I’m back…flew in from St. Kitts last night. I’m enclosing a picture from St. Barthes though. These are two of the six boats owned by the same Russian Billionaire. The one that appears to be a submarine is particularly stunning. It covered the distance from where I took the picture to over the horizon is what appeared to be 20 minutes.
As for me, I’d rather have a two-photon microscope.
Thanks to patient and loyal readers for their patience. Now back the world of science….
We dodged the proverbial bullet here in Washington DC as the monster blizzard does what it has to do to vast swaths of the rest of the US. The upshot is that I’ll be able to leave town tomorrow for a week’s vacation. Email access will be minimal, but if I happen onto any blog-worthy ideas, I’ll probably manage to post them at some point.
Today I spent a while on the phone with our public relations folks trying to put into words a concept that really, on reflection, was quite simple: the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study is a national scientific gem and that’s evidenced everywhere, from our Nobel laureate scientific DNA to the way we win our scientific respect: competitively with the likes of Harvard, Yale and Caltech–not by our Washington connections.
Sometimes it’s better to just say what you have to say directly and not beat around the bush.
Ben McGrath’s piece in this week’s New Yorker is here.
Money quote from our friend and colleague Geoff Ling:
Colonel Geoffrey Ling, a neurologist with the Defense Department, had come to the InterContinental to share some of the government’s research with the N.F.L.’s medical brain trust. (Concussions among the men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, one doctor told me, could be “the next Agent Orange.”) “If you look historically, what really hurts our soldiers from blasts is artillery shells, mortar shells,” Ling said. “The combat helmet was designed particularly for mitigation of fragments. It does have some ballistic protection. You could shoot at the thing point blank with a 9-millimetre pistol, and you won’t penetrate it. That’s pretty doggone good. I’m surprised New York City policemen aren’t wearing the doggone thing. But, like, I wouldn’t play football with the thing. It ain’t that good.”
My colleague Tyler Cowen’s column in today’s NY Times nails it here. The progress of science is inherently unpredictable.
Hat tip to one of my former students and of course, because I began my career in neuroscience studying invertebrate brains:
ScienceInsider has the latest news on the growing insurgency among biomedical researchers reacting to the news that NIH plans to break up National Center for Research Resources (NCRR). My former colleague at FASEB, Howard Garrison is quoted “It seems wasteful and destructive without a vision of why.”
NCRR has played a very important historical role in the history of the National Institutes of Health. We’ll have to see how this plays out.
We had a small blip in our blogging routine as Washington shut down due to snow mayhem. I wasn’t one of those who went through a ten hour commute home, but did lose power at home for two days.
In the meantime, commend Gillian Tett’s FT interview with Charlie Rose here.
We’re about four weeks out from NELSI3. The Web Site is here. For those loyal readers interested in the ethical, legal and social implications of the latest neurotechnology in the DOD context, this is a great opportunity.
I’m not going to link to it, but loyal readers should definitely check on the Zheng lab’s You Tube video “Bad Project”.
The real issue for today’s blog post is how to avoid getting stuck with the proverbial bad project. And the advice is aimed at our doctoral student readers.
This is a difficult problem, because 1) grad students typically don’t have a huge amount of say on what project their PI gives them and 2) they also don’t often have the experience to avoid those bad projects on the rare occasions where they do have a choice. So what to do?
First, let’s face it. If you are on a rotation, a bad project isn’t necessarily the kiss of death. It’s just wasted time (and it might not even have to be that if you learn some new methods). But, if it’s your dissertation project then, indeed, you’re toast.
Second, the ultimate answer to avoiding a bad project is finding a good PI. This is something you do have control over (at least as far as your thesis is concerned, it’s generally a mutual decision). As I’ve written before, PI’s come in two extremes: the extremely junior newly minted assistant professor who can give you lots of attention, but may not have the resources to support your project well, and further may also not have the experience to know the bad project from the good one. The other extreme is the lab chief with 20 postdocs and 40 graduate students, not to mention several technicians. Here you’ve got someone who probably could tell you which projects are bad, but doesn’t have the time or attention span or will to do so. In the worst case scenario (just like in the Video, you’ll inherent the bad project of someone more senior in the lab who is fortunate enough to have punched her ticket (PhD) and be leaving.
So pick a PI in the middle of that distribution unless, of course, your scientific passion pushes you otherwise. But, in that case, go in with your eyes wide open.
