Fake Review Contest Entries #9-12

Here are a few more "fake reviews" for the Fake Review Writing Contest:

9. ER

Dear Editor,

In the future please waste your own time.

10. YN (modified only slightly from a real review)

I'm suspicious of claims to categorize behavior in the vague terms of these authors, or as has been done in the past, using the very popular statistical framework X, which claims that the only way to rationality is to have a prior distribution on possible hypotheses for every problem. The experiments seem to be toys.

11. SW

I couldn’t help but noticed that my work is not cited in this paper on (a topic that has nothing to do with my work). If my work is not going to be cited, why would I spend time reviewing this work? If the authors add citations to my papers, if only the recent ones but perhaps also one of my classic papers and ideally my 2010 paper because I just need a few more cites on that one to raise my h-index by a point, I will be happy to read past the introduction and reference list.

12. NR

If the authors had high-quality data, interesting ideas, and an understandable discussion and conclusions, I would write a positive review. In the absence of those items, I regret that I must hate this paper.

Fake Review Contest Entries #5-8

Here are a few more 'fake' reviews (even though some are apparently word-for-word or only slightly modified from real reviews):

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5. CF

Paper title: Graph analysis of System ABC shows differences in A-B connections during Condition X vs. Y

This paper uses a novel method to study ABC system dynamics. However, I don't know anything about graph analysis so I'm going to interpret the paper through the lens of a different analysis method I do know something about. Thus the only constructive feedback I can give is that this paper is a poorly written explanation of a structural equation model of XYZ - the conclusions drawn make little sense given the data, i.e. they frequently refer to "graphs" but all I see are these pictures of circles and arrows.

6. SS (modified slightly from a real review)

Since the author is a woman, I had lowered my expectations accordingly, but the author did not even meet those. Even though I have never done experiments in my life and have never used any of these techniques, the experimental results presented were completely misinterpreted in my distinguished opinion. The largest error was the omission of any background information; the authors did not cite enough of my papers or work in the background, specifically my articles in “Science” and “Nature”.

7. MC (verbatim real review)

Why is this result not loudly proclaimed as a triumph of predictive modeling? I can think of several reasons, such as (a) the authors are saving this for another paper, or (b) some one else has this result in press already and the authors don't want to deal with the politics, or (c) the one that worries me, the only explanations known are ones that cast serious doubt on the other analysis in the paper, so something is wrong somewhere.

8. EWH

There was no point in my reading the entire paper because in the introduction on page 2 the authors assert with no supporting evidence that the world is round. That the world is round is simply stated. What is the evidence for this? Without a detailed and convincing explanation, with compelling evidence, the rest of the paper is worthless.

Fake Review Contest Entries #1-4

The first entries in the reviewing writing-fest are fascinating because they are all apparently based on real reviews. In some cases, I think only a few identifying details have been changed. Perhaps there is no need to have a creative writing exercise to craft a fake review introduction; the real ones are strange enough to provide plenty of fodder.

There will likely be a vote on the entries at some point, so I am numbering the entries and adding an author pseudonym for each (in most cases at the request of the author):

1. kamikaze

Taking into account that this paper forms the basis of Ms HopefulAuthor's PhD thesis, I would have loved to love this paper. But I don't. I hate it so much I don't even want to read it properly. Therefore, I will reject it without any other argument than the fact that if this paper had been better, I would have read it and loved it. Ms HopefulAuthor had better hope I'm not on her committee.

2. mixedmetaphor

This paper is like a car-bomb headed for a building or a wall or something; it is difficult to be sure what or where it is going. Will it explode or will it be a dud? Neither has a good outcome, nor does this paper. It is filled with dangerous ideas crammed into a package with a mundane exterior.

3. JT

I have completed my review of the manuscript by XYZ et al.  This manuscript must be rejected on grounds of plagiarism - significant sections of the text were copied verbatim from a previously-published manuscript [ABC et al.].  I attached a PDF of ABC et al.'s paper and the XYZ et al. manuscript marked to indicate the plagiarized text (you will note that all but the first two paragraphs were copied).  I am very disappointed that the authors chose to represent another group's work as their own.

4. GR

Proposal Title:  Linear and Nonlinear Methods to solve XXX

Reviewer 3 (it's always reviewer 3):

"Why is the approach limited to linear methods, and the PI does not propose nonlinear methods?"

Write This 2013

It has taken me a while to have 6.2 minutes of spare time to put together a post about an end-of-year FSP academic writing contest, but here it is, finally. You probably don't have much time either, so this year's contest has a brevity requirement.

To summarize the last five (5) contests:

• 2008: The Statement of Purpose;
• 2009: Letters of Reference;
• 2010: Why I Missed the Final Exam;
• 2011: The Cover Letter for academic positions; and
• 2012: The CV.

I was just thinking about how I finally have some time to work on my own writing, but then I realized I have letters of reference and nomination to write and I have promised to comment on the proposals and manuscripts of some colleagues and I have some manuscript reviews to do. The latter is the inspiration for this year's writing contest: REVIEWS. Specifically, I refer to reviews of manuscripts and proposals.

Reviews can be quite lengthy. In fact, some are longer than the original manuscript (I have only done that a few times). No matter how long and detailed the review, however, some reviewers signal their overall opinion in a few introductory sentences that address the general issues raised in the rest of the review. Is this review going to be mostly positive, negative, or "mixed"?

It is those first few sentences that form the challenge of this year's writing contest.

In 2-4(ish) sentences, write the introduction of a review. Your review can be of any flavor that you wish -- you can write a few sentences of pure scathing venom, you can write a beautiful prose-poem of praise, or you can be passive-aggressive and compliment (faintly) whilst undermining the entire premise of the paper.

I prefer that these reviews be entirely fake, but you can of course use real reviews (that you have written or received) as inspiration, ideally suitably disguised so that no real individual is targeted for insult or humiliation. The point of this exercise is to have fun and entertain with creative writing of the academic sort.

Send your entries to femalescienceprofessor@gmail.com and I will post results intermittently whilst the FSP Family is traveling around an interesting part of the world for the next 2 weeks or so.

My Year of Meets

[Note: the title is a subtle reference to the book "My Year of Meats" by Ruth Ozeki, but not for any particular reason, though I did like the book.]

Somehow I ended up going to a lot of meetings again this year. What is "a lot"? This year, for me, "a lot" = 6. There might be some years in which 6 is a good number and other years in which 6 is excessive, so the concept of "a lot" is flexible.

I do not regret going to any of the 6 -- each one was interesting in its own way, and very useful for discussions with colleagues and prospective colleagues/postdocs/students. Some of the 6 meetings were large, some were small, one was less than 500 miles from my home, the others were more than 500 miles from my home.

As I was musing about my Year of Meet(ing)s, I decided to try to think of the Most Strange meeting-related experience that I had in 2013. It will not surprise any regular reader of this blog when I say that my Most Strange meeting-related experiences (MRE) involved gender-directed weirdness.

There were several contenders for Most Strange MRE.

There was the incident when a colleague I have seldom met in person (although we have corresponded extensively by e-mail for years and written several papers together) came up to me and gave me a startlingly emphatic and prolonged hug in the presence of his wife (who walked away). ick.

There was the potential postdoc who had corresponded with me and who had supposedly done extensive investigating of a large project I am directing and that he wanted to join but who somehow thought that one of my male colleagues must be the lead investigator despite massive documentary evidence to the contrary.

And there were numerous small incidents in which men went out of their way to explain to me that they supported women scientists -- some of them had even worked with women and the experience had been surprisingly good. etc.

But the "winner" was when a scientist with whom I have only a passing acquaintance came up to me after a session that I co-organized and congratulated me on putting together such a "diverse" session. I don't mean to be thick, but my first thought was that he was referring to the subjects covered in the talks.

He said, "You must have worked really hard to have such a diverse session."

I said, "No, the session easily fell into place, given the general theme. We were all very pleased that there was such a diversity of approaches." [note: we = my male co-organizers and I]

He said, "I meant diversity of the speakers."

I said, "Oh, right, yes, well, we did deliberately invite two early-career speakers and two more established speakers, but it was mostly good luck that the session ended up with such broad representation from across Europe, Asia, and North America."

He said, "No, I mean that there were so many women in your session. I congratulate you on finding so many women." (FSP note: "so many" in this case: ~ 35% of total speakers, 50% of invited speakers)

I said, "That was not deliberate." I paused and thought about it for a moment, then said, "but maybe this was a good example of how a session can easily be naturally diverse."

He said, "It made me think that we are spending too much time focusing on the problem of women in science."

I said, "That does not follow."

That was depressing. It seems that at least one person assumed that those women speakers were selected because they are women, not because they are doing interesting work (even the one who is a hot-shot professor at a Top-Two institution?).

What has been your Most Strange MRE of 2013? Please share.

If You Just

It seems like it has been a long time since I have done a poll in this blog. Perhaps that is because I am tired of doing surveys, including surveys on surveys, not to mention surveys for which I seem to be held personally responsible for making sure others do them even though I don't even want to do the survey myself? Perhaps, but today seems like a good day for a blog-poll anyway. The topic is the post from last week.

How would you describe your reaction (just based on what you know from my description of the incident in that post)? I have enabled the 'multiple response' feature so you can select more than one. I don't doubt that my list below is incomplete. If you are so inclined, please leave a comment if your response is not represented.

My response was..
	The man was a clueless interrupting jerk.
	He meant well. That's the main thing.
	One of the women should have interrupted him.
	It is exhausting to be expected to deal with frequent low-level bad behavior like this.
pollcode.com free polls

I'll Go First

Earlier this year, I participated in a workshop about diversity in hiring and retention, with all the usual discussion of implicit bias and so on and so forth. It was very well done and I appreciated the reminders and advice.

At one point in the workshop, we were divided into small groups to discuss relevant topics. My group consisted of 4 women and 1 man (all white). Although I was the only scientist in the group, it turned out that 3 of the 4 women were from fields in which women are underrepresented.

For our small-group discussions, we were told to share experiences in which we had felt that gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or other characteristic had affected how people had treated us in a professional situation. When one of the women in my group started to speak, the man interrupted her and said "I'll go first."

I laughed and got a strange look from him. I thought he was being funny and had jumped in like that to be deliberately stereotypically aggressive. He was not joking. He really wanted to go first. He had seriously interrupted the woman who started to speak because he had something really important to say (first).

His example involved living in another country years ago and having someone say something in a meeting about Americans not understanding some aspect of higher education administration in that other country. This hurt him. He felt stereotyped, and he felt that the comment was directed at him even if it was made in an apparently general way.

The stories the women told were mostly about being ignored, silenced, disrespected, overlooked, and patronized in very personal ways that in some cases affected their careers. The man nodded and said he understood, he had felt that same way when he was insulted that time years ago.

I admit that I thought his example was stupid and I thought that I would not like to be in his department. Not to be competitive or anything, but he came up with one ancient example in which his administrative prowess had been obliquely called into question. The women each had multiple recent experiences in which they had been the specific, personal target of some very unpleasant behavior by colleagues or administrators.

But then I wondered: perhaps, for the purposes of being alert to bias, the important thing is that this man believes that he had the experience of being stereotyped and feels empathy as a result? I am not advocating being disrespected as a personal growth experience for all, but I wondered if I was being too hard on him in dismissing his example as absurd.

Then I remembered that he had interrupted and insisted on going first, and I gave up on my wonderings. Perhaps my failure to respect his example shows the limitations of my empathy. And perhaps I have a lot more work to do to overcome my own biases (despite attending numerous workshops).

I left the workshop thinking: how can any of us possibly do the right thing (in the hiring process) if we are all riddled with biases, despite good intentions? Is our best hope to have large and diverse hiring committees comprised of people whose biases, implicit and overt, will mostly cancel each other out?

Tour de Forced

Lately I have been looking at those little roving clusters in campus tours with a new perspective. Over the years, I have been amused and in some cases semi-horrified by what I have overheard as campus tours passed nearby. I have been amused by the endless trove of strange trivia that tour guides impart, and semi-horrified when some of that trivia is about my department/building and is quite incorrect (not that it matters). Lately I have been looking at these groups to observe the proportion of students to parents and to see if any students look like they are on the tour without their parents. It's hard to tell of course, but I think most students go on these tours with one or both parents.

Although not something I have to face too imminently, college is looming on the horizon for my daughter, and that will mean campus tours and all the rest. My parents did not accompany me on any campus tours, but these days it seems that many parents do. I can see how the shared experience would give you something to discuss later, and that would be interesting.

Even so, I would rather walk around a campus with my daughter ± husband (not on a tour) and have her do the guided tour thing alone if she wants to go on a tour. I am not sure I could handle all that backward walking, our-rec-center-is-so-cool, the history-building-is-haunted trivia stuff.

I am surely being unfair to campus tour guides by even suggesting that all they do is spout meaningless factoids. I know that the work they do can be extremely important. I have met several people recently whose choice of college was positively or negatively affected by the campus tour guide. In fact, I recently asked a high school senior why he decided not to apply to a particular university, and he said it was because he didn't like the campus tour guide.

I still remember the tour guide at the one college to which I applied (early decision). I was very impressed by her. Did she change my life? Perhaps I would have applied and gone elsewhere for college if she had been an obnoxious bore? I don't know, but I also think my experience on the tour would have been different if my parents had been with me. I enjoyed being on my own, free to have my own impressions and then talk about them with my parents later.

I have discussed this with my daughter, and she is so-far ambivalent about being accompanied by one or more parents. She can see how the shared-experience thing might be nice, but she is also happy to have her own adventures. I told her that if she ever wants me to accompany her, I will, and I will even try to behave.

Did you go on campus tours with your parents (or other adults) and/or offspring (depending on your stage of life..)? Are you glad you did? If so, what was good about it? And if you did not go on campus tours with your parents (or other adults) and/or offspring, why not?

Price Check : You

A former PhD student of one of my colleagues recently added up the cost to their advisor/institution of their graduate education: salary, tuition, benefits for n years. It was a large number. Add to that the cost of the research (this can be considerable). Then evaluate the result, however you want to attempt to measure that in tangible or intangible ways (knowledge advanced, papers published, career opportunities for the former student).

[Note: I am talking about the typical case of a STEM graduate student who receives full support during their graduate studies -- salary, tuition, benefits. In this post I am ignoring the issue of low pay for grad students, not because I don't care about the issue but because I want to discuss other financial aspects of the grad school experience.]

In this particular case, the former student (who is not an academic and who has a successful career that involves thinking about money) was just musing about 'worth'. Was it 'worth' it to the advisor, department, institution to spend all that money on this PhD? In this particular case, the advisor's answer is yes (I happen to know), and I will take the liberty to speak on behalf of the institution and say yes as well. This is a good result.

I was impressed that the former student was interested in putting a price tag on their graduate education for the items that have specific costs. If you are in a STEM field or another field in which you are paid to be a graduate student (including as a teaching assistant), do you know how much your graduate education cost(s)? For example, if you are a graduate research assistant paid from a grant, do you know what the actual amount to the grant is (not just your salary)? You may not know, as advisors don't routinely share this information; I don't, but not because it is a secret, it just doesn't occur to me to mention it. If you are teaching assistant, your department may be paying your tuition and benefits in addition to your salary, which may or may not be the same amount as for a research assistant depending on institution-specific policies.

And how much does your research cost? You probably know (or knew) some of the costs, for example if you turned in receipts for conference travel. But do you also know the costs (rate) for any analytical, computational, or other methods that have user fees? This is not a judgmental question with a right and wrong answer; I'm just curious.

Whether those costs turn out to be 'worth' it to anyone (including you) is another question -- one that is too big a question for my post-grading brain to handle right now, though it is interesting to contemplate how each of us measures long-term worth in this particular context.

Heads or Chairs?

Whenever administrators at the department level (or moral equivalent) gather to discuss their experiences, a very common topic is whether one is a head or a chair. What is the difference and who cares?

First let me note here that I am not entirely one or the other (but will not explain that statement further), so the distinction is not one that I feel strongly about. Nevertheless, I have found myself having the heads-or-chairs conversation (or listening to discussion of the topic) a surprising number of times in the past year or so.

During one recent discussion among a group of chair-heads, it turned out that some people's definition (in this case: powerful heads vs. less-powerful chairs) did not hold up in the face of data. In fact, in a group composed of heads and chairs, there seemed to be no difference in terms of the types of activities and amount of "power" (for lack of a better word) each administrative species had. Perhaps there is a distinction within a single institution that has both heads and chairs, but any such distinctions across institutions seem to have little or no meaning. I am not even sure there are distinctions within single institutions. I know of one case in which the distinction is related to historical preference rather than to any real difference in responsibilities.

To answer the question about the difference between a head and a chair: There seems to be a belief among some that heads have more power (such as to make decisions with less consultation of faculty, committees, deans) or length of term (5±1 years versus 3 years) but in fact there may or may not be a difference at some (many?) institutions.

Who cares? Do you care? My unscientific research into this critical issues seems to indicate that heads care more than chairs. I have heard some people (n = 6) specifically note that they are a head, not a chair, but I have not heard a chair make such an emphatic distinction. Maybe administrators at higher levels care. Maybe I have met the only 6 people in the world who care. I can tell you for sure that my mother does not care.

Which one do you think sounds better? I think they both sound absurd (if you really think about it), but head is simpler because it is gender-neutral. Chair can of course be short for chairperson, but chairman is still a very common word. The easiest way to get me to claim to be a "head" is to ask me whether I prefer chairwoman, chairman, or chairperson. Ugh. None of the above.

Medieval Mind

Not long ago, I sat next to Distinguished BioMedSciProf at a luncheon meeting. We introduced ourselves (name, department, institution) and said a few slightly-more-detailed things about our areas of research expertise. I therefore knew what part of the human body/system he studied and he knew what aspect of the physical sciences I studied. We talked for quite a while, but I will mention three particular things that affected my conversational experience:

1. After explaining some basic aspects of my research, he asked, "Why hasn't all that been figured out already?" Several times in our conversation, he said things like, "Don't we already know all the important things about that?"

What does one even say to something like that? We non-bio scientists are just a bit slow? So how's it going CURING CANCER? What? You haven't done that yet?

2. Talking to him was like lopsided jousting, or like taking my oral prelims again. He fired questions at me and expected a certain answer. If he was not convinced by my response (despite having no expertise with which to judge my answers), he expressed his dissatisfaction ("That is hard to believe" etc.) and fired more questions. It was conversational torture (alert: hyperbole).

I was overall fine with this although I did not enjoy it as a conversational style. Is this one of those stereotypical male/female things in which men enjoy conversation-as-combat and women feel attacked? I didn't exactly feel attacked -- that's too strong a word -- although it was a bit exhausting. He mostly asked me questions about what he perceived I work on rather than what I really work on, but we made little progress in getting to a discussion of what I really work on. This could be because I was not a good explainer or because he was not interested in what I really work on. Either way, I think it is safe to say that he was not a good listener.

3. He said he thought he had met me before. I said I did not think we had ever met. It did not take much more exploration of this conversational thread to realize that he was confusing me with another female science professor in the physical sciences, at another university.

"No man can tell two of them apart, you see, and one name's as good as another.." The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton

Well, the quotation wasn't meant to apply to women, but from my perspective, I have very little in common with the other FSP. We are not similar in geographical location, appearance, personality, age, or research expertise (from a physical sciences perspective, anyway, but perhaps we are the same from a biosciences perspective). I know it doesn't really mean anything that he thought I was this other FSP*, but it was yet another strange little aspect of our "conversation".

* For example, in the class I am teaching now, there are 4 particular students who seem so similar that it took me 3 weeks to know them well enough to be able to distinguish them correctly and easily. I am sure it would shock them that I see such similarities; they very likely do not see any such similarities (even if they have the same hair/clothes and they have similar or identical -- in the case of two of them -- names).

Dealing with Disrespect

A reader wrote with a quandry about teaching students who are openly disrespectful. I have modified the e-mail message to remove some possibly-identifying details.

Some background: I'm a recent PhD graduate in my late 20s, working as a postdoc in a science field. The postdoc includes teaching one class a year, and I get to initiate and design the class based on my research area, which is really great. 

I've already taught this class once and it went over well. The class at that time didn't count for the major, so it was small and everyone who was taking the class was genuinely interested in the subject. I built a rapport with the students, and ended up with great evaluations that way exceeded my expectations.

This time, the class counts for the major, and my enrollment has increased to over 40. This is good, but now I have a variety of students, at least some of whom are only taking the class to complete their major.

While the students are actually better prepared on average than last year's class, they're extremely demanding -- not just about getting help understanding, which I appreciate and am happy to oblige -- but on details of how I run the class: they want me to make detailed powerpoint slides for every lecture, write practice tests, provide test outputs for their programming homework, and so on. I'm already stretched extremely thin, and besides, I don't want to spoon-feed them! My lectures are actually clearer than when I gave them last year -- and there were no complaints then -- so I don't think my teaching style should be causing problems. They also object to how I demand some degree of class participation and cold-call people for answers. 

The biggest problem I have, though, which is the real reason I'm writing to you, is that I unlike last year, I don't feel I have the respect of the majority of the students -- specifically, many of the male students. I lucked out with a niche set of students last year, but I get the sense now that many of the students have a preconception about my intelligence and ability. For example, today, I made a minor error running through the details of an algorithm. I clarified it quickly and the rest of the class went fine, but several people snickered or rolled their eyes when this happened and continued well after we were back on track. Obviously, errors and confusion in lectures are frustrating for the students, but I'm concerned they're expressing it by snickering so openly. There have been other instances -- for example, students being quick to assume I've made a mistake in writing out a formula, when it's really them misreading it.

Do you have any suggestions on gaining their respect while not being authoritarian (which I anticipate will also cause problems due to my gender)? I am very confident in my knowledge of the material, and fairly confident with leading a classroom, and these reactions are disturbing.

This reminded me of some experiences I had in my early years of teaching. I admit that I never dealt with this sort of situation in any active way. I did try to convey the impression that I was aware of the disrespect (not clueless about it) and was unimpressed by it, and I always hoped that by being calm and teaching the class the best way I knew how, the jerks would get a little bored. Sometimes this mostly worked. 

 

I think being relentlessly calm (without losing your sense of humor or passion for the subject you are teaching) is very different from being authoritarian. You can be authoritative without being authoritarian.

The only thing that really worked for me was to get significantly older than the students. That is not very satisfying as advice though.

Does anyone have any better advice? Have any of you dealt with this type of situation and found a way to silence the snickerers? Does being authoritarian work (assuming you can pull it off effectively)?

 

Academic Life is Good

Agree or disagree? (see below)

I happen to agree. Not to minimize anyone's stress in their academic job or to discount the anxieties that come with the pressure to get grants, publish papers, advise students, teach teach teach, travel, answer endless surveys from administrators who want to know about our quality of life but whose response seems to be to make life more difficult, and so on, BUT a reader writes:

.. from talking to male and female colleagues with kids, and having my daughter recently myself I find the idea that Academia is (more than other careers) hostile to family life to be hugely overblown. 

 

How many other jobs can you basically decide to set your schedule to be whatever hours you want, or even to work from home much of the time (I know several faculty members who have done this when they had young children and remain successful)? 

What other job lets you take 3 months in the summer to work on your own with few other obligations (some faculty I know work from home 4/5 days during the week in the summer)?  

What other career gives you 6 months to work from home or even another state if you want to, with no other work obligations, every 5-7 years (I know faculty who have taken a sabbatical basically to raise their infants)? 

And all of this while you are doing work you love that is intellectually stimulating, allows a standard of living well above average (and job security to rival a government job - even better at present!), and is physically safe.  

I am sick and tired of the privilege I see coming from academics.  Some people have to actually work for a living.  They work their bodies to death, and their minds to jelly because they have to.  We are lucky.  So, Damn, Lucky.  

What we need to do now, is convince more women of this and stop scaring people away with this idea that Academic science is some kind of hell that will destroy your life, your soul, and your family and any sane person would stay away...  I think maybe some people have selective memories...  It certainly doesn't seem to match with what you've described of your home life, or really that of any academic I've met. 

She Would Not Wish This On Her Nieces

From e-mail from a reader (text modified to remove possibly-identifying details):

I had traveled to a conference with some colleagues, including my husband. 

The first person who greeted us was a conference organizer. We introduced ourselves by our full names. It was a small conference and we assumed that, as an organizer, he would have looked at the list of attendees. I was greeted with a broad smile and "Oh, so you're just along for the 'ride'."

Over the next two days, my colleagues, husband, and I lost count of the number of intended and unintended gender-targeted put downs and innuendos.

My career in [this field] spans 25 years and I am often asked to become involved with groups encouraging young women in Science and Engineering. As I would not wish this environment for my own nieces, I am unable to promote STEM as a good choice for females.

Over the years, as I have attended some of the same conferences as my scientist-husband, the assumption that he is attending the conference and that I am his guest ('along for the ride') has occurred a few times, but not recently. This e-mail was a sad reminder that this still occurs. How is it that some people -- and most specifically conference organizers -- have not yet gotten the memo about how The Wife might be a scientist or engineer or mathematician?

Here is a short version of the memo, for handy reference: Don't assume.

Hawking, Dawkins, and me

It is not every day that Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, and I appear in the same essay in Nature (11 September 2013).

In fact, it was so thrilling that I did not even take exception to the fact that the journal Nature thinks I am "free from the constraints of celebrity". So that's why they don't publish more of my papers -- they don't want me to get too constrained. Thank you, Nature!

Anyway, it is a bizarre essay, and I mean that in a nice-ish way, speaking as a self-selected unconstrained blogger-person who may or may not* write about her workaday reality, but who is at least talking to herself, or the Universe, but probably not to Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins. And I am OK with that.

Hawking's recent memoir doesn't fare too well in the review by Robert Crease in Nature.

It is a concise, gleaming portrait, not unlike those issued by the public relations department of an institution.

Hawking, or perhaps his soul, is compared to a black hole. Ouch.

Other reviewers are not so harsh: Hawking comes across as an understated, hard-working, and likable physicist committed to understanding and explaining the cosmos. [Boston Globe]

I am not a memoir-reading person, so I do not have a strong opinion about whether such works should be polished, soul-baring, and/or filled with previously unknown and juicy details** about the author. I suppose the point is, however, to give a reasonably accurate picture of at least a part of one's life, although the choice of what to include or omit is likely to annoy various readers no matter what.

That is an advantage of a blog (and perhaps that is the point of the essay in Nature). I don't have to summarize my life, such as it is, in a concise way with perfect balance between the mundane (the everyday life of a scientist and teacher), the awesome (my most favorite scientific discoveries or teaching moments), the absurd (see posts on "gender-directed weirdness"), and the cats (see posts labeled "cats"). Unfortunately, blogging can be a bit of a black hole, but then so are faculty meetings, effort reporting, and filing annual grant reports on research.gov.


* phrase added to keep alive the rumor that this blog is written by cats
** My family had three identical cats named Fluffy by the time I was 9 years old; not a one of them was actually fluffy.

Irrelevant Dislikes

Although college is still quite a ways (years) away for my daughter, the onslaught of Collegiate Propaganda has begun. We get mail every day with colorful brochures. There are certain colleges that send something to her just about every week. She gets email. She gets invited to college fairs. It is non-stop college college college, probably from now until the applications are due in what still seems like the distant future.

As the child of two professors, my daughter has come to realize that her parents have Opinions about colleges and universities, and these Opinions are only somewhat-to-not useful in many (most) cases. 

Some of the college-mail that comes to our home is entertaining. One college postcard had a photo of a friend of ours on front. Some are bizarre in their slogans and/or images. This is interesting, but there is one thing that my husband and I have struggled with and will likely continue to struggle with for the foreseeable future: we must not let our opinions of the Science Department and Particular Scientists influence our daughter, who does not want to be a Scientist.

I do not always win this struggle with myself. Not long ago, my daughter saw me throwing a college brochure into the recycle bin before she had a chance to look at the brochure. She asked me why I was throwing it out. I did not have a good answer other than that I don't like one of the Science Professors at that institution. Not long ago, I was the recipient of some inappropriate touching by that person (hugging, arm-touching, deliberate bumping up against me) at a conference; I think he is a creep. There are creeps everywhere and I don't seriously think I am saving my daughter from encountering creeps by tossing out a brochure from that creep's institution, but still...I did not want that brochure sitting on my kitchen counter.

I have actually disposed of a few other brochures for institutions associated with disliked individuals in my field. Some of these incidents are not very recent. Here is an excerpt from a post in 2006 about something that happened in my academic youth:

At one interview, I gave my interviewers an updated copy of my CV, noting that the version they had was out of date because I had submitted some papers and a paper formerly in review was now in press. One of the interviewers took my new CV, slammed it on the table right in front of me, said "If you care about things like that then you CLEARLY do NOT have what it takes to teach at a place like this", and walked out of the room. I did not get that job.

I threw out the colorful postcard that came in the mail from that place. The mean interviewer is still there.

An institution that was the source of two very-high-maintenance associates? Recycle bin.

I think one of the reasons I do this is because I don't really think it matters. My daughter gets e-mail from all of these institutions, she gets multiple items in the mail from many of them (and I don't get to them all first..), and she has a mind of her own. She seems moderately entertained by her parents' Science anecdotes (some of them are even about people we like), and not at all worried that we will ruin her life with our foibles or deprive her of her dream school because we don't like a certain Science Professor she will probably never encounter. She is enjoying (so far) exploring ideas about types of institutions, fields of study, geographical locations etc., and I hope she keeps enjoying this.

I just can't promise I won't recycle the thing that comes in the mail from the university of that Scientist who wrote that mean review of one of my papers three years ago.

Room With A Table

To state the obvious: not all classrooms are created equal. Students may have strong feelings about their classrooms (types and arrangement chairs, writing surfaces, boards, screens; sight lines, acoustics, lighting etc.), and professors do as well. And although there are certainly rooms that are better than others, what works well for one class might not work well for another so any one classroom might be good or not good depending on the class/professor.

Several times in my teaching career, I have requested and been initially assigned a "good" classroom (one that works well for the class I am going to teach), only to be reassigned at the last minute to a "not good" classroom. To the casual observer, the differences in these rooms may be quite subtle, so I may seem like an unreasonable complainer when I object, but a room with chairs in rows is very different from a room with chairs around a table. A room that is a 12-second walk from my office is very different from a room that is a 12-minute walk from my office. A room with projection equipment is very different from a room with no projection equipment, and a room with a giant touch-screen TV is very different from a room without.. and so on.

You may have guessed that a classroom reassignment happened to me recently, and your guess would be correct. Another annoying thing about this late reassignment is that I had spent some time over the summer specifically preparing teaching activities for the room to which I had been originally assigned. Much of this time was wasted because my actual classroom does not (and cannot) have the same features as the original room.

A classroom re/assignment is not a neutral thing; just because a certain room will fit the number of students enrolled in the class does not mean that the class will "fit" in that room.

But I don't want to be (too) cranky so early in the new academic year. I am disgruntled about this particular issue but overall quite excited about teaching one of my favorite courses.

Imported Talent

The topic of a recent email to me involved a male science professor who wanted to find a female science professor to talk to his female students "about being a woman in the sciences and work/life balance". The MSP did not write to me; the woman he asked for help wrote to me. She was not having much luck finding a local FSP who would participate in this, so this institution was willing to pay to bring someone in. This is all very well-meaning etc. etc. but I would like to make the unoriginal, non-radical suggestion that women should not be singled out to talk about work/life balance, either as givers or receivers of information on Family Issues, even by well-intentioned men.

I hasten to say that I am quite supportive of groups of women who voluntarily get together to discuss issues related to being a woman in science and I don't mind (too much) being asked to talk about these things at "pizza lunches" with female students, postdocs, and others (although I would like to see these become less common and necessary). I also hasten to say that I know very little about the particular situation described in the recent email; maybe the women students specifically asked the male professor to organize something involving FSPs and he asked around to see if some colleagues could help. OK, fine. It is good to meet possible role models, especially if few are available locally.

What would be a bit troubling (and may or may not be relevant to the specific situation that inspired this post) is if the MSP didn't think that men would be useful participants in a discussion of work/life balance, either as givers or receivers of information.

Whatever the case: what to do? Because these topics are so complex and vary so much from person to person, it might be useful to have a panel discussion involving FSPs and MSPs, and open to all students. Another option would be to find out what the questions and concerns of the students are, and then compile information from online resources (blogs etc.), or whatever else might be relevant. Certainly many blogs, including this one, welcome questions and comments, so there could even be some interactive discussion. Or maybe this blog is not the best candidate for this, as my opinions of work/life balance as a discussion topic are summarized here.

Anyway, maybe male and female students have some different questions and concerns, but I think both would likely benefit from having an integrated discussion with people who have had different work/life paths and who view these issues in different ways. 

Tell All

From a reader seeking your comments:

"I am currently on my 4th postdoc position and still have a 4 years left on my current fellowship. I've decided that I don't want to continue moving around, even for a permanent position. If a position opens up in my current town, I will apply, otherwise I plan to look for a job outside of academia in a few years time. Several people have contacted me with further fellowships or jobs positions abroad that they encourage me to apply to. Some of these people are current collaborators. My question is, how do I let them know that I don't want to apply to these jobs, without risking losing my collaborations over the next 4 years? I feel that if I let people know my true intentions, they will write me off as 'leaving academia', stop collaborating with me, inviting me to conferences etc... Even if I do eventually do something else, I still want the next 4 years to be productive scientifically, yet don't want to apply to places I have no intention of going to for that to happen. "

It is always tricky giving advice with only partial information about the context and people, but, as usual, let's not let that stop us. One possibility is to imagine this scenario in the context of our own collaborations and speculate about what we would want this person to do if we were working with them. Using that approach, this is what I think:

You should not apply for jobs you have absolutely no intention of taking no matter what. If you were merely leaning towards staying where you are but could possibly move for a great job, then it is worth applying anyway and seeing what happens. But if there is 0.00000% chance of your accepting another academic job if offered, I recommend not applying.

I realize that advice leads you to a situation of having to explain to your colleagues why you are not applying for academic jobs, but I also think you should be open with your colleagues about your decision. If I were your collaborator, I would keep working with you for the next few years but would know not to plan on doing so in the long-term (assuming your non-academic job wouldn't involve such collaborations). In fact, I am reminded of a situation years ago when a colleague of mine left academia but we kept working together for a while to wrap up a project. This was fine with me, and I appreciated having some notice because it affected my plans regarding proposals, students, postdocs and so on.

There are likely to be some conflicting views in the comments (I hope!), but perhaps seeing a range of opinions will nevertheless help this reader wrestle with the options and come to a good decision for this particular situation.

Not A First Class Guy

Owing to my frequent travels with a certain airline, I have a certain 'status' that has some nice features that make travel possibly bearable. Every once in a while I have to travel with another airline for which I am a nobody, and I know how soul-sucking it is to deal with the long lines and little seats all crammed together at the back of a plane in which every overhead bin has been (over)stuffed by those allowed to board first.

Anyway, my sympathy for the non-frequent flyers does not extend to my wanting to join them in misery, so I take full advantage of shorter lines and simpler security procedures whenever posssible. However, to get to the Premium Elite Special Place at check-in/security, I have to get past a gate-keeper.

I understand the purpose of the gate-keeper. I see them turn away people who are not allowed in the hallowed grounds of the Premium Elite Special Place and who need to be directed elsewhere. The gate-keeper helps keep the Premium Elite Special Place uncrowded and efficient. I hope they would let someone in who really needed a short line in order to make their flight, but I admit that overall I am glad to be able to get through check-in and/or security in a reasonable amount of time for most flights.

Over the years, I have become resigned to having to show my special-status card and having it scrutinized to make sure that I really am allowed to enter that special zone. I have become resigned to traveling with colleagues who do not have to show their card or who just flash their card quickly to gate agents who then stop me so that I can prove my worthiness to entire the Premium Elite Special Place. This is a very minor inconvenience, and I can usually get over the fleeting feeling of micro-humiliation by reminding myself of the alternative.

And yet this bothered me on my travel this week: As usual, I had to show my card, it was examined closely to make sure that it was not an expired card etc., and I was allowed in. The man behind me saw what I had to do and started to get out his card. The gate-keeper said to him, loudly and with apparent unconcern that I was a meter away and would hear: "I don't need to see YOUR card, sir. You LOOK like a first-class guy."

Memo to Airlines: Consider adding to your training of these gate agents some instructions about not blatantly insulting middle-aged women who do not look like "first-class guys". 

Little did I know that this minor little irritation with a certain airline would be dwarfed by what happened during the rest of the trip, but that is another story.