I am off to claim my consolation prize while, hopefully, not getting a sunburn. I have discovered four used bookstores within one city block, and a conservative shul I can walk to. I am in heaven.

Ta!

Marriage Quiz, BONUS!

Your nut of an advisor (see below), recently returned from sabbatical, has a Bright Idea. It is the exact same thing that your spouse (in City A) is working on. To the letter. What do you say?

1. Sounds like a great idea! I'll do it!!!
   
2. Well, I happen to know that [Other, Bigger, More Famous Lab] is already working on it and I don't think we want to be in direct competition with them.
3. It is a bright idea; in fact, my spouse is already doing it. So I don't think it's a good idea for us. And I wouldn't be able to work on it.
4. Are you OUT of your MIND?

Extra credit:

(5 points) You are the postdoc in City A. Your spouse signs up for the above with nary a word of protest, and then calls to cheerily tell you about it. What do you say?

(5 points) Estimate the chances that Nut of Advisor came up with this idea completely independently and it's all just a terribly unfortunate coincidence.

Quiz on Marriage

Choose all that apply:

Your spouse of one month gets two postdoc offers at [Top Labs in X] in Cities A and C, and wants to go to A. Do you:

1. Apply for postdocs only in City B, 5 hours away, where there are no top labs in X and where your spouse has no offer?
2. Apply for postdocs only in City B and in City C? (You both hate the labs in C.)
3. Apply for postdocs in all 3 cities, and go to City B?
4. Compromise like a reasonable human?

Your spouse's family is having a big party this weekend for your spouse's Nth important birthday. Your advisor, who has been traveling, wants to 'talk to you' about writing something due in six months. This weekend. All weekend. To 'talk about' this lame-o project. What is the proper response?

1. Of course! I'd be delighted.
2. Perhaps we could talk about it next week.
3. I'll be away this weekend. Perhaps we could talk about it next week.
4. Are you OUT of your MIND?
   

Your advisor, newly returned from sabbatical, announces a desire for you to work from Early O'Clock until Wee Hours of the Morning. Every day. For about 16 hours a day. No, really. What is the proper response?

1. Of course! I'd be delighted.
2. No.
3. Hell, no.
4. Are you OUT of your MIND?

You and your spouse of N months where N less than 12 agree that you will trade off visiting one another. Every Friday when it is your turn, you call and say:

1. Oh, I'm just so busy in lab with all this important work. How about you come?
2. I don't give a damn about YOUR work. How about you come?
3. I'm stupid and a jerk. How about you come?
4. I'll see you in a few hours.

Your spouse of N months where N less than 12 chooses (1) for all of the above. What is the proper response?

1. Dear, I think we need to talk.
2. Dear, I feel you're putting your work ahead of our marriage, and it's beginning to be a serious problem.
3. Dear, I feel you're putting your work ahead of my life and work, and it's beginning to be a serious problem.
4. Here's the number of my divorce lawyer. She'll call you Monday.

(P.S. This is not myself or my spouse in question.)

Still Mad, Still Not An Academic, 2

I am angry that because I don’t fulfill Advisor’s notion of a proper grad student, I am being denied aspects of training that are mine by right. (Even when I ask, pester, or communicate until the email box overfloweth.) No matter what I do, no matter how much I ask or beg, there are still some things I can't have because I'm not a perfect peon. Well, I didn’t come here to be a tech. I came here to be taught how to be a professional scientist.

(I should add, some things I have found elsewhere, wherever I could get it.. But there are still some things- like my advisor's considerable expertise at X, Y, and Z- that I cannot get from others. Hence, angry.)

Along with not putting on a show, I am not good at playing games. I do what I consider reasonable and leave. Therefore I am punished for my (two days of vacation/ volunteering/ doctor appointment during lab meeting). Then I think, if I play the game only partly, if I come on time sometimes, if I work hard but not seven days a week, I still don’t get what I want, so WHY BOTHER PLAYING?

I realize that this is a very black-and-white view. I can’t ever get above a 5, but playing partly will get me maybe a 2.5. Never playing will get me a 0. But if giving in to crazy requests doesn't get me what I want, and not giving in to crazy requests doesn't get me what I want, WHY BOTHER. (My mother says I inherited this from Dad: being very bad at sucking up.)

The funny part is, I know Advisor does respect me as a scientist. He thinks I am doing good work and making decent data. This is only bad in certain ways. And it is only bad for an unknown but finite amount of more time. It still makes me furious.

In Which I Am Angry At Great Length, 1

I am going to tell you the real reason that I am leaving academia. Eventually. Let me tell you some stories first. [In several parts because I am angry at very great length indeed.]

My advisor has been in science N years where N> my age. His wife stayed home to raise the kids. She packs him lunch. Dinner is on the table at (time here) As a result, my advisor works more than 70 hours per week and is very efficient and very productive. Fabulous; I’m sure he enjoys it.

The result, however, is he thinks everyone should do likewise. If I can work 50 hours a week and still be productive, too bad: I should be working harder, because I could be working more. I know because he’s told me so for six years. I have worked myself to the bone, until I was sick again and again from fatigue and stress, and that counts for nothing.

To make it better, I apparently don’t put on a good enough show. We have another grad student, much younger, who most assuredly works shorter hours. He makes a production of it, and he does what Advisor wants: comes to every journal club, is always on time for lab meeting, emails if he's sick/ five minutes late/ dealing with an embarrassing infestation of mice. I, meanwhile, tell Advisor if I am: 1) very ill and/ or missing lab meeting; or 2) gone for more than three weekdays. And nothing else.

Also I don’t care about certain things, like lab meeting, because they do me no good. No-one has told me anything useful in lab meeting for two years. Did I mention we ALL go every time? EVERY SINGLE terminally boring time.

As a result, in Advisor’s little game of favorites, I always lose. There are certain things we should be learning (Mrs. Whatsit touches on them): grant writing, reviewing, how to write a paper, how to train others. And while I could have asked for them, three things prevented me: 1) when younger, I didn’t know enough to; 2) later, it didn’t occur to me that I was the only person in my lab who would have to ask, as no-one else had to; and 3) oh yes, when I did ask (to review something, go to a conference, have a student) I was repeatedly turned down.

Which is why, when a casual comment revealed to me that a much younger student, who works maybe half as hard as I do, reviewed a big paper last month, as a reward for being a good little scientist- I was reminded of my fury. Don’t get me wrong, she’s smart and a good scientist, but my work counts for nothing because we all know that real labwork only produces publishable results.

I’m not angry with her. I’m angry with my advisor, and with the university for doing absolutely nothing to make sure any of us get training. We're cheap labor. This is not an education (which is the reason we're not employees, and therfore do not have contracts or a union, by the way; we're getting educated, not working), it's servitude, and whatever crumbs we pick up along the way are all we get.

Worthless Sacrifices

Sometimes one decides to give up something for a certain gain. One lives in a superbly dreadful town, for example, in exchange for getting paid to do a PhD there. I am not prevented from hating it by having chosen, but I accept the consequences. So I don't go out after dark, so what?*

What I see a lot among women (and sometimes men) here is they give up something they're not really willing to give up. They put up with harassment or discrimination because complaining might hurt their chances of a good job later. They work ridiculous hours because it makes their advisor happier. They are submissive in situations where they want to slap the other person, verbally if nothing else. They put in extra time grading things that aren't their job** because some professor asked and we must play the game or we won't get a good enough recommendation for just the right postdoc followed by any faculty job.

Yes, I know that there is a certain amount of game-playing to stay in academia. It happens to be a game I don't care to play, not least because your average professor drives me kind of nuts. I'd probably kill someone. Or get fired. Or maybe both.

If being an academic professor is really more important than anything to these women, then they have the right to make the choices they want. But what happens a lot- what I see- is that they make choices and then they are utterly miserable because they have given up too much. They feel exploited, degraded, used. Because they are. And they're buying into The Crazy.

I can see giving up a few things you really want for at least a moderate certainty of reward. (See also: PhD.) I cannot understand giving up many things you want for the dim possibility of future reward. If Professor Geezer is being completely inappropriate, why put up with it? Yes, all right, being rude to Dr. Geezer might mean he doesn't vote for tenure in five more years. Meanwhile he's inappropriate every week. Is it worth it? It wouldn't be worth it to me.

One of the reasons I think academic science is so broken is that it's so hard to change, especially if one does not have tenure. And one reason it's hard to change is that people are kept in line by fear of ruining 'their careers' by one wrong word. Surely many wrong words would be required to totally ruin it.

*No, really.
**Long explanation, but trust me, really not at all.

Social Conditioning 1, Me 0

A few nights ago I woke up screaming from a horrible nightmare: I was eating a pork chop. (!!!)

The night before that, I woke up screaming because I dreamed I was in a London Underground station and couldn’t find a map.

Scientiae Turns One!

Here.

Ask a Scientist: What's the deal with plastic baby bottles?

A kind reader asks: "Have you heard anything about plastic baby bottles being bad for baby?"

The main concern with plastic baby bottles is that they may leach Bisphenol A, which is what's called an endocrine disrupter or xeno-estrogen. That is, it looks enough like estrogen that proteins in the body bind to it as if it were estrogen, but since it's not the response isn't quite right. This same general principle is kind of part of what makes birth control pills work- disrupting a hormonal feedback loop- except then it's on purpose.

BPA certainly does bad things to rats at both high and low doses. There aren't a lot of decent studies on what it does to humans because a) humans are hard to study; b) reporting of exposure is notoriously ineffective; c) it's unethical to feed people harmful things; and d) it's often very hard to see a weak effect and so researchers would need to, say, take weekly blood samples from a lot of people to get long-term effects.

But in rats, it appears to do a variety of small things- not like instant cancer, just small effects: enlarged prostates, changes in some blood proteins, various hormonal disruptions, effects on the mammary gland, maybe developmental changes. Before you become too distressed, let me remind you that rats aren't people or we wouldn't need to do clinical trials, and nobody's going to keel over immediately from any of these things. On the other hand, bad effects in rats are usually at least a fairly decent gauge of what to avoid. These effects are nothing that's going to do someone instant harm, but nothing that sounds great.

Fortunately, there are many kinds of BPA-free plastic and glass bottles now, which it makes it much easier to avoid in baby bottles.

But. The problem is that this isn't the only place you'll find BPA. It's in some can linings- so that tomato sauce you just bought may have BPA in it. Nalgene bottles are another well-known culprit, but they sell several kinds of BPA-free bottles now. Some are even colors. Maybe your plastic spatula, your plastic-lined travel mug. It's at low levels in some drinking water. It does go from the mother's body into breastmilk, though at low levels; this extraordinarily long and boring review will tell you all about it if you're curious (email me if you want a copy of the PDF).

Nonetheless, take heart! It happens that the safest plastics are numbers 1 and 2, which are also the most recyclable. Here's a good summary of which plastics leach what- the recycling numbers are extremely handy. A quick rundown: 1 and 2 are safe and recyclable; 4 and 5 are safe but less recyclable; avoid 3, 6, and 7. Plastic wrap is PVC (3); I avoid that too.

After writing this I was so alarmed that I went and checked all our plastic goods. Happily, most of it is #2 plastic, along with the ketchup bottle and the juice bottle. Unhappily, much of it is not labeled. And then I threw away the Nalgene bottle.

Seriously, I don't think it's time to get really upset. But it might be best to cut out plastic when possible, and try not to worry about it the rest of the time. And plastic wrap and processed plastic-packaged foods are not so good. But we knew that already, right?