Who says scientists aren’t creative?

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Steve Caplan

One of the things that people tends to think about scientists is that we are all machine-like robots who are technically advanced, but without an ounce (or gram) of creativeness.

I’m planning in this brief blog to dispel this criticism with a few choice counterpoints, followed by “the mother-of-all-examples” from my own work. Yes, I am bragging, and you’ll see my creativeness if you bear with me.

But first, OT and it’s bloggers and followers are a prime example of creativeness. Each blog is uniquely creative, thoughtful, didactic, scholarly, humbling and humorous. Or any combination of the above. And we are all scientists! There are authors, chess-players, film makers, photographers and artists among us. But if these examples still don’t convince you, how about this:

I’ve been suffering for a long time from a really awful e-mail system that our university is finally about to discard–known as “Lotus Notes.” It’s particularly poorly adapted for those of us who use Macintosh computers, although it’s not exactly a treat for PC users either. In any case, we are finally migrating in a few weeks to a new system called Microsoft Entourage, which is supposed to interface well for Macs. Whatever the case, it certainly can’t be worse than the current situation.

Allow me to explain how lousy this “Notes” system really is: At home, outside of my “Client” or office computer, access is of course through the internet. In logging in to “Lotus Notes” I find that my inbox shows roughly the last 20 e-mails that have come in. Not unusual. But what if I want to retrieve and reply to an e-mail I received this morning, about 27 e-mails ago? Simple, silly. Just scroll down.

What?! Or eh?! (for you Brtis and Canucks) How does one scroll down? Simple, just use the arrows or the mouse. Uhhh, but that doesn’t work. It doesn’t? Oh, well, go into the “Lite Mode” instead of the “Full Mode.”

Problem solved! No! “Full Mode” doesn’t help one iota. Now let’s get creative! So my first creative solution was to click “command -” (apple minus) to decrease the font size. Hurray! Now I can get more e-mails on the page. But what if I need to go back 45 e-mails to reply to one? Make it smaller again. And again. See this period? (.) Well, it could be an entire letter–I can’t read it either. This method means you need a microscope to read your e-mails. perhaps a confocal, or electron microscope… Won’t do.

Be creative! How can a scientist solve the problem?

Here’s what I do: I find the e-mail (45 e-mails ago) on my BlackBerry, and forward it to myself. Now it appears at the very top of my “Lotus Notes” e-mail inbox. Brilliant, eh? Great use of my time. Lovely.

So while I am excited about perhaps no longer having to depend on my own creative solutions to function from home and outside my work office, there is a catch: the new system will not work well with BlackBerry. That scares me for obvious reasons. However, it is supposed to be well coordinated with Iphones. So I may have to switch loyalties–never tried one of those new-fangled gizmos.

Any comments or suggestions for a potential new Iphone buyer/user?

Be creative!

Posted in humor, research, science | Tagged , , , | 32 Comments

Interpreting Reference Letters–Lost in Translation?

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Steve Caplan

As a principal investigator, or PI, one of the tasks that I am consistently faced with is “interpretation.” How so? Well obviously, my job revolves around interpreting data and trying to understand if experiments done by my students and co-workers really do support or rule out hypotheses that we have proposed.

However, the role of a PI in interpreting extends far beyond data. It can be interpreting the mood of  a student, or his/her motivation. It can be in interpreting the comment of a collaborator–on the phone, e-mail or in person–as to whether they are enthusiastic about a given project. And it can, and often is, about interpreting reviewers’ critiques regarding manuscripts or grant proposals submitted. I hope to expand on the latter two issues in some upcoming blogs.

Today, I would like to focus on another form of interpreting–one that needs to be honed to a fine art form, and can be rather tricky–interpreting reference (recommendation) letters. In the 8 years since I have been in this position, I have come across thousands of such letters: recommendation letters for students to gain acceptance to our Ph.D. graduate program, letters on behalf of potential post-doctoral fellows eager to gain employment, letters in support of candidates for faculty positions in our department. In my role as reviewer, I have also examined recommendation letters for students and post-doctoral fellows who have submitted fellowship applications. Okay. Enough, you say. I’ve convinced you that I’ve read (and written) my share of these letters. SO what?!

The point that I want to make is that interpreting recommendation letters is a fine art that needs to be honed. Moreover, there are huge cultural differences when reading letters from across the pond, or from other parts of the globe.

US recommendation letters, for the most part, are extremely diplomatic. They follow the old axiom “If you can’t say something nice about a person, then don’t say it.” What this means is that the reviewer needs to proceed with extreme caution. Why? Because it’s not what’s in the letter, but what’s missing that’s important!

An example: if a letter discusses an excellent student, who is extremely determined, very bright, and excellent speaker and writer–but ends with this short description–then an American PI will have the impression that perhaps this student doesn’t get on well with his/her colleagues. So a nuanced reviewer needs to constantly look for whatever is lacking. On the other hand,  so-called minor issues such as “despite being in the country a short time, the student has done a good job catching up in language” will often mean the person can’t speak a word of English!

So PIs in the US become accustomed to looking at a checklist of qualities, and taking special note of anything that is either understated (ie., “the student is good at writing” will generally mean the student can’t string 3 words together in a row), or worse, missing altogether from the letter.

As it turns out, this is not a universally accepted way of writing and interpreting such letters: in Israel, and I believe in many European countries, the system is far more direct. PIs will give a more candid assessment of applicants, often highlighting out their good and not-so-good traits. An American PI reading a recommendation letter from Israel or Europe that notes “the student is outstanding in work at the bench, but needs some guidance conceptually” will undoubtedly conclude that this student can’t think and plan his/her own experiments. However, the referee writing this letter may only be noting that the student fares better with some guidance and discussion and isn’t yet fully independent.

Meanwhile, a European PI receiving a post-doctoral application from an American-based student may be surprised at how the student is so “overwhelmingly outstanding” in every category listed, not realizing that because communication skills are not addressed in the letter that the student might actually be essentially illiterate!

Expanding on these cultural differences, I suppose the worst danger for a student or post-doc would be to move with his/her PI from Europe to a lab in the US, and to look for a job in the US before the recently moved PI has had a chance to catch up culturally. The newly migrated PI might think he/she is writing a strong supporting letter, but eventually find out (when the student doesn’t receive any interviews or job offers) that “one man’s strong recommendation letter is another man’s weak letter.”

Posted in Education, research, science | Tagged , , | 15 Comments

If these data were in a grant, it wouldn’t be funded

Posted on February 2, 2012 by Steve Caplan

Harping on my chronic lack of time this month due to a hectic schedule, I am going to post a quick laconic blog featuring a little something that I noticed in the freezer. I stay away from these frozen ice cream goodies, but I noticed the empty box sitting in the freezer when looking for something else.

Tasty treats that I try to avoid

 

According to my spouse, it’s purely a male trait to empty containers in the refrigerator/freezer, so my son must be the guilty party.

In any case, as I was heading for the recycling bin, I couldn’t resist congratulating how much fat I had avoided eating. So I looked at the “fat per serving,” and then looked again. They had it listed twice: per single bar, or per two bars. What are we consumers, stupid? They need to calculate how much fat there is if we eat either one bar of ice cream or two per ‘serving’?

measuring fat content: this ice cream company needs a new calculator

That’s what they did! With one slight problem: if you look at their calculations, while 1 bar is 52 grams and 2 bars are 104 grams, and 1 bar has 190 calories and 2 bars have 380, saturated fat has an unusual property; it increases disproportionally!

So while eating 1 bar provides an astonishing 40% of one’s daily recommended saturated fat, 2 bars provide 85%. How does that work, exactly?

I don’t know, but if these were data provided in a grant proposal, it sure wouldn’t get funded!

post script note: Fuzzy math: how is 35 mg of sodium equal to 1% of the daily recommended sodium for 1 bar, and then with 2 bars it becomes 65 mg sodium that is now 3%?

Posted in humor, science | Tagged , , | 39 Comments

BLOG # 100: Professional lecturers–good or bad?

Posted on January 21, 2012 by Steve Caplan

I can’t believe this is my 100th blog!

Thanks to everyone at OT for putting up with me!

In today’s world of dwindling scientific funding across many parts of the globe, one issue that seems to be more frequently discussed is that of professional teachers at universities and colleges.

What do I mean? I mean the hiring of faculty at academic institutions whose job description is relegated designated (this editorial change added in admission to an originally poor word choice that doesn’t reflect my thoughts that teaching is less important!) exclusively to the goal of education. In the US at least, this is not such a foreign concept. After all, there are many colleges (the distinction between “college” and “university” being that only the latter has the research that would allow graduate programs for masters and doctoral degrees) that have no real ongoing research; just some undergraduate research for the purpose of education.

Is this in itself a bad thing at these colleges? In my view, certainly not. This type of education provides a rounded out science education even for those students who will never walk into a lab–who are committed to arts and humanities. But, you might ask, what about those students who are potentially interested in science careers?

I don’t have a good answer to that. Data and statistics are lacking (or I don’t have access to them), and my own experiences are both anecdotal and varied. On the one hand, I have seen outstanding graduate students whose scientific training comes from such colleges, where the teachers are entirely education-based, but not research-oriented. I have also seen weak students. It seems to depend more on the student than the college. And guess what? That’s not exactly surprising.

My own experience at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (eons ago) was with teachers whose primary raison d’etre was research. Does that mean we received better instruction? I doubt it. Some of the teachers were often harried, busy, disinterested in teaching and doing it only because they were forced to teach. The curriculum was often disjointed. At the time, southern, northern and western blots were the newest technology (yes, I’m that old!), and EVERY instructor spent a class explaining these techniques without bothering to find out if they had been taught already. BORING! On the other hand, other teachers were brilliantly organized, and their ability to relate classroom material to some of their own research REALLY excited me. So for undergraduates, the more didactic teaching will probably be better coming from professional teachers (as opposed to researchers), yet the experience of learning from a good instructor who is also a researcher should not be undervalued.

What about graduate and medical students (early, non-clinical training)? The consensus in the US has been that  Ph.D. researchers are the best qualified to teach these 2 groups of students. I think it’s still well accepted that graduate students need to be taught by active researchers. With medical students, things seem to be changing. True, for many years universities have often employed faculty-instructors to teach such complicated and demanding areas as anatomy. But many universities still have active researchers teaching basic physiology, immunology, microbiology, biochemistry, genetics, etc. But this is starting to change. Not so much because universities are hiring faculty specifically for such teaching, but because increasing numbers of researchers are having difficulties keeping their research enterprises up and running. As a result, they end up making a switch with their primary contributions being shuffled from research to education. And while this in itself is not a bad thing, it does concern me that so many talented people–with so much research training–are being forced to reassess their careers.

As for me–I don’t mind teaching, but for now I am hoping to stay in the research business for a while. Unless one of my books becomes a best-seller. Then we’ll see. Perhaps I can use the royalties to fund my research instead of writing grant applications. Wouldn’t that be fun?!

Posted in Education, research, science | Tagged , , | 25 Comments

Adolescent games, now and then

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Steve Caplan

Although I am on target in dealing with my pressure at work, I did want to post a short and silly/funny blog. I can’t help admiring how adolescents today have such a wide variety of electronic gadgets at their disposal–especially cameras and video cameras. I had a primitive reel-to-reel tape recorder when I was about 10 years old, and one of those automatic point-and-shoot instant polaroid cameras. Nothing like these capabilities!

Make sure you see the end, before the bloopers!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMQdhqd_r3g&feature=plcp&context=C39f588eUDOEgsToPDskKLgtsHnISFseVsVI85bGDj

 

Oh–and thanks to Athene for nominating me as a “versatile blogger.” I don’t think I deserve it, but I couldn’t thank her on her own blog because for some reason it doesn’t allow comments (Richard?)…

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Dealing with pressure…and men

Posted on January 9, 2012 by Steve Caplan

Occam’s Typewriter has seemed like a home to me since I started this gig about a year ago.  Always controversial, always avant-garde, always energizing. And it still is. But lately I’ve found that my energies for putting a tolerable piece together seem to have been dwindling. Why? It’s the pressure right now at work.

Surprisingly, it’s not a lack of time; not being one to spend too long hours with my eyes closed, and since I am usually unable to write much in the way of science-based grants and papers after a certain hour in the evening/night, there is still plenty of time to write. But I don’t want to write blogs under pressure. That’s the whole point.

Why so much pressure? Well, although for those of you on the other side of the pond the funding agencies differ, it’s the same old story. We’re all on a rickety boat. Up the creek. Without a paddle. At least that’s how it feels.

I find myself having returned from vacation with no fewer than 7 proposals that need to leave the confines of the lab-office by the end of this month. One of them, a biggie that I’m organizing involving 4 other investigators from different institutes. Not just organizing, but herding. Add some grant reviewing of my own, reviewing manuscripts for journals and serving as monitoring editor to handle an array of manuscripts. And did I mention that our little group now numbers 11 people? Each with her/his own project, results, requirements and troubleshooting. Sometimes I feel as though I need to clone myself.

But I’m NOT complaining. I chose this path, and wouldn’t give it up for anything. Okay, maybe if one of my novels became a best seller. But that’s as likely as winning the lottery. And I haven’t bought a ticket.

So what can a researcher do to decrease pressure? Everyone has her/his own style, but here are a few of my own guidelines:

1)   Don’t change your daily routine. I exercise every morning, but if I give that up to “get more work done,” it will backfire. Because my exercise makes me feel good, and I am more creative and efficient at work. Even if I am physically working fewer hours. The same goes for sleep—all-nighters are seldom worthwhile.

2)   Seek solutions for removing extra burdens. In this case, I’ve stopped accepting manuscripts to review or handle as academic editor this month. If people are unhappy, let them be.

3)   Focus on one task at a time for several hours. It’s important to be able to juggle, to work simultaneously on different projects. However, the “orientation time” that it takes to get up to speed and working on a specific project makes it inefficient to jump back and forth too frequently

4)   Delegate responsibility. Have senior students, post-docs or others in the lab take care of whatever they can on their own so that minor issues do not take up your valuable time.

5)   If all else fails, think outside the box about how to find extra time. In my case, I simply decided to cancel my participation in a meeting on the west coast towards the end of this month. Just the decision brought me a sudden flood of relief. I should have made the decision earlier.

6)   Continue to do non-science things that you enjoy! Reading brings to me a great relief from stress. And so…

In that vein, I would like to mention and leave a small sample of some work by a phenomenal author, poet and friend, Robin Stratton. She has a number of great books and poetry chapbooks on sale at Amazon, and on this website from Big Table Publishing Company, and for anyone who is really interested in beautifully written prose and poetry that deal with the most personal and candid relationships between the sexes, you are in for a treat! Better yet, some of her poems (and upcoming novels) are “LabLit.” I will leave you with two poems from Robin’s outstanding Chapbook “Dealing with Men” (now available on Kindle for an absurd $1.99).

 

Haiku for 4.5 Million Americans

You left home last night

big hurry, no shoes, no coat

What were you thinking?

You slipped out the door

must have been just before dawn

Alzheimer’s Disease

 

 

Haiku for Rudy

Brilliant scientist

decodes the dark enemy

beta amyloid

A fierce opponent

but government funding goes

to another war

 

Posted in research, science | Tagged , , , , , , | 23 Comments

My best Ph.D. prank

Posted on January 2, 2012 by Steve Caplan

Looking back at 2011, my first year as a blogger and my new affiliation with OT, I find that I have written 96 blogs. That’s probably 96 more than most of you would care to read, so I may try to curb my impulses a little in 2012 and spare you some pain!

One of the things that struck me about my initiation into the world of blogging, is that like in fiction, it’s necessary to find one’s “voice.” Mine seems to have been all over the place–megaphone-like.

So what IS my voice? Am I first and foremost the serious guy who blogs about life as a PI, or science education for kids? Or am I the anti-religious coercion guy who can’t leave topics of gender inequality alone? Or am I the guy who pulls pranks his students and delights in taking revenge for their having parties at my house when they graduate? The runner-up to Ricardipus in Cath’s Bragging Rights Central?

I’ve come to the conclusion over this past year that I don’t really need to have a stated up-front theme. Unlike everything else in my life, stacked methodically into compartments with ruthless efficiency, on OT I think I would prefer to be less regimented and just let loose with whatever strikes my fancy. I don’t have the time or energy (or perhaps ability) to put together sparkling, highly informative and erudite blogs like a number of my highly respected OT blogging comrades. So you’ll just have to bear with my rambling from topic to topic.

So to start out 2012, I’m going to go back about 17 years to: my very best Ph.D. prank. By that time, I was already a veteran Ph.D. student in Jerusalem, and our lab had just taken on a young (and impressionable) new graduate student. Being the most senior student (and the first to eventually graduate with a Ph.D. from the lab), it often was incumbent upon me to train newcomers. In a number of cases, I was dissatisfied with the work ethics of these new recruits, but in the case of –let’s call him Johnny–there seemed to be genuine interest and dedication. Along with a little naivety! He was a nice kid, but suffice to say that after a while, he began to grate on my nerves. Well, perhaps not enough to justify this…

One day I came into the lab in the morning to find Johnny being photographed–by some newspaper reporter. Holding a pipette at a jaunty angle and examining a column with his white lab coat on. I snickered and was about to say something, when I had a better idea. I allowed the shoot to continue and came back a few minutes after it was over.

“Wow, you must have a lot of special connections,” I said.

“Oh, it wasn’t that. They just wanted to photograph a scene from a lab.”

“No,” I shook my head. “I mean connections to get permission from the Chancellor’s office to have your photo taken in the lab or speak to the media.”

“What do you mean?” There was a bit of a dent in his smile now.

“You know how rigid they are about controlling publicity. I mean it’s great that they gave you permission, but really unusual. They hate this type of thing.”

“But I didn’t get any permission. The reported just walked in and took my picture.”

“You DIDN’T get permission?! Ha! You’re putting me on! Don’t joke with me.”

Now he was beginning to get worried, lines appearing in his forehead. “There was a guy in the other building who interviewed in the paper without permission,” I added. “He’s now a biology high school teacher. A shame, he was really talented–published a couple high profile papers, too. They caught him doing an interview, and—–”

“No way. You’re pulling my leg.”

He definitely looked worried now. “Okay, I’m pulling your leg,” I said.  “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I let it fester for a few days, and then pulled the big one. I had a fellow graduate student from another lab call our lab and present herself as an administrator in the Chancellor’s office. Poor Johnny took the phone, as she explained to him that he had violated university policy, and that they would have to schedule a hearing for him. He would be allowed legal representation at this or any subsequent stage.

I waltzed into the lab later, and he pounced on me. “They’re scheduling a hearing for me.”

Play it dumb, I thought. “A hearing? What are you going to listen to? Rock music?”

“Seriously, at the Chancellor’s office! Because of the reporter and photograph!”

“You can’t be serious! I wonder how they found out so quickly. Did the article come out already? I hope you didn’t say anything bad about the university!”

“What am I going to do?” He was close to tears now, so some optimism was called for.

“Well I know that a strong recommendation letter from our supervisor/mentor would definitely help. Would you like me to talk to her?”

“Oh thank you–I can’t thank you enough!” No, I thought, I guess you can’t!

Well, cutting to the chase, my mentor was delighted to take part in an additional bit of bullying foolery (in today’s world, they’d probably arrest me for such a prank!). We went on a bit longer before finally divulging that it was all just a prank!

He took it well, and turned out to be a decent student. But a year or so later, out of the blue, he simply failed to show up in the lab and left his research altogether. No warning or explanation. A new career/life. And I can’t help wondering whether I contributed, ever-so-slightly to pushing him over the edge. But if I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again: in science (as in life) one needs a thick skin to survive…

_____________________________________________________________

In other news of the day: My novel Welcome Home, Sir about a scientist with post traumatic stress disorder is now available from Amazon Kindle as an e-book!

Note the different covers, since the e-book is my own publication. Guess whose house is on the cover of the e-book?

 

The paper version cover: Welcome Home, Sir

The Kindle e-book cover: Welcome Home, Sir

 

Posted in humor, research, science | Tagged , , , , , | 19 Comments

Impressions from a Parallel Universe

Posted on December 28, 2011 by Steve Caplan

Research and life have many things in common. In particular, it has always intrigued me that when following a line of research in the lab, we are constantly presented with branching points that make it imperative to make decisions about what path to pursue. In fact, in almost any line of research that my lab has ever undertaken, we almost inevitably (and regretfully) have to “shelve” a host of interesting and potentially fruitful projects along the way.

However, this requirement for making decisions and proceeding in a ‘linear fashion’ is not limited to research, but an essential part of our everyday lives. Sometimes there are crucial branching points: the choice of a partner, career, job, etc. Other times the choices may be simpler, like choosing what to order from the menu. But in each and every situation, one can envision how differently the course of our lives might have progressed.

Such was the case for me, on holiday in Israel over the Christmas and Chanuka break these past 10 days.

In 2001, I had offers to join 3 Israeli universities and had the gall to turn them down—without yet having made any attempt to secure faculty positions in the US. I was still enjoying the more focused responsibilities of a post-doc. Now, 10 years later, and 5 years since I last visited Israel, I had the opportunity to tour the country—or parts of it—as a tourist, as well as give a seminar in my former department in Jerusalem where I was a graduate student until 1998.

I thoroughly enjoyed my visit as a tourist, feasting on some of the best hummous and middle eastern salads, appetizers and olives that I’ve had in ages.

hummous

Hummous in Israel, recently

We visited a Crusader castle (Kalat Nimrod) at the tip of the Hermon Mountains that stretch from northern Israel into the Golan Heights, Lebanon and Syria.

Nimrods-castle-21

 

 

 

We stayed at my spouse’s parents’ kibbutz, and visited Haifa, the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea and Jordanian valley.

Salt crystals at the Dead Sea–the lowest place on earth

 

Salt crystals–a crystallographer’s nightmare. Dead Sea, Israel

 

The Dead Sea shore–shortlisted for the world’s greatest wonders

And finally we visited Jerusalem, one of the most fascinating cities on earth—where I lived for 10 years.

El Aksa mosque and old city from the east

 

Hezekiah’s Tunnel leading below the walls of the Old City to the spring and Pool of Shiloah

Without getting into the very complex politics of the middle east (not that I shy away from voicing my views, but in this piece I’d rather focus on other issues), I couldn’t help wondering over and over how my life would have been had I returned to Israel 10 years ago. Would my science have led me to the same discoveries and areas of research, or would I have been influenced by the availability (or lack thereof) of specific equipment? Would Israeli students in my “parallel lab” have yielded the same findings as the rather international collective of students in my US lab? Would I have been happy? There’s little question that life in Israel is inherently more stressful on a day-to-day basis than life in the US; the traffic and driving, the need to be aggressive to achieve even the simplest tasks, the economic differences, security and on and on.  But then again, one can sometimes appreciate the simpler things in life—picking your own clementine oranges, papaya, lemons, etc. from a tiny garden in your own yard.  Without living a parallel universe, it’s hard to know how things might have turned out; we never really have a control, and can only judge how things are in our current universe, without a real basis for comparison. I’ve touched on some of these issues more deeply in my recent novel, “Welcome Home, Sir.”

Somehow I always get drawn back to politics—but it’s because in discussing parallel universes I recall what a columnist once wrote years ago before Israel’s current prime minister (Netanyahu) was elected for the first time. He wrote (and I paraphrase) “It would be interesting to elect him if we had a spare country or spare universe—just for the sport of it—but horrible to have him actually leading the country.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could second-guess our decisions in life and science through a parallel universe?

Posted in research, science | Tagged , , , , | 13 Comments

The Plot Thickens

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Steve Caplan

Well yes, it’s true. The plot for my upcoming work-in-progress (AKA-barely started) novel is thickening. No, you read that right, not “sickening,” but “thickening.” But as this all begins to take shape, I find myself coming back from an adrenalin high coming from the high altitude at the Annual American Society for Cell Biology meeting in the mile-high city–Denver–to join Defiant the Firefighting Guinea Pig. This time in a never ending battle to put out ever smoldering fires in the halls of academe.

But I now race against time and all odds to finish the grading of my portion of 50 graduate exams, and time is of the essence–as I am soon to fly over the pond for visits in the Holyland. So I will bow out for now–with one final self-promotion for 2011. For anyone interested, please see/read my author-interview with Editor Robin Stratton at the Boston Literary Magazine (I have to admit, it’s so flattering, that I’m tickled pink–and green and all other colors as well…):

Cheers and happy holidays to all!

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Reserving judgment

Posted on December 12, 2011 by Steve Caplan

I would probably prefer to write another blog on the sense of entitlement that seems to be permeating through the ranks of today’s graduate students. However, unlike some pseudonym-wielding bloggers, who hide their identities behind closed doors in order to espouse vile and spiteful comments, my own blog is of course an open book. Meaning that there are many interesting and significant issues about which I would like to blog, but will be forced bide my time for now.

So as I pondered life on my way through my treadmill routine at the gym a few mornings ago, I had the opportunity to witness a phenomenon that I occasionally see every couple of months. In the row in front of me, a middle-aged man set his sights on an elliptical machine. He was decked out from toe to ear in the very latest and most modern sports gear: fancy training shoes, socks, shorts, neoprene shirt with matching wristbands and headband. All of his clothes were still creased in the manner they must have been stocked on the store shelves—just a day or two earlier.

But that’s not all—no indeed—not by a long shot! Additional accouterments included the latest Ipod and earbuds, and a full 3D audio-visual display. He set up an Ipad of some sort, something that resembled an external speaker, and an Iphone to check e-mails and make calls. Fully assembled and ready-to-run.

In contrast, when I began a formal exercise regimen some years ago, it took me 2 years until I decided to purchase even the most basic accessories—light shorts that don’t chafe the thigh (as opposed to cut-off jeans), and finally an Ipod. For over a year I battled slow wifi to try and listen to songs on UTUBE. I only caved in when all the fiddling with the BlackBerry nearly threw me off the treadmill.

Thinking about this gentleman and his 3D audio-visual (and he looked as though he hadn’t ever seen the inside of a gym), I couldn’t help noticing the degree to which I am judgmental. Psychologists spend many long hours with patients counseling them on how to let go of their judgmental attitudes (Just breathe, and accept, breathe and accept)—and here I am making a snap judgment about this man 30 seconds after his arrival and before he has even pushed the power button on his elliptical.

So making judgments about people in this manner is not going to increase my serenity, acceptance and mindfulness. It may even increase my stress levels. BUT, I have a feeling that this psychologically-incorrect behavior pattern is one of the most pertinent skills that a group leader needs to develop or have in today’s world of science.

The skill set for a PI definitely encompasses being able to accurately judge people—often on short acquaintance a PI needs to calculate whether a potential student, post-doc or technician will be an asset to the lab. Whether this person will be honest, responsible, determined, reasonable, hardworking, organized and disciplined, easy to get along with, and much more.

How did I become good not bad at making such snap judgments? Was it experience with a bipolar parent that helped? Or service in the military that honed my antennae? Or as a novel writer have I developed a second sense for judging character, and become a connoisseur of human nature? My two novels certainly harp on these themes, but I don’t have the answer.

So while I won’t win any psychological points for being non-judgmental, I reserve my right to judgment. Without it I’m dead in the water as a scientist.

Posted in research, science | Tagged , , , , , | 17 Comments