Valerie Cardenas Nicolson (valerie at itsa.ucsf.edu) wrote
>I think you have done a good job drawing this
>distinction in someof your later
>posts. However, from some of the earlier posts it
>sounded like you (and Deirdre and Bharathi) felt it was
>your duty to rip apart your students so they could get used
>to it. I think it was terms like "confrontation," "ugly underbelly,"
>and "negative feedback" that gave me the impression that you
>felt it was a necessary part of graduate training to engage your student
>in at least one ugly, demoralizing, mean-spirited, destructive kind of
>question and answer session, just so they'd have some practice.
I think you misread what I said in those early posts.
I went back to my EARLIEST post on this and found that what I said
was "Unfortunately, however constructively phrased,
criticism is often difficult for students to accept."
Which is exactly what I said in my later posts. But
it appears that you and others equated "criticism" with
"negative feedback", and Deirdre's "pickyness" with "confrontation."
I did remark that science was done by negative feedback and
confrontation, adn students have to learn to deal with that.
I stand by that--that IS what science is like and the DO need
to deal with it. But I then elaborated:
>This does not mean I advocate making people feel embarrassed or miserable,
> espcially in public, but asking pointed questions in group meeting and
> giving constructive criticism without being all touchy-feely about it is,
> IMHO, absolutely necessary.
It's hard to see how much clearer I could get! Read that first
sentence again! "This does not mean I advocate making people
feel embarrassed or miserable, espcially in public..." But
everyone seems to have thought I was advocating exactly the opposite.
Somehow, you interpreted "asking pointed questions"
as meaning an "ugly demoralizing mean spirited, destructive
kind of question and answer session". I did mention spirited
arguments. I don't see how "spirited arguments" could be interpreted
as "ugly, demoralizing, mean-spirited" etc either. Spirited arguments
are the stuff of scholarship,where we care passionately about our
ideas....or should.
I did say we needed to educate students in the ugly underbelly--
it is ugly and we do need to educate them in that. I also said " No one
wants to make you unhappy, but no one wants you to
be completely unprepared for the sharp give and take that makes up
scientific discourse. " Again, this all comes from my first post on
the subject--but has been misread, mis-cited, or ignored.
No hard feelings, but just wanted to point out that I've actually
been VERY consistent in the arguments I've made and how I've made them!
Valerie tells me that she actually never saw my original post, but
only how it was cited, which misled her. This is a useful lesson in
how we shape our opinions. Following this on the website,
where all the posts appear pretty much in order, I had not realized
how my comments had been trimmed and cited with the effect of making them
appear to support an abusive interaction. Not that this was deliberate
(I prefer to be charitable on that interpretation ;-)
but perhaps people should have paused before jumping into the fray
to think whether any rational person WOULD support such abuse as
imputed to Deirdre and me in the middle of the discussion!
It seems to me that most participants (who are probably postdocs
and students) are willing to believe the worst possible things
about any PI. It leads to a real Us-vs-Them mentality that is
not conducive to learning, discussion, positive relationships, or
anything else.
You can check out all the posts in this or any discussion on the web at
http://www.bio.net/hypermail/WOMENINBIOLOGY/
--
-susan
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Molecular Biology and Virology Lab
The Salk Institute, La Jolla CA
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Women in Biology Internet Launch Page
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