End of My Hiatus

Wow, it has been almost 2 years since my last blog post!

I did not mean to go this long without blogging, but I have been very busy at work and at home.  After my last blog, I took a 3 week vacation with my family.  We took a road trip of the Western and Midwestern states.  It was an eye opener!  I did not realize just how severe poverty was in the US until I traveled through Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Missouri, Kansas and Illinois.  What are the major factors? Weather, drought, industrial collapse, racism?  I do not fully understand what has happened in these states, but it is heartbreaking.  I have no idea what the solution is, nor do I know how long it will take to turn these areas around.  I doubt that casinos, fast food companies, and retail malls are the answer, but these were the only infrastructure remaining in some of these places.  This lead me to rethink my priorities, thus I spent the last year and nine months focused on my work and family.

I am rejoining the blogging community!  I have so much to say and this is the best format.  True to my original intent, I will blog about science.  Not that knitting is not interesting.....   Instead, I previously used my hobby as an outlet to deal with an ugliness of science that is not easy to discuss.  No more hiding behind K1, P2!

It is tempting to address numerous issues plaguing the scientific community, including misconduct, fraud, plagiarism, retractions, funding inequities, and gender bias.  All I can say is "maybe".  These are difficult issues, often with no clear answer.  And there are some very nice sites such as Retraction Watch that do a much better job highlighting these problems than I could ever do.

A more progressive approach is to move into open-science, open-access, crowd funding, and independent science.  Rather than use my energy to attack what is wrong with the system, I want to walk away from the mess and build a new community.  The best part is that I have seen examples of like minded people.  Rocket Hub and Petri Dish are examples of a movement to use crowd funding to finance science. Ethan Perlstein and Jacob Shiach are pioneers as independent scientists, flying without the safety net of academia.  And the Open Science Federation is blazing a path for future scientists.  Really, it is more rewarding to redefine a successful science career, than to continue to point out who is unethical, who is cheating, and who is a fraud.

Coming Soon: new blog layout!  And old blog purge........

The Scientist's Life

We have such a strange way of training scientists.   First, we get an undergraduate degree, of course, we pay for it and understand that it is a privilege to work in someone's lab.  Then we make the choice to work as a technician (paid+benefits) or go to graduate school, again "paid", but no benefits.  Graduate school takes anywhere from three to eight years to complete.  The programs are not equivalent from school to school or even from department to department.  Thus, recently hooded PhDs are diverse in their understanding of how to approach a scientific question.  Probably--this is OK.

What becomes a challenge is that the next step is even more variable.  The post-doctoral training!!  This can be 3 years or even a lifetime.  There are far too many variables at this step.  Some can be controlled by the individual post-doc.  But there is too much that cannot, such as how the university views their obligation to the post-doc.  Typically, universities allow the principle investigator (PI) decide how to train the post-doc. Some decide that the post-doc is cheap labor, some decide that training the post-doc is an opportunity to advance scientific thought.

I have been in the post-doctoral training stage for 5+ years and I now realize that the process is not quite right.  If only I could be in charge!  Basically, I feel that the University should be fiscally responsible for all steps--whether technician, graduate student, post-doc or PI.  There is too much power at the PI level.  Sure, the PI brings in the NIH money (or other funding opportunities).  I do think that this is important to the process.  But the PI should not have so much power over the rest.  Post-docs should have equal opportunity to apply for funding independent of the PI.  Technicians should have better opportunity to move from lab to lab, perhaps by being an employee of the department rather than the PI.  There are so many abusive PI's because they do not seem to have to answer to the University, as long as they bring in funding.

I have been thinking about this whole process, because I want to move on to the next level.  I wonder if I really have enough time to make the changes that should be made.  Probably, I need to start being more vocal to the people around me about a "better" or more equitable  way of performing science.  Perhaps, a few of my ideas will be transferred to the next generation of scientists.        

Saturday in the Lab....

I am applying for a grant from the National Ataxia Foundation (http://www.ataxia.org/).  I am not certain that I am really competitive enough for this award, but why not try?  The award is due on Tuesday the first, and I received my mentor's edits yesterday.  I am sad to spend the day away from Colten, but we did have the whole day together on his birthday.  Also, it is another hot day in San Diego and I am in air conditioning, while my family is not-----that makes me sad.