> Karen Lona Allendoerfer (ka143 at columbia.edu)
> Thanks, Susan, for the valuable advice! This is the sort of thing that
> really ought to be taught explicitly and systematically in grad school, but
> for the most part, isn't, unless you're fortunate enough to get a good and
> caring PI.
Oh, I'm not that. I'm a hazer, remember?
> It seems (at least to me) as if this thread and related ones have gotten a
> little heated, with people seemingly misconstruing what the others write.
> I wasn't very clear in what I meant by "trial by fire," or I may have
> misunderstood the original poster. None of the situations you're
> describing here sound particularly "fiery;" rather, I think that even
> though I count myself a part of the "anti-hazing" side, I find substantial
> agreement with everything you write here, its motivations, and its value.
Thanks for that!
> When I think and write of "trial by fire," I am more thinking of situations
> such as the gratuitous drubbing a paper of mine got from a colleague a
> couple of months ago (which I posted about in a very low moment--she said
> things like "I wouldn't bother publishing this," and "this isn't
> interesting," and wrote "So what?" next to a paragraph she didn't
> understand. Her whole tone was completely contemptuous and dismissive)
Try it when its anonymous on your grant reviews or paper reviews and you
are rejected for funding or publication as a result. That's
loads o' fun.
> I don't think that any of us on the
> "anti-hazing" side want to be patted on the head, told "there there all's
> well," or have our hands held. We just think that ordinary civility and
> courtesy ought to carry the day.
The point Deirdre and I are making is that it doesn't. So, you have
to deal with the jerks like the friend who read your paper and the
"ashamed" PI. And if you don't learn how to deflect their comments,
then they destroy you. So you have to make your own little world
better, and teach people to deal with the other one.
>> In another related posting, you wrote:
>> >"And if you do a lousy job on something, shouldn't I tell
> >you?"
>> To me, the answer to that is a yes and no. On one hand, I can't honestly
> think of a situation in which "you did a lousy job" is a helpful or
> constructive thing to say to anyone. On the other hand, something like "you
> should have included a lane of wild-type DNA on that Southern to show that
> your probe was working. As it is, without that positive control, the
> experiment is uninformative and has to be repeated," would seem to me to be
> a very appropriate thing to say.
Yes, I wasn't advocating saying "that was a lousy job" verbatim. On
the other hand, if someone is lazy, I will tell them THAT. It's one
thing I can't tolerate--I can forgive any mistakes as long as they
were honest and had effort behind them, but lack of effort is not
excusable.
Related issue: one of my other rules is to ask intellectually tough
(ie, challenging) questions but never be rude. However,
many people will immediately
assume an intellectually tough question is aggressive and mean,
espeically if it comes from a woman. I think we do need to examine
our own kneejerk responses and make sure we are not projecting our
own stereotypes onto an actually well-meant situation.
--
-susan
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