Any of y’all blogonauts attending EB 2008 ? If we get quorum we can schedule a little social or something. drop me a line

drugmnky-ATAZ-gmail-DOTTYDOT-com

Everyone is already all over this but Abel Pharmboy liveblogged his vasectomy yesterday. As the DM noted at the new digs, this was a Public Service Announcement:

But the very serious part of this post is to educate men on how mild a vasectomy is relative to tubal ligation in their female partner. As I said, this is the least I could do in return for my wife’s true suffering in bringing our lovely daughter into this world.

What some people will do for the greater good…

In a bitter sweet moment, I announce that we are bringing activities on drugmonkey.wordpress.com to a close.

Thanks to you DearReader. It has been a fun and very memorable ride on DrugMonkey over this past year. I started out with the intent to talk about careers in NIH-funded biomedical science generally and the subfields of drug abuse science in particular. Through this I’ve learned a great deal, both by trying to get coherent thoughts together for a blog entry and in reading the comments of readers from a broad set of backgrounds.

Along the way I picked up co-blogger PhysioProf, whom I can’t thank enough. The insightful perspectives and clearly outlined career advice has taught me a lot, as I expect it has you Readers as well.

BikeMonkey’s contribution were less of a “pickup” since the BM’s views had been a touchstone for my blogging all along the way. Nevertheless, thanks for providing that slightly more colorful tone to the blog.

You may at this point be wondering why it was so important for me to get your views on the past year of blogging. Why indeed? Well, to skip 1,000 words:

Yes, DrugMonkey the blog has been assimilated by the Borg. The PhysioProf and I will be continuing our discussions over there for the coming year. We do hope you will join us at www.scienceblogs.com/drugmonkey. Go easy though, there’s going to be a learning curve. And more “working through blogging issues” stuff. The intent is to stick more or less with the same blogging, so I’m sure you’ll keep us on the straight and narrow, DearReader.

[The WordPress blog will remain here for now. I have no plans to delete it. Time will tell if it makes sense to shift the archive or to maintain this blog home for the occasional odd purpose.]

DM, I’m looking in your direction. Anyway, Chris Rowan of Highly Allochthonous has a bit on the new Nature Geophysics journal. For the usual bioscience audience around these parts, I think you will see some familiar themes emerge and one comment that goes a bit off the path:

 my own initial response to almost any article in Nature or Science is to treat it the same as I would an infomercial: claims presumed false until I see supporting communications or have a chance at my own interpretation of the data presented

Of course, one wonders what it is to “have a chance at [ones' own] interpretation of the data” if not, err, reading the paper?

DrugMonkey’s post today is an excellent introduction to the topic of how a post-doc might choose to organize experimental/conceptual effort as a post-doc to maximize the appearance on the CV–and, hopefully, the reality–that she is an independent thinker capable of being PI of her own lab. I have a few illustrations and amplifications on his post below the fold.

He is correct that working on exactly the same kind of stuff that the PI is already known for raises the question of who really drove the research. The answer could turn out to be “the post-doc”, but it raises the question right on the face of the post-doc’s CV. DrugMonkey provides examples of a few ways in which a post-doc can pursue a project that leads to first-author publications that make it manifest–through their content–that the post-doc likely did play a leadership role in conception and execution of the research project.

Here I’d like to give another example. One way for a post-doc to distinguish herself as capable of captaining her own ship is to develop a novel collaborative project using a technique that arises out of the work of one lab to pursue a scientific question that arises out of the work of another. If successful, this research project results in a first-author paper on the CV with the post-doc as first author, and the final two authors being PIs of the two different labs, with the subject of the paper being novel from the standpoint of technique vis a vis one lab and novel from the standpoint of scientific question vis a vis the other. (This works even better if either the technique or the scientific question (or, even more better, both) are novel vis a vis both labs.)

And here’s just a little digression into how to plan a robust, diversified post-doctoral research program. Every post-doc needs a balanced portfolio of research projects to be working on, not just a single one. The reason is that post-docs (and PIs, but that is a post for another day) need to always be simultaneously engaged in multiple projects with a range of coordinately, but oppositely, varied risks of failure and rewards of successful. You have at least a few projects ranging from low-risk low-reward, on the one hand, to high-risk high-reward, on the other. The low-risk low-reward stuff should be from the core of the PI’s pre-existing research competence, while the high-risk high-reward stuff should be speculative projects built around the technique/question collaborative model described above. You pray for hits on the high-risk high-reward end–and if and when you do smell a hit, you should shift time and resources from the low-risk low-reward end–but you rely on the low-risk low-reward end to keep the bread buttered.

Further unpacking of the technique/question collaborative model: What you hope for is ultimately a first-author paper that establishes the utility of a new technique as a novel and useful way to address an important scientific question thus leading to an important insight in the field encompassing that question. The paper will, of course, be written using the rhetorical structure of hypothesis testing. But frequently, what actually happens is that you decide to try a new technique in the context of a particular model system, just to see what happens. (If the technique is completely novel–i.e., hasn’t been successfully utilized in any system–then the experiment is a first proof of principle that the technique is useful.) To the extent that the results are consistent with conceptual understanding of how the technique ought to operate, they establish utility of the technique, and to the extent that there are surprising aspects to the results, they represent novel tests of a hypothesis (or hypotheses).

These things are good for people who read your CV to come away thinking, for at least two reasons. First, it suggests that you have the capacity, at minimum, to combine techniques and scientific questions in a novel way that is prima facie independent, as taken as a whole it is outside the pre-existing scope of any one of the two labs. Second, the project opens up a new area for continued research involving the application of the technique (itself possibly novel) in a new area, an open area that is not already wholly subsumed in the ongoing work of either of the two labs. This indicates an arena in which a newly independent PI could operate, if not not freely from the two post-doc labs, at least equally, and not at the disavantage of competing with a former mentor in an area of her core competence.

One amplifying point is that there are other important mechanisms besides the face of the CV for conveying information about a post-docs contributions to her published manuscripts. DrugMonkey mentioned a few, which include letters of reference from (and more casual comments made by) post-doctoral mentor(s) or, even more powerfully, from disinterested PIs working in the relevant field(s), but not personally vested in the success of the post-doc. (These are the kinds of letters, incidentally, that play a huge role in the tenure/promotion process.)

But there is a key method for conveying this information that DrugMonkey didn’t mention (at least I don’t think he did), and that is the development and promulgation by the post-doc herself of a compelling narrative that describes the genesis of the project in a way that is both truthful and fully indicative of the post-doc’s independent role in its genesis and implementation. The post-doc needs to present this narrative as frequently as possible in the relevant scientific community to “get it out there” into the minds of her colleagues. This sounds like cheap smarmery, but it doesn’t have to be.

If the project itself is quite interesting, incoporating a novel technique and/or application of an existing technique in a new context, then people will ask you about its genesis and implementation. This will happen at meetings, either in front of posters or in casual conversation at bars and restaurants, and also when on faculty job interviews. The narrative can be presented in the chalk talk, in one-on-one meetings with interviewing faculty, and at lunches/dinners with interviewing faculty. These people, in particular, want to hear your narrative, as they have a great perceived interest in figuring out how the project really was conceived and implemented.

This narrative needs to satisfy several constraints simultaneously, and must therefore be carefully crafted and delivered consistently (the idea being to have a single consistent narrative propagated into the relevant scientific community via multiple vector indididuals, thus lending it additional credence). These constraints are: (1) that it is truthful; (2) that it is at least broadly consistent with the outlines of what one can expect to be said by other knowledgable parties–participating PIs and other scientific personnel, as well as colleagues who have inside information; (3) that it is laudatory of the PIs’ roles in genesis and execution (of both labs); and (4) that it makes very apparent the post-doc’s capacity for an independent and critical role in captaining her own ship.

Of those four constraints, (1), (2), and (4) are self-evident, but what’s the deal with (3)? Wouldn’t it be best to state, if it is true, that both PIs are witless boobs who would never have been able to conceive of or execute the project without the incredible drive and talent of the post-doc? Uh, no. First, no PI is going to perceive herself that way, let alone talk about herself that way, so your narrative will likely be broadly inconsistent with those of the mentor PIs.

Second, it is unseemly to bad-mouth one’s mentor (unless they are a truly unethical person, and one needs to explain an unsavory situation or defend one’s own honor against false claims), even if they are all the bad things that YoungFemaleScientist complains about: lazy, stupid, credit-hogs, parasites, uncreative, etc. You want to construct a narrative that acknowledges the fertile conceptual, technical, and infrastructural environment that the PI(s) created for the genesis and performance of the work, but also contains a key driving role for you, the post-doc, in making the conception and exectution of the project occur. (And yes, however much credit you think your mentor PI deserves for the project, there is virtually no question whatsoever that they actually, objectively deserve more.)

If you bad-mouth your mentor absent some objectively egregious circumstance, you demonstrate a lack of respect for the continuity of scientific lineages and, to put it bluntly, your scientific elders. You also make it clear that you will bad-mouth even those whose goodwill and support you really need, which raises the question, “Who wouldn’t you bad-mouth?”

Get that positive narrative out there, get enough people accepting it, and you have gone a substantial way towards enhancing your reputation as an independent thinker worthy of captaining her own ship, but also as a gracious and grateful trainee who understands the key role that receiving effective mentorship has played in her own career, and thus is poised to deliver effective mentorship in turn to her own trainees as PI of her new lab. A savvy hiring process is going to look closely at every possible predictor it can identify for whether a candidate is likely to be a decent mentor, as this has a huge influence on the likelihood of success of the new PI’s research program.

One final point: The argument can, and probably will, be made that one can learn how to be an effective mentor by virtue of having had a piss-poor mentor, and focusing on doing the opposite, and that the post-doc can make a case for her own independence and likelihood of future mentoring skill by explicitly relying on this. This is, in my opinion, a bad idea, as some assessors might feel that one cannot learn to be a good mentor from a bad mentor through some complementarity mechanism, and thus might consider the post-doc with an assertedly poor mentor to be poorly trained in mentoring. Those assessors may very well be correct. A post-doc who perceives her position to be akin to YoungFemaleScientist’s–mentor is stupid, ignorant, lazy, uncreative, uninterested, not around, selfish, greedy, self-aggrandizing, etc–would do well to find a decent post-doctoral mentor (they are out there) or, at a minimum, to try to construct a public narrative concerning their mentorship that accentuates the positive and elides the negative.

One bugaboo of scientific transition, and gaining respect in the field in which one works, is the concept of scientific “independence”. In a prior post I tried to grapple with the question of why we care about independence. Now I want to get into how the postdoc/senior research associate / (very) junior faculty scientists can work to demonstrate independence.

The first essential concepts are that you want to establish evidence on your CV, of the type that people understand when looking for such evidence, that you have more intellectual and functional independence from the PI than the average bear. Second, that you want to convince people who are in a position to testify about you of your independence. These are distinct issues and you will need each type of support in different circumstances, even though much of this is interrelated.

As with everything, publication is key to the hard CV evidence of your independence. “Well, duh!”, you say. In this context, however, we are looking to go a little beyond the usual of “publish as much as you can, in as high ImpactFactor journals as you can, with your name as close to the first position as possible”. The point is that even in very small labs there are usually a couple of “domains” of research going on at a given time. This may be defined by techniques, by topic, by species or other model features. In drug abuse, for example, one might have the “opiate” project and the “cocaine” project. Perhaps the self-administration models, the intracerebral microdialysis or the drug-discrimination models. The rat project, the mouse work or even the Drosophila work. Now the smart trainee, on joining a lab, is going to look around for the “hottest” stuff to work on. The stuff that has the PI’s attention, that is funded, that has the best prospects of publishable data coming along quickly and that has the chance of going “highest” in eventual journal. This is not always so good for independence.

Obviously, all of the trainees in the lab are coming to similar conclusions. Meaning that authorship position will be competitive and a given trainee might end up with a single first-author pub, maybe another 2nd author pub and a few mid-author pubs. If lucky. Meanwhile, said trainee is also jumping into some of the “other”stuff going on to get additional (middle) authorships because you have to pump up that CV, right? The trouble is that years later when someone is trying to evaluate the “independence” of the trainee, it is difficult to tell just what that scientist does. What have been her consistent contributions? Is he just there for a single model applied to a series of papers? A glorified one-trick-pony tech rather than an independent scientist? Although it flies in the face of advice for “interdisciplinary” and “translational” research (and can eventually lead to critique that an independent scientist is a “one trick pony”) at least from the perspective of grant review and generalized recognition within a field, a postdoc should have a series of pubs on the CV that tell a very clear story that s/he is interested in this specific scientific problem or issue.

So what can a postdoc do? Well I’m certainly not going to suggest not getting a middle-authorship when available. All things equal. As we know, however, things are rarely equal. Meaning that effort spent on that middle-author contribution might be better spent honing one’s own “domain”. That one should be thinking about “hotting up” the work that is of interest to oneself first, rather than riding the main stream of the lab. Of recruiting the PIs interest in your selected area of the lab. Give up a couple of IF levels just to make sure that “your” stuff actually gets published sometime soon. The principles are really the same as the general ones governing the development of your CV with the adjustment that you are focusing on the idea of a single scientific domain.

Horsetrading. A bit seamy, yes, but authorship horsetrading goes on all the time. We’ve discussed this before. Arguments over who gets what authorship position or who takes on what project abound. The “independence” issue may give you some perspective over what compromises you should be making. Is it worth abandoning that second-author (with symbol!) position on a paper out of your primary domain to lock down first-author on something within your domain? Sure. Worth letting someone do “your technique” applied to question Y so that you can do “their” technique applied to your question X? Yes.

A little DM vignette. For various fortuitous reasons YHN came out of the last postdoctoral stop with his name as first author on a fairly good proportion of the papers from a little “run” the PIs group was having in a particular area. Said PI had a rather broad set of studies going on such that it would have been easy to have distinct “audiences” which may not be aware of said PI’s other stuff. Also keep in mind that there are pockets of my field where the PI first-authors quite a bit. At one point shortly after I’d been appointed, YHN’s prior PI was walking around a poster session chatting with some trainee who said “Hey, Dr. PI, didn’t you used to work in DrugMonkey’s group“?

The point being that you should be thinking about the way things are going to “look” to the larger community, ofttimes many years later.

Another example of choices to be made is detailed by Lou of A scientist’s life. A recent post ponders the fate of a postdoc training with a PI who has left on long term medical leave.

But the problem is that now, the postdoc is on a free reign. That shows the amount of trust the PI has in him, but is it good for the postdoc?

So this opens up a question.
To leave or not to leave.

As for the postdoc… I don’t think he realises that this particular situation is not good for him. I don’t think he has the capability of churning out decent work without his boss, and I certainly don’t think he has enough work to publish.

In most cases, my advice is “seize the opportunity”. As in the chance to build a legitimate case for the statement that you would like to have in rebuttal to the StockCritique of “hasn’t yet demonstrated independence”. Which btw, you are going to get. Regardless. Reviewers just loooove this one. It is, IMO, a very strong rebuttal to be able to say “The big PI was on 9 mo of medical leave during which the applicant ran the day-to-day operations of the research program….supervised the X grad students, Y tech and Z junior post docs … time during which we generated the Preliminary Data….these 3 publications for which the applicant is communicating author”. Etc. The ability to make this sort of statement, backed up by the on-leave PIs letter if possible, is pure gold. Well worth a bit of lost opportunity in terms of slightly better/more publications that might result from jumping ship. YMMV of course. If Lou’s assessment is correct, that the postdoc is really not ready to captain the ship for a while, then of course this isn’t the right call. But if a postdoc past about year 3 isn’t ready for this type of opportunity, even if it is a “challenge” for her, well, said postdoc may not ever “be ready”. IMO.

A final bit on the more subjective perception of independence. This is getting lengthy so I may have another go at this part of the topic later. At any rate, a previous discussion we were having about why go to conferences and why become a member of academic societies speaks to the “personal testimonial from senior figures” issue. You should attend meetings. Period. While getting platform talks burnishes the ego and is an important thing for broad visibility, the action on “independence” front is at the posters. This is where the senior figures come to find that the postdoc really IS the expert in this area of the lab, that the PI either isn’t there or is standing around to schmooze while the postdoc handles the science.

I already did the “out with the Old” and the maudlin things. Now it is time for “in with the New”. It’s a New Year and it will soon be a new year of DrugMonkey.

So in shameless solicitation of our own little Sally Fields moment, DearReaders, would you be so kind as to supply some thoughts on the first year of DrugMonkey? [Update 1/16/08: Although WP doesn't do sticky, I'm re-time stamping this. I got my reasons...; Update2: and "sticky" again.]

Why do you read?

What categories of discussion do you come back for?

Do you have a favorite post or discussion thread?

What make you say WTF? and go elsewhere?

What would you like to see more of in the way of discussion?

Does the blogosphere fit into your professional engagement as a scientist, academic or other?

Which blogs do you read that it seems as though we don’t and should? (hmm, I never did do the Blogrolling thing, did I?)

In short DearReader (and especially you Lurkers, no email necessary), fire away!

The draft of NIDA’s next “Strategic Plan” is now open for comment:

The public is invited to review this draft plan and provide comments via email to stratplan@nida.nih.gov or mail to:

National Institute on Drug Abuse
Attn: Draft Strategic Plan
6001 Executive Blvd.
Suite 5213, MSC 9561
Bethesda, MD 20892-9561

Comments must be emailed or postmarked by February 6, 2008.

Sheep cloner Ian Wilmut, Knighted. Vision neuroscientist and recent MRC head Colin Blakemore, stiffed for being “too controversial”.

I don’t understand these British things…

I posted on John Edwards views on medical marijuana before, here’s Mike Huckabee fielding a similar question:

[h/t: Kendra Campbell of The Differential]