Lab Packrat

dmAgent: “So, Postdoc B, what’d BigCheez have to say to you today”
PdB: “Huh. Now that you mention it this is the first time BigCheez has ever directly smiled at me…”
I don’t really get the phenotype myself. My type of work doesn’t really lend itself to the pathological hoarder of lab reagents. Apparently they are somewhat common though. You know the one. The lab member who orders stuff and then…well, hoards it. Won’t give you any even though there’s plenty on hand. Even though it’ll take a few days to order some more (oh by the way it isn’t exactly cheap, you know) and the lab colleague could get the experiment done this afternoon.
So what do you do?

Academic Promises

Sciencewoman has a nice post up detailing the process she went through to obtain research funds she was orally promised during negotiations for her tenure-track faculty position. Once she came on faculty, and sought fulfillment of this oral promise, she banged up against an immutable fact of academia:

As soon as I settled into my office and wrote my syllabi, I went to my chair to find out about getting the rest of my start-up funds. Chair was somewhat amnesiac and non-committal, but he suggested that I could put in a request to our department’s budget and equipment committee.

WTF!? How did a “promise” turn into “put in a request”?

Impact Factor Trends at the GlamourMags

This one is for the impact factor geeks. The ever engaging Lou of A scientist’s life has posted a graph reviewing the changes in the impact factors of Cell, Nature and Science from 1992-2006.
You’ll have to click through for the full graph but gee, there was a lot of action 2000-2002 wasn’t there? We don’t usually think of the relative rankings as being quite so….dynamic, over such short intervals, do we? Or is that just me since I never really pay attention to trends in any serious way.
This highlights yet another absurdity in the process of judging a CV by reviewing the journals listed. I can’t imagine anyone noting the publication year and mentally adjusting relative rankings by changes in absolute or relative Impact Factor. Maybe we should just go ahead and start itemizing CV entries with the appropriate IF for the relevant publication year?