? I read an article today about how education specialists can't decide whether charter schools are working better than public schools or not. I found many of the lessons (pun intended) quite relevant to higher education: that schools with the highest accountability showed improvement, while those that tolerated mediocrity stayed in business despite showing no progress.

What about science policy work? How many jobs can that really provide? My guess would be in the hundreds, maybe the low thousands, at most?

But we have tens of thousands of science PhDs in this country. And nobody seems to know how many are doing anything related to science within, let's say, 15 years of leaving their PhD program. Let's say you do 5-10 years of postdoc after you graduate. Then what? Where do you end up?

And sure, you can always go back to school for patent law. How many science PhDs are going into debt to attend, of all things, more school??

At some extreme, if we're really being hyperbolic and facetious, we can see how not all scientists (with degrees or otherwise) can be patent lawyers. There would be nobody left to invent or find anything worth patenting.




The article I cited in my last post talks about how undergraduate education now yields only about 8% of students majoring in the humanities. It cites a large percentage as majoring in business, but fails to mention science and engineering. I have to assume they account for the majority, which seems to be supported by data such as these.

Parents don't check these data, either. Mine didn't; others are just misled. I had a conversation with a woman recently about how she felt her daughter should major in science rather than engineering, and get a PhD so she could have more possibilities for finding work. I had to control myself to say, as calmly as possible, that she had it all backwards and wrong.

I understand that universities budget for faculty positions and building space according to student enrollment numbers in the classes. In that sense, faculty in every department want more students to choose their discipline to major in, or at least they should, because it means their department will get more money and resources. Universities are a business, and at some schools, students are treated as consumers. It is the faculty's job to woo the students. It is the students' job to choose.



Personally, I agree that humanities are a necessary ingredient to teaching critical thinking in higher education. I think humanities classes should be required; I think science requirements are less than they should be. To educate the public on science and technology-related issues, we need to start by turning out students who at least understand the basics.

Having said that, I think we've duped far too many students into majoring in science.

Then they find they can't get a job, or can't move up, without a PhD.

Then they're duped into grad school.

Then the cycle repeats, so they do a postdoc.

Then what? Cut them loose and absolve everyone of any guilt? Tell the student "you chose to do this"?

The least we could do is collect the data and tell the truth.

Students: you'd be better off choosing an alternative that will guarantee you can find work.




In the interest of full disclosure, I don't know what the best alternative is now; I don't know what it will be 15 years from now, but I can almost certainly guarantee that it will keep changing every few years. It's no secret that people tend to run in herds. Baby names are trendy; so are majors and careers.

Some disciplines seem to have it all figured out. I've heard of some departments choosing to be exclusive, admitting fewer majors and building up their reputation as a great department by taking only the best students they can get, rather than trying to earn strength by numbers. Those people seem to have no trouble finding jobs when they get out.

I don't know if the secret is in top-down regulation of earlier specialization, having more but smaller departments, or more options for specialized majors, but it might help control and direct the pipeline. It would be a way to potentially combat the common misconception that there are plenty of jobs for everyone who majors in science.




One final thought from this particular soap-box: I still think one of the major problems with the approach to careers in science is the overly long incubation time. Part of the disconnect between input of students majoring in science, and output into an actual job, is the lag time.

I often think if I had gone to a vocational school or majored in engineering that at least I could have gotten a "real job" after just 4 years (or less) of classes.

Nobody can see 4 years into the future, whether the oil spill in the Gulf will completely kill the fishing industry, or whether in another 4 years after that, it might come back.

Even fewer people can say that in 10 years, there will be jobs for people with PhDs in X sub-speciality of biotech.

Fewer still can say that in 15 years, there will be jobs only for people who did a PhD in X and a postdoc in Y and published papers on L, M, N, O and P.

But that's how it actually is right now. Does that sound very scientific?

So spin your dice. You either have to be psychic, or very, very lucky.

May Scientiae: Humps and Bumps

For better or worse, this topic makes me think of a book called The Dip.

I was talking to a friend about this book recently, because she said she favors listening to motivational tapes to keep herself going. She said she especially likes advice for getting past failure, that tell you "yeah, things suck now but you'll get through it". Or something to that effect.

The Dip isn't like that. The Dip is about knowing when to quit.

The main point I got from this book is that if you quit when you're down, you'll always have some regrets. He suggests you should only quit when you're at the top of your game, because then you know you're quitting for the right reasons: because you want to do something else, not because you're just discouraged. Because everyone knows it's hard to make the right choices for the right reasons when you're upset.

What's interesting to me about dealing with setbacks is how much I've learned and yet, I still don't know anything. Sometimes I think that, the more I think about it, the worse my decisions get.

Sure, I've surprised myself over and over. The first time I had a major setback, I was fatalistic and depressed. Then I rationalized, found other things I loved to do, and rationalized some more.

I was surprised to find I could love to do so many different kinds of things.

Looking back now, I never really gave up, but I didn't really keep going, either. I just kind of held onto the dream and put it in my jewelry box. Sometimes I take it out and look at it, but mostly it's just nostalgia for something old and tarnished.

That was before I started doing science.

***

My first major setback in science wasn't about science so much as it was about politics. I went with my gut reaction; I put my nose to the grindstone; I got mad and used my anger.

And that more or less worked out just fine.

Not exactly ideal or a fun time, but I had a clear goal in mind, I set my sights on it, ate my power bars and worked around the clock to show that no matter what anybody said about me, they couldn't sneeze at my science.

I was surprised at how angry I could get, and how I could use that as fuel.

***

The next setback was harder because I felt that my life as a scientist was being shortchanged; I was being treated badly. I said Oh no, Not Again, and I left. I rationalized it as being equal parts about me and the science I was doing. I was very invested in it. I've always found it's easier to stand up for something or someone other than myself. So that helped get me out of an abusive situation, but really I was able to do it because I rationalized that I was shepherding what I thought was an important finding. I rationalized it as not really being just about me, but in reality, I was watching myself get beaten down, and I needed an excuse to get out.

Then I had really serious scientific setbacks in the sense that I had gone out on a limb with a telescope and I was trying to point and wave and say Hey, you've gotta come look at this! but everyone was too busy looking at the tree and they didn't want to see where I was pointing. They weren't mean about it, they just ignored me or said I seemed a little bit crazy.

But still, I kept on fighting. I started blogging and I was very philosophical about all of it. I focused on people I admired, both scientists and non-scientists, and how they had all gotten through setbacks and succeeded anyway.

The idea being to view every hump, no matter how tall, as just a bump in a very long road.

So I got past that bump and then there was another bump and it looked exactly the same and I felt like I had taken a wrong turn somewhere. I thought whoa, am I trapped in some kind of loop here? Didn't I just do this bump?

And then I started to realize that you can keep powering through, up and over, and you can get people to help you, etc. but it does make you tired. And it's actually kind of boring.

Persevering seems glamourous at first (Cue the Montage!). But then, it's really not. It's actually just really tedious. And unlike a montage getting ready for the big fight or the dance recital or the romantic speech in the rain, persevering is infinite. Nobody can tell you when it will be over.

Then I learned that some people will think you're lazy or pessimistic if you say "Hey, I need a rest".

But if you don't take a break when you need one, it's basically impossible to climb up anything for a while. You start looking for a way to go around the hump, and maybe it takes longer but it will eventually get you to the other side.

So now I'm on the other side of the latest big hump, but I don't really feel any better because there's no celebration ticker-tape parade. And I know there's more where humps where that came from.

***

What's sad to me is how our culture views setbacks: it's all about the end.

We seem to see everything through a movie lens: if it has a happy ending, then you made the right choice. But, if the ending is just "okay", then, my friend, you can expect to be second-guessed. It couldn't have been that big of a deal, they say, because you're still here! You must be exaggerating.

So here you are, panting on other side of the biggest hump in your life, and the important thing is that you're still in one piece.

But nobody cares about that. Or maybe they just can't identify? Your friends will pat you on the back and then get on with their lives.

What our culture really cares about is the photo-finish: you're supposed to die trying, or at least be wiling to die. But mostly you're supposed to grasp that trophy and hold it high! Smile pretty!

Except there's no trophy besides being able to say you survived.

What I still don't understand is that while science is all about the journey, getting a job is not about the journey. Getting a job is about the end. The end of being a postdoc. The long-awaited, much-coveted, highly unlikely victory. And if your work isn't published, if you don't get the tenure-track faculty position, it's like you never did anything. You might as well be dead.

I don't know of a way to point and wave and say, Hey! Look at what I did! See how I came, that route there? See all the cool things I learned? ... And shouldn't the journey itself count for something? Wouldn't you rather have ideas and experience than the perfect pedigree?

But everyone is too busy looking at the trees.

So am I on top of the hump, quitting for the right reasons? A month ago, I would have said yes, definitely.

But some days I wonder if I'm still in a Dip.

Then again, I read a statistic the other day that the odds of becoming tenure-track faculty in the biosciences now are pretty much on par with the odds of becoming a successful rock star. Seriously, if someone had told me it was that much of a long shot, I would never have made it this far.

There was an episode of Grey's Anatomy recently that has been haunting me. It's a cancer patient who explains how, past a certain point, hope is scary. It's so true. And ironic, because I've been accused of everything: being too pessimistic, being too naive, being too stubborn, quitting too easily.

Hope is the scariest thing, because it's very hard to learn how to let it go.

"we are career trainees"

The title of this post comes from a comment because I think it should be our new battle cry.

I also think that if things are going to continue as they are, in the meantime, NIH-funded postdoc fellowships should be adjusted upwards.

For once, the NPA is trying to put the collective postdoc mouth where the money needs to be. Click on the link above and follow the instructions to send a message arguing that this is important! It's really easy and only takes a few minutes, but it might be the most useful thing we can do this week.

Scienciae carnival post: Sustainability in science

When I think of sustainability, I think of fairness, cost, burnout and all the potential wasted.

We can't sustain science if we keep treating women like this.

To wit:

private college tuition ~$100,000 and 4 years

grad school salary ~$100,000 and 4 years

postdoc fellowships ~$100,000 and 4 years (give or take)

publications >10

number of extra papers women postdoc candidates need to be seen as equal to men ~ 3 more high impact or 20 more in lesser-known journals

job offers = zero

unemployment benefits = zero

Taxpayers' investment in my "training"?

Priceless.

********

Other Recommended reading:

Women disproportionately leave male-dominated fields for reasons of pay and promotion opportunities

Go give NIGMS an earful on "training"

Give Us Input for Our Strategic Plan on Training and Career Development

Posted by Jeremy Berg on Tuesday, Mar 2, 2010 10:29 AM EST

I’m proud of NIGMS’ long and strong commitment to research training and biomedical workforce development. As biomedical research and its workforce needs evolve, we want to be sure that our training and career development activities most effectively meet current demands, anticipate emerging opportunities and help build a highly capable, diverse biomedical research workforce.

To this end, we are beginning to develop a strategic plan focused on research training and career development, and we want your input.

Between March 2 and April 21, you can anonymously submit comments at http://www.nigms.nih.gov/Training/StrategicPlan/.

Why couldn't undergrads do research?

A link via my last post led me to this article in the chronicle that says both the oversupply of PhDs and the shortage of scientists are myths.

And some really scary stuff about Bill Gates, H1B visas and Walmart. Definitely worth a read.

But there was one line in the article that caught my attention, because it implied that having students do research is a bad thing.

I'm not sure I agree. If anything, I felt like most of my structured education was inefficient at best, a huge waste of my young energy and time at worst.

Why couldn't we accelerate more students through required courses faster, and let them start doing research younger? Would that really be such a bad thing? They're curious, they have fresh ideas, and they ask good questions. Why not?

The idea that "casualization" of scientific jobs is okay is also lost on me. As I've written here before, I think it would make more sense to let younger people do scientific research like time in the Peace Corps, while they have the energy for the long hours, and before the creativity is beaten out of them by the conformity of too much school.

Having more older temporary staff is stupid. Have more adjunct/lecturer type positions is not the way to instruct students at the college level, and it's a complete waste of a PhD, not to mention postdoctoral research experience.

Between this kind of stuff, earthquakes, and generally crazy weather, it sure does seem like things are getting worse, not better.

But hey, Olympics, possibly healthcare of some kind.... oh whatever.

See? You don't need me anymore.

Check out this post on the mythical scientific talent shortage.

I mean, clearly, there is no postdoc problem! No problem at all.

a good news/bad news scenario for my readers

the book is coming along.

I started looking into Amazon digital publishing. It's either that or the sort of thing that FSP used. But I like the idea of having a Kindle book.

Have to figure out the legalities of using people's real names in a tell-all memoir. (read: I think I will need a lawyer)

don't know how much more blogging I'll be doing.

please continue sending your questions and comments and I will try to respond. I'll probably still see things on other blogs that inspire me to write here. For a while anyway.

the blog is not going anywhere. but I need to move on. when I can't even read that Dr. Brazen Hussy has job interviews without being jealous of her, or read the kind and encouraging comments from readers who say they hope I will get the job I want, it is time to stop torturing myself.

it's funny because one of the commenters asked why I don't have impostor syndrome about my ability to run a lab, like that was a bad thing. I thought that was weird and backwards.

but the truth is I am tired of living as a closeted blogger. Writing is one of the most rewarding things I do, I need it like air, but nobody knows I do it and nobody here knows this is me.

I kind of have impostor syndrome about being a writer, but it's backwards. It's closet fever.

so in the hopes of getting out of the writing closet, I am working on the book and plotting exit strategies.

thanks for your thoughtful input and continued participation over the years. it has been fun, and enlightening, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have made it this far in science without blogging and the support of the blogging community.

unfortunately, it looks like none of the sacrificing has paid off, and tenacity can't fix a certain amount of cumulative career damage.

so here I'll write what I often feel: maybe the most useful thing I've ever done for science was writing this blog.

good luck to you all

- MsPhD

The kool-aid strikes again

Prof-like Substance wrote one of these polly-anna posts about how good it is to do a postdoc.

So I feel the need to respond, violently, but I'll settle for writing something here. And then maybe later I'll go punch a wall.

To the specific points:

That isn't a ton of money given the training they have had to that point, but get over it. You're being paid to do research, and in most cases, have no other distractions.

Why this is an inane thing to say:

1. It's not a ton of money, true. But what if you want to have children? What if you have sick relatives to care for?

2. And why, pray tell, does it make sense to pay us poorly for 10-15 years as grad students and postdocs, but then magically bump up the junior faculty to as much as 3x more than senior postdoc makes? This is just stupid to me. I don't understand why it wouldn't be better for EVERYONE if we gave small, morale-boosting raises every year. More than cost-of-living, but it wouldn't take much more than that to make us feel just that much less like slaves.

no other distractions

Why this is an inane thing to say :

Are you fucking kidding me??? This is just wrong. I have never worked in lab where I could "just do research". I have been expected to manage the fucking lab if I wanted to do research, which typically consisted of doing much of the PIs job, the technician's job, and if I was lucky, I could also do a few experiments. Seriously- if the PI is not training the students, writing grants, or helping edit papers, who do you think does that? The postdocs do, that's who. If the technicians are not taking care of the supplies, the animals, repairing equipment, and ordering, who do you think does that? Me. The postdoc. Then, if all the fires were put out, I might have time to do a few experiments here or there. But it was FAR from having "No other distractions". Give me a fucking break. What the hell kind of magical postdoc land are you talking about??

Moving around. Yup, the academic lifestyle can be somewhat nomadic and that can put a strain of relationships and make for difficult logistics.

Why this is an inane thing to say :

I'll say it again, because apparently you come from an independently wealthy and immortally healthy family.

1. What if you want to stay married?
2. What if you want to have kids?
3. What if you have sick relatives to take care of?
4. What if you have some disability or health problem yourself?

Get a fucking clue. Most of us want to have a partner, who also wants to have a career, and probably also has geographical restrictions. I think it's ridiculous to expect us to live not just a nomadic lifestyle- personally, I like to move every few years - but a monastic one. I think this selects for a certain kind of scientist. The ones who can't form relationships with anyone, much less manage the interpersonal dynamics of a group? Or teaching? The socially deficient ones? Yeah, that's the old tradition of science. It's not one of the traditions we should keep.

Lack of independence. Now I know that lots of people get into situations where they feel taken advantage of or where they are stuck doing projects they don't care about. That is why it is critical to do your homework ahead of time and know enough about the supervisor whose lab you are joining to determine if you can work with them and get the mentoring you need. Don't just take a position in any lab doing something remotely close to what you like. Talk to other trainees in the lab! Talk to former trainees. Is the lab a good place to develop as a scientist? That information can be FAR more important than the project. Put yourself in a place to succeed.

Why this is an inane thing to say :

I've blogged about this extensively, but apparently I'm not getting my points across clearly enough. Or maybe you just have to have been through it yourself to believe it - we have FAR too many scientists like this in academia these days. If you can't believe other people's accounts of their observations, what are you doing in science?

Why the "do your homework" advice is a bullshit cop-out blame-the-victim mentality:

1. Because we DID talk to people in the lab. We DO talk to former trainees. This approach is not guaranteed. Here's why.

2. Because people tend to try to spin everything in the best light when you ask them about the lab. I was talking to a friend just yesterday who was furious with one of her colleagues for talking about some of the negatives of their workplace with a visiting candidate. She feels it is her job, nay her duty, to make everything about the place where she works seem as rosy as possible.

Personally, I find it completely baffling and frankly dishonest. But they probably don't even see it that way- they think they're just being "positive" and don't want to sound like they're complaining. In some cases, they're terrified of the potential for backlash. Even if there is plenty to complain about.

3. Because when you're first starting out, you might not know what to look for. If people are "spinning", it's even harder. If you haven't worked in a bad lab, you don't know the warning signs. That's not your fault. Especially since there are still plenty of people who act like no bad labs exist!

3. Because PIs of really bad labs go to great lengths to make sure that visiting candidates don't meet with people who will tell them the truth. My own PI does this. If the candidates don't know to ask to meet with me, is that really their fault? I don't think so. I didn't know any better when I was a freshly-minted PhD. And if the lab website isn't up to date, etc. how do you even know who's missing? Especially if it's a big lab and you don't have time to meet with everyone anyway?

4. Because things can change. The PI might go through a terrible personal tragedy while you're in the lab, or develop a drug/alcohol habit. The lab might lose funding - a stressful situation that tends to bring out the worst in even the best PIs. The best labs have some rocky times, and it's never your fault if this happens while you're there. What are you supposed to be, psychic? Give me a break. Shit happens. What nobody tells you is that in science, no one will cut you a break for that. All they'll care about is your publication record- or lack thereof.

To the general idea that a postdoc is the greatest time, blah blah blah. Yeah, I've said before, maybe 3 years of postdoc would be just the right amount to do something new, learn a few things, have some fun doing science and maybe reduce your chances of running into something truly awful.

But the average postdoc length in my field is more than double that long. It's in your late 20s and early 30s, when your peers are able to have functioning, adult lives. They can do things like buy houses and afford child care and take vacations. Yeah, I know that as scientists we're not supposed to care about those things, but we're not robots and I don't see how being robots would make our science any better.

I'm not arguing that nobody should do a postdoc. I think there are plenty of people who benefit from the additional training, and broadening your experience can be really good, etc.

But I resent that it is required, but I don't think it's true that everyone needs one. In fact, I found the 4th comment on PLS's original post to be an interesting one, since it kind of implies that part of the problem with competition for faculty positions in the US comes from importing all these postdocs from overseas. I do wonder whether more American grad students are ready to run our own labs after grad school, since in most cases our grad school training lasts twice as long as in other countries. No wonder American postdocs are more pissed off. We're already older and more experienced, and then we're told we're complaining too much if we point this out? This is ridiculous.

My biggest complaint, however, is how long the postdoc "training" has become, and that the postdoc "period" only seems to be getting longer. Meanwhile, NIH has no plans whatsoever to figure out what to do with all these unemployable PhDs when the economy is shitty and the old fallback plan of "just go to industry" just went down the toilet.

I'm sorry but the "it's good for you" band-aid only goes so far. These are peoples lives we're talking about. Let's not tell them "oh, it'll be fun!" That's about as responsible as sending your high-school kid off to New York to live on the street and audition for shows on Broadway. Of course it will be fun. But will it lead to gainful employment?

My magic 8-ball says: Outlook not so good

Go vote for Barbie, PhD!

By way of "Isis, Mattel is taking a poll for what career the next Barbie should have. I voted for Computer Engineer.

Response to another postdoc having a hard time

This conversation began as a comment two posts ago, so I am including that here.

At 10:27 PM, Anonymous said...

Dear YFS,

I am in bench withdrawl even though I have yet to leave. What is wrong with me? I felt everything you did, and am choosing to take an opportunity that is away from bench research. I am getting emotional (not to the point of tears), but certainly to the point at which it is obvious to my boss that maybe I should not be leaving. I was doing this mostly for my personal side of things, but with everything we've talked about here, I thought was also for my benefit of getting paid well and starting a life. WHY AM I FEELING SO CRAPPY?

And I totally misunderstood, so this is what I wrote:

Anon 10:27, Oh, this is so sad to me. I actually do sometimes get to the point of tears when I think about this. I think part of why you feel crappy is because it's a huge change, very stressful, and you drank the kool-aid for so long that on some level deep down, even though you know it's not true, you kind of feel like a failure. Also, for me anyway, it's harder to make choices when I feel like people are second-guessing me (and it sounds like your boss really doubts your choice is the right one). Maybe you should have another talk with your boss if this person is genuinely supportive of you (and not just trying to get you to stay and be a slave)? But then, again, that could make you feel worse. My advisors tend to be pseudo-supportive, which I find most upsetting.

Personally, I'm not sure that getting paid well or "starting a life" (not 100% [sure] if you mean all the connotations of that phrase) would make me happy. But at some point it just seems hopeless to continue, and if you're so miserable day after day, something has to change. That doesn't mean the changing process will be easy- it's always a time of mourning, like a breakup. But the idea is that when that period is over, you will feel better. Or so they tell me.

Fortunately for all of us, Anon wrote back and patiently told me I had it all wrong:

HI Ms PhD,

It's anon 10:27 again. I am not sure if I was clear enough in my prior message. My boss has been supportive of me up to this point and has said that I was one of his top postdocs (and he has had 20+) and always talked about "when you have your own lab... ." At the time, I just wasn't listening to it and wasn't even thinking that I was going to stay in research. But, I think that I somehow fell in love with research after the PhD.

I definitely have had the best boss I could imagine; this was after a not-so-good beginning to my _early_ graduate student life. Somehow, things turned around for me: I got fellowships, travel awards, international travel awards, papers, everything that I was supposed to be getting. But then I had a friend who suggested that this alternative opportunity could get me to be nearby my SO. After not landing anything in biotech-- you know there are tons of layoffs going on right now--I decided to do a little bit of interviewing. I got lucky, or so others think, but it is hard to hear any congrats. The good thing is that I am doing a bit of testing the waters and my boss said that he supports me, no matter what I choose. We have spoken a few times; he is incredibly understanding. The problem is that I know I should go and and check out this opportunity. OK, I don't have Science, PNAS, Nature, etc., yet, but I do have some good journals and collaborators that I have been able to network with; this is the problem--things had their ups and downs, but overall, I settled in and become a productive lab member who is trustworthy and committed.

I did everything right that I was supposed to do, but had tight geographic constraints because of my SO. We have been long distance for almost 4 years, so that is what had to change, or so I was trying to convince myself of. It becomes hard to sleep, but somehow, my thoughts are much more organized and I am finding a new sense of driven motivation. I want to think about this as a sabbatical; wish that geographic constraints were not as they are.
The kool-aid never tasted so good as it seems to now....

Anon 10:27,

Well, thanks for clarifying, and sorry I misunderstood. I think(?) I understand a little better now.

Now I think this sounds more like a personal question than a career question.

I have to wonder if your SO understands how hard it is to get a "permanent" job in this business, and whether you do?

You really have to be willing to give up everything else and drag your SO with you if necessary. Would you? Are you?

If you really thought you wanted to have your own lab, did you not discuss that this was your top priority, and how everything else would have to come second? Do you think that now? Can you have that talk now?

Because truthfully that is what has to happen if you want to do that.

Personally, MrPhD and I talk about this all the time. We came to some decisions that make sense to us now, but it's fluid and we may change our minds as we go along. But we're always talking about it. Talking about it helps us be honest, not just with each other, but with ourselves, about what we want, how badly we want it, and to share our observations about it as a choice. For example, MrPhD knows that while I might be okay not having a lab, I would never be happy if I didn't take every chance to try to have one. In fact, sometimes when I am not sure if I can do it, he is the one who says I can and should. (He is also the one who told me to start a blog, so you can see he is very smart and I tend to follow his advice!)

If you're really heartbroken and missing the lab, maybe you should start thinking of not just how to get through the current period as a "sabbatical", but also how to plan your return and eventual takeover over the world? Because seriously, applying for faculty positions is kind of like a military RPG. You have to be at least somewhat confident that you can win, or be willing to die trying.

So I don't know if your SO is totally un-moveable forever and ever, but I have to wonder how much you two have talked about it - maybe not enough, if you're only realizing now that you really don't want to give up on the career you have been working towards for years already.

I also recommend reading The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. I think the idea that women will automatically be happier as wives and/or starting a family (e.g. rather than a lab) is an old myth that keeps coming back like the bad guy in a B movie. We just need to keep killing it and beating back the Larry Summers thinkers of the world. While the gender roles of the 70s are not as obvious today, I think the problem is still there - we have all grown up with these pressures and influences as the silent killers of our aspirations - as part of the air we breathe.

You might not even realize that you were drinking two competing kinds of kool-aid, but that's essentially the problem.

Science tells you to be a certain kind of person- independent and emotionless to the point of being monastic.

Society tells you to be a different kind of person- feminine to the point of having only the desire to please your SO, nurture your aging parents, raise children, and look pretty.

Science is changing, slowly, but it hasn't changed enough yet and it's going to take a while.

Society has changed on the surface, but many of the same expectations and pressures remain, even if they're not in our faces quite so much as they were when we were kids, we still internalized them back then and they haven't completely gone away.

Even if we consciously buck the trend, deep down I think we still feel torn. I know I do, because my family still asks why I'm not settling down into a regular job, buying a house and having kids. I have no intention of doing anything just because my family tells me to, but that doesn't mean I'm impervious to their constantly questioning my life choices. It's just like with work- no matter how certain I am about my results, I have to ask myself why everyone gives me such a hard time, and what else I can do to test my hypothesis. Because the more certain I am, the easier it is to feel like I don't care if I win so much, because as long as I'm sure that I'm right, I am willing to for my career to die trying.

I don't know if that helps at all, but I hope you can come to some honest decisions about what you really want, and soon. Science waits for no woman, and being out of the game only makes it harder to jump back in and not get tangled up in the ropes. But having a supportive advisor (or two) is huge, so if anyone can do it, having that kind of help and a supportive SO are definitely the way to do it.

Response to postdoc who needs help

From the last post, there was a comment:

At 1:21 PM, Anonymous said...
Ms PhD, I have a specific question for you... I am a 3rd year postdoc, facing the end of my fellowship in a few months. My postdoc adviser and I have had a falling out and it seems to be irreparable. He refuses to write recommendation letters. Well, I need another postdoc job soon, and how the hell can I get one without his recommendation? I thought I'd be getting 2 papers out from his lab but now it's looking like 0. I'm not really that bad. No one else here has papers after 3 years. Why am I being picked on? He's been contacting my former boss (PhD adviser) and actively blocking me from getting jobs. He suggested I go into teaching or industry. WTF. Suggestions?


Anon 1:21,

UGH. That is a sucky situation, but you might feel better to know it is NOT that unusual. AT ALL. It is actually much more common that anyone wants to admit.

First, your advisor sounds like a jerk, but it really depends on what the falling out was about? You can be vague about it - was it something ethical (you disagreed with your advisor about data presentation)? If it's scientific, that is different than if your advisor is discriminating against you, and/or is a nutcase (not that unusual), or if there is some other extenuating circumstance (advisor is running out of money and can't handle the stress, etc.).

Also, keep in mind that in a way it is better to have no letter at all than have someone agree to write a letter for you and then have it damn you with faint praise. He can't do much worse than that, because if he actually wrote nasty things, that would just expose him as a jerk. But at least he was honest enough to say that he can't write you a good letter - maybe that's a sign that he's not completely without ethics?

Second - what is your relationship with your PhD adviser? Have you talked to this person about the situation with your soon-to-be-former postdoc boss? If not, you need to have a frank conversation about it and find out if this person is able and willing to be on your side and help you out or not. It won't be fun, but you might find out more useful information that will be helpful to you as you move forward.

Third - Even if your PhD advisor can't or won't help, you can probably find another postdoc position if that is what you want.

Most people will take a postdoc to work on their projects. However, most people will NOT take a postdoc to work on their OWN project, unless you have your own funding and/or it fits really well with something that lab does.

Contrary to popular belief, you DON'T need a letter from your former boss.

My advice then is to:

a) publish your papers on your own - send them to PLoS ONE or whatever the equivalent is your field, and be done with it

b) marshall your other resources- any PIs who have helped you, like your thesis committee, collaborators, friends who went off to start their own labs - and get their advice on your situation, get their help editing your papers, and get them to write your recommendation letters.

Ideally you want their letters to address what happened with your former boss, or come up with a scientifically believable reason why you're not in that lab anymore (e.g. "project is going in a different direction; I need more training in X field so I am joining a different lab to learn it").

c) Apply for new positions. You don't have to tell them you had a falling out with your PI (your letters will explain the situation for you, much classier that way), but ideally you want to find someone who will be sympathetic and a mentor.

Fourth, and this is probably the most important, ask yourself in your heart of hearts why your advisor said that about you going into teaching or industry. Was that just a generic put-down or way of telling you they think you're lazy? Was that this person's screwed-up way of being concerned for your happiness? Was it a sexist/racist otherwise closed-minded comment that just reflects how biased he is?

In my case, for example, I had to think long and hard until I realized I had NEVER heard my advisor say ANYTHING nice about ANY female scientist. EVER.

Then I rewound everything I had heard him say about women scientists I admired, and realized he always insulted them, not their science but them as people, saying they were "bitchy" or "crazy".

Then I realized that anything this guy thought about my science or said about me would be coming through that lens: where all women who were not idiots and sex symbols were either bitchy or crazy.

Aha, I said to myself when I realized this. It's not me.

Was this person speaking more about themselves than about you? For example, one of my mentors gave me a whole speech about how I should spare myself the pain of academia, and it really hurt my feelings that she seemed to be saying she thought I wasn't good enough.

On further reflection, however, she was really just talking about how crappy she was feeling that day.

Aha, I said to myself when I realized this. It's not me.

Having said that, some of us impatient, efficient and highly organized types sometimes get hit with this suggestion about industry. It usually comes from people who are inefficient and disorganized. They think if you're in such a hurry, you should go to industry.

Fifth, I will tell you what everyone tells me over and over in this business. It's about perseverance, they say. So if you want to do it, you have to figure out how to stay in the game.

What I've learned from staying in the game is that it doesn't change. This is happening to you now- some variations on this kind of thing may happen to you again, and again, and again. All you can do is try to learn the ropes so you don't fall into the alligator pit.

Good luck and hang in there.

Actually getting to do my job

Someone asked on the last post what about the fun parts of the job.

I enjoy:

-doing experiments
-getting data
-analyzing data
-discussing data
-reading papers
-thinking
-making lists of experiments I want to do someday
-making lists of experiments I should do immediately
-getting excited about doing those experiments immediately
-getting excited about new data
-new data giving me ideas for more experiments I should do immediately
-daydreaming about having my own lab someday
-asking questions
-hearing good talks
-giving good talks
-writing
-being asked questions
-finding out that other people's latest results are consistent with mine
-being treated as a colleague

I do not enjoy:

-working in labs that don't have what I need to do my work
-being told I'm "not eligible" to apply for my own grants so I can get money to buy what I need to do my work
-waiting for broken equipment to be fixed
-waiting for shipments because someone used up the last reagent and didn't order more or even tell anyone we ran out
-scheduling snafus
-get phone calls at night about last-minute extremely important paperwork due the next day
-other people getting credit for things I did
-being held to different standards than my male peers
-assumptions made about my work or life plans based only on the observation that I am female, or because of any aspect of my physical appearance
-nasty competitors
-lying, self-promoting fakers
-frienemy tor-mentors
-the little birdie effect
-anonymous commenters who represent just how rampant sexism still is
-seeing women leave science because they are discouraged by sexism and/or lack of sufficient mentoring
-deniers who act like sexism doesn't exist or it will just go away if we ignore it
-women who pull the ladder up behind them

Perception hole

From a comment:

Anonymous said...
"My point in #3 and 5 is not that men don't care about these things, absolutely they do. But women drop out in disproportionate numbers, and these are some of the reasons they cite."

Wait a second. Why would women drop out at disproportionate rates due to lack of money and job security?

In fact, if patriarchy is the norm (as you suggest), don't you think women have LESS pressure to earn well and have good jobs? Shouldn't this make it easier for them to adjust to the lesser pay and lower job security? In the patriarchal system, women don't have to be breadwinners and hence they can afford to pursue science almost along the lines as a hobby.

Contradiction.
.............................................

Woooooooooooooooo boy. We got some work to do here.

I'm going to take a stab at this, and hopefully some others will write in the comments here as well.

Assumption 1a: That "patriarchy" means men take care of women

TRUE and FALSE.

TRUE. The definition of the word patriarchy includes "a family headed by a man".

FALSE. Because not all women want to be or are taken care of by men; similarly not all men take care of or want to take care of women.

Assumption 1b: so women don't want to or need to work.

FALSE. Patriarchy has two other definitions, which are the ones more relevant to the point I raised (although I did not use the word patriarchy, you did).

As you can read here in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, patriarchy also means control by men of a disproportionately large share of power and a society or institution organized according to the principles or practices of patriarchy.

Although you could argue that nobody wants to work, I think you'll have to agree that if nobody is taking care of you, you need to work.

Most of us fall into that last category. We need the income. Also, there are various benefits to working besides just paying the bills. Being denied a career means being denied all of the fulfillment and stimulation of

a) an intellectual environment
b) making tangible progress and
c) getting feedback when you make significant contributions.

Assumption 2: That women should want to pursue science as a hobby.

I guess you're also assuming within this that most men who pursue science as a career would also want it as a hobby if they could afford to do that?

But in your version, women can do science as a hobby, but men don't have to??

So let's break it down.

FALSE: Science as a hobby

My type of science can't be done outside a university or a company. It is too expensive. It is unsafe. I can't do it at home in my basement. This is not just true for me because I am a woman; it is true for everyone in my field. We have to have careers in science if we want to do science at all. That's just the way it is.

And as I think I have written extensively here before, I want to direct my own project(s). I don't want someone else telling me what to do. So this means science is a full-time job for me. Not a hobby.

I want job security just as much as the next guy. Being a woman does not make it easier for me or any of my friends to "adjust" to being paid badly and not knowing where I'll be from year to year.

And in the current economy, in the current world, most everyone I know needs two incomes. So yes, women worry a lot about finances and job security because they want to have kids and own a house and take care of their parents and siblings when they get ill. Not less than men; maybe even more than men, if the statistics of why women leave disproportionately are any indication.

My personal impression is that women worry more and feel more pressure from our own parents to "settle down" in a secure, stable situation.

Men are allowed, in our society, to take more risks and take longer doing it.

If I want to have kids, I have only a few more years to decide that I want to do it. Men have more time to play around. That's biology working against us.

So by that logic, if anything, we should let everyone go through grad school and postdoc and get a job as fast as they can, but especially women if they can and want to.

But we don't even take that into account.

We're stuck with an incredibly inefficient, patriarchal system that wastes everybody's time and drives most women to run screaming from science as a career. I could have done ten times more science by now if not for the inefficiencies in the system.

This is why almost all of my friends left academic science for industry science. They felt it was possible working in industry to make more progress more quickly; get paid what they are worth; work more reasonable hours (because they can get more done in less time!); and potentially move up more easily (although this last part is actually not the case).

Women leave disproportionately because academic science is still based on a patriarchal system that doesn't work for us. Which isn't to say that science is working all that well for most men, either- I think the pipeline numbers show very clearly that it only works for a tiny minority of people, and the vast majority of those who major in science end up leaving for other career paths.

More on presentations (also some ranting about writing)

By way of FSP's latest post, I wanted to say something more here since she had 44 comments already and many were quite long.

Lately there's been a lot of talk about "why do young women drop out" of the academic pipeline.

Lately I have been hearing from a lot of young women about why.

(As an aside: I've covered all but one of these topics (I think extensively?) on this blog from my own point of view. This post is mostly about the other one I really haven't covered.)

The why includes many components, but I think the main ones are:

1. not feeling welcome
2. wanting kids
3. wanting job security
4. outright harassment
5. wanting more money

Let's pick #1-2 for the sake of addressing FSP's post.

There is still a lot of pressure, especially in the US, for women to have children and be supported primarily by their husband.

I've had many long discussions with friends from Europe about the nonsense of last names, taxes, and mortgages in this country. On the one hand, we supposedly have equal property rights as men. Nobody would say, nowadays, that a woman could not legally own her own house. However, some of the red tape might lead you to think otherwise, especially if you are married.

I think one of the things we underestimate in science is how many young women feel these pressures. Constantly. From their own families, and from their in-laws.

They already feel left out of science as it is, socially speaking. Many fields are still majority male at the upper levels, even though we have this constant stream of young women coming in... and then leaving again. They see their friends leaving. It's a sinking ship. And they are not stupid.

There's still a lot of talk among young women about things like:

1. should I tell my boss I'm pregnant?
2. when's the best time to be pregnant in grad school/postdoc/junior professor (before my ovaries dry out)?
3. should I expect to be treated badly because I'm going on maternity leave (yes)?

They get the answers and they start making other plans for their lives.

So in response to FSP's question, no, I don't think it is too much information (aka TMI) for a (presumably senior, tenured?) professor to include in her research seminar some (?) mention about how she integrated having a family with having a career.

I think one of the major problems, as bluntly illustrated by the comments on FSP's post, is that women are often just as sexist and discriminatory as men are.

And many of the senior women in science now came from a generation of all-or-nothing. They did not have children, and whatever their feelings about it now, they tend to resent younger women just for having the choice. And they're not very sympathetic when their own students or postdocs need time off before or after having a child, or when they need more flexible schedules. I've seen it; I've heard about it; and you know it's true. Having a female PI is not necessarily any better.

I'll admit, learning to recognize the resentment and where it comes from can be really difficult. In my case, I have a younger friend who is very very girly. When I first met her I was mostly surprised that she wanted to hang out with me. Then sometimes I was slightly bothered by her girly-ness. But I was able to take a step back and say, you know what? She's being herself. In that very Legally Blonde kinda way that I actually really respect and enjoy. And I'll admit I'm a little bit jealous that she has figured out a way to do it without being the slightest bit self-conscious.

I would love to see more of this in science.

I think there has been a dangerous trend lately, perhaps brought on by various linguist-type philosophers (Roland Barthes comes to mind), to pretend as if science is written objectively by using pronoun-free passive phrasing. (Bear with me here, it's a short tangent and I promise it's relevant.)

Science was never like this. Looking back, historically science grew out of letters people wrote to each other (yes, there were women doing this too) about things they did basically as hobbies. Gardening, collecting bugs or rocks, looking at stars. They were conversations. They wrote, "I saw this. I thought that. I think it means blah. Next I think I'll do bleh."

Science now might as well be done mostly by robots, since so much of it is repetitious anyway. So then it might make sense to use phrasing like "The DNA was sequenced and this analysis revealed" rather than, "When we examined the DNA sequence, it became apparent that."

End of tangent. My point is that a little person-ality is not bad for science. It's actually how science was always done until very recently (say the last 20 years or so). So I'm very concerned when I see this kind of backlash against scientists being people. The two should not be mutually exclusive.

Sure, by the time you're a tenured professor you might have had all the life beaten out of you. You might have squeezed yourself into the mold so hard you cut off all the parts that didn't fit. But is that really what you want for the next generation?

Personally, I would MUCH rather have an informal presentation from a friend about her work, where she intersperses in stories about what else was going on at the time. Because that's where ideas come from, really. And science is sorely lacking for ideas these days- precisely because we're driving away so much young talent in the form of young women who haven't lost or traded in all their personality.

From a comment

MYTH:

If you love what you do, you'll rise to the top decile in any profession.

Anyone who has watched a reality tv show (take ANTM or Project Runway for example) knows that how much you love what you do has almost nothing to do with whether you will be in the "top decile".

Why it's sexist that top-tier papers are the unspoken requirement

Lately I've been having to explain this a lot, so I figured hey why not blog about it.

1. Nobody tells you it's a requirement

The thing about unspoken rules is that the in-crowd shares them with their proteges. The auslanders argue among themselves about whether there really are rules or not.

2. Publishing is sexist

Yeah, you can argue, but it's actually true that unconscious bias affects everything, including the supposedly objective non-blinded reviewing of papers. See for example this study .

Women, you should know that you are automatically at risk if your name sounds female, or if you're in a field where people know who you are.

Speaking with 5 women in different fields, we discovered that our papers were all trashed by reviewers in very unprofessional ways. We all thought we were the exception, until we noticed the pattern.

In one case, an observation from a male peer said it all (same age, same field, same tier publishing experience, who thought the work was really solid): "I've never seen reviews like this."

We all looked at each other.

Damn right you haven't. You have no idea.



3. Submitting papers is sexist

Within your own lab, you might experience what I've experienced over and over and over again.

First, my PIs have consistently undervalued my work (even as people from other labs were impressed by it), but nobody seemed to understand this. I felt like that guy who couldn't speak for 23 years because the doctors thought he was in a coma - screaming, trying to find a way to make people notice.

I did more work, and more quality work, than some of my male peers, and equal work to other male peers. And yet the men were systematically favored with opportunities to submit their papers to top-tier journals.

Then, when I had been forced to wait and wait and wait, I was told I couldn't submit to the same journals while the men's papers were still in review (which takes about a year, if you're talking about a top-tier journal and revisions).

Again, you could make all kinds of excuses for why this was the case, but it was pretty clear what my male peers had in common with our advisers to get these advantages in the first place: their favorite activities involved drinking, watching sports, and discussing the physical attributes of women's bodies. And because my male peers got more informal face-time, they had more chances to plug their work and keep themselves high on the radar.

Second, our PIs wanted to protect us from the heartache and frustration and length of time it takes to publish in top-tier journals. I'm not making this up. They told us we should plan to have babies; that it would take too long; that we weren't up for the fight; that we should go to industry; that we should run core facilities; that we should teach.

Third, they lied to us. They said it didn't matter. Simultaneously, they were advising our male peers on what other experiments they needed to do to get their papers accepted at top-tier journals when the time came, positioning them for success. Why were they telling us one thing while telling the men something else?


...

So when study sections and hiring committees decide that these papers are the mark of the best scientists, we should be asking ourselves, why?

Q: Do we really think the editors at these journals are the best scientists of all?
A: No.

Q: Have the editors at these journals themselves published extensively in these journals?
A: No.

Q: Have the study section members and hiring committees themselves published in these journals in order to get where they are now?
A: No.

Q: Is there double-blinded review, for the most objective evaluation?
A: No.

So why is this held up as the ultimate criteria of a qualified scientist?