Dissertation III: How much do you own your work?

One common tension in the thesis work is the often unstated conflict between the major professor’s view on ownership versus that of the graduate student. As a matter of fact, the graduate student author generally holds copyright on the words and figures in the thesis; the major professor is generally viewed as owning the data and having rights to senior authorship on the resultant publications. However there are many complexities involved and any real understanding of the issues (at least in the biosciences) must be nuanced.

From my viewpoint, the stumbling block often really lies with the question of who has the right to pursue future follow-on research resulting from the thesis (the graduate student or the major professor). The newly minted Ph.D. understandably feels that she or he has done the experiments, has become the world’s expert on that small area of science , has just completed a tome (i.e. the thesis) on the subject and therefore has the rights to the future research based on the thesis findings.

However, in a typical NIH-funded lab, in my opinion, the PI owns the actual raw data (not the graduate student) and it is generally assumed that the intellectual kernel of the thesis came from the PI (at least as much as from the graduate student). This is less clear in the case of non-federally funded research of course.

The key is that the thread of research in the thesis usually exists within the larger context of that of the major professor and his/her laboratory. Thus the argument is made that the follow-on research stays within that larger context of the PI’s lab while the graduate student goes on to different (and hopefully more interesting) projects during the postdoctoral years.

In practice, conflicts have usually been resolved in favor on the major professor as opposed to the graduate student.

So my recommendation is: enjoy the very real ownership of your dissertation itself…and look forward to all the future science you can do, once you are an independent investigator.

Jim

The dissertation: II

Today I’m going to write about the choice of the thesis project. This is nominally a collaborative choice between graduate student and mentor, although in the sciences, it’s often really the province of the dissertation advisor. The fundamental reason for this is that there are no givens in scientific research–it’s not cookbook. Essentially, the success of the thesis project is somewhat stochastic, although with expertise this can be minimized.

Thus, ultimately one of the most important criteria for choosing a major professor, is their ability to pick good dissertation projects. And typically professors become better at picking projects as they gain experience with supervising dissertations. Hence, one of the principle disadvantages of choosing a newly-minted assistant professor relates to the possibility that they might pick a very bad thesis project.

So what makes a good thesis project? First, I believe that it should have a very high probability of yielding publishable results no matter which way the experiments turn out. At the same time, it should be very much hypothesis-driven. At first, this might sound like a paradox. But at least in the biosciences, this is often true (most successful NIH RO1 applications are designed this way).

The second very important characteristic, is that the entire experimental scope of the thesis experiments should be able to be conducted within a reasonably compact period of time. It’s a bad thesis project that wont get its first pilot data for five or so years (think longitudinal studies such as the famous Framingham Project on blood pressure).

It’s also very important to have the experiments manifest practicality. If getting your data requires space on a mission to Saturn–something your proposed advisor has no experience with, then probably something is very wrong with the choice of thesis project (not to mention that the trip to Saturn will take a bit of time).

Finally, I always believe that there should be some aspects of a thesis project that can be “cut out” from the professor’s research program and published potentially independently by the graduate student. As an example, one of my students has such a chapter in his thesis where he developed a new computational methodology for solving differential equations in neuroscience simulations. This is a topic that might be easily “cut out” into a separate paper from his thesis as a single author unit. The advantage with this strategy is that it gives the trainee early evidence of independence–something that will be crucial for career advancement later.

Jim

The dissertation: I

Over the next several posts, I’ll put forward some of my ideas about what a successful science thesis should encompass. First some general comments:

The dissertation or thesis is of course the culmination of a graduate students work towards the Ph.D. degree. For the sciences, in general we are looking for original and potentially publishable work. That the work could be published (and usually will be) implies that it advances scientific knowledge in the disciplinary area of the dissertation.

Typically, the research leading up to the thesis takes on the order of 2-3 years and represents a coherent body of experiments, which taken together, form the basis of the thesis chapters. A thesis also typically includes a comprehensive literature review and a somewhat speculative discussion chapter (often the last time a scientist gets to be reasonably speculative in print until they reach the rank of full professor).

There is some debate as to whether the middle chapters of a thesis should be essentially separable as distinct publishable papers (the staple 4 papers together concept) or whether it’s better to have an integrated tome. I have my opinion on this which I’ll reserve for one of the next posts.

Of course a thesis must be defended–usually including a public seminar given by the degree candidate, and an examination session with the thesis committee where, in some European universities, any question at all is fair game–even if not related to the thesis. In the US the defense is often somewhat pro forma–we basically don’t allow someone to defend if it’s likely that they will fail.

Jim

Washington DC "tis the season"

A strange aspect of living in Washington is how, come the holiday season, the weather turns actually winter-like (as if on cue) and how there seem to be an endless stream of holiday parties that successively pile up on the days as if they were storm waves crashing up on a beach. So it is this year living along side the Potomac River.

I gave a talk yesterday on artificial intelligence–a topic that I get asked about quite a bit, but one that I’ve always felt somewhat removed from, given my own work in neuroscience. And yet, the field of AI has made great strides since Marvin Minsky–although my take is we’re not anywhere near the “strong AI” that was sold last century. One way new way to think about AI I suppose may be to go beyond the Turing Test towards some deeper understanding of our own consciousness and what it means to be self-aware.

And so we return to the topic of studying consciousness and the mind–which is the raison d’etre of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study.

Happy Holidays,
Jim

NIH to allow multiple PI’s on grants

This is pretty big news for those of us who collaborate extensively:

Money quote:

Beginning with research grant applications submitted for February 2007 receipt dates, the NIH will allow applicants and their institutions to identify more than one Principal Investigator (PI). The Multiple PI option will be extended to most research grant applications submitted electronically through Grants.gov (http://www.grants.gov/) using the SF424 R&R application package. Grant applications that will accommodate more than one PI beginning in February include: R01, R03, R13/U13, R15, R18/U18, R21, R21/R33, R25, R33, R34, R41, R42, R43, R44, and C06/UC6 (see http://era.nih.gov/ElectronicReceipt/strategy_timeline.htm). Some types of applications including individual career awards (K08, K23, etc.), individual fellowships (F31, F32, etc.), Dissertation Grants (R36), Director’s Pioneer Awards (DP1), and Shared Instrumentation Grants (S10) will not accommodate more than a single PI. The restriction to a single PI will be described in announcements for those programs.

How to write a recommendation letter

There are several unpaid duties that go with being a scientist–among them, refereeing manuscripts for publication, serving on grant review “study sections” and of course writing recommendations. This last obligation is often the least understood.

There are several aspects to writing a recommendation letter that are clearly fraught with ambiguity:

First, given our lawsuit-friendly times, how frank should one really be? My opinion is that if you can’t write someone an outstanding support letter, it’s really better to tell them that up front so that they can go elsewhere. I realize that this might put other institutions and granting agencies at risk, but, following my principle, a really awful scientist is going to have a hard time getting any support letters.

Second: the phenomenon of “recommendation letter inflation”. It’s just a fact of life–the intense competition for jobs and grants probably pushes the trend, but if you really want the individual to get the job, you’d better not “condemn them with faint praise”. This goes against the grain for a lot of scientists, because in their papers, when discussing their data, any tendency towards over-hype is very properly held against one.

Third, it’s key to get across in the very first or second sentence, how long you have known the person you are recommending –and in what capacity. If this isn’t made clear, the entire letter becomes considerably less useful to the reader.

Finally, I always believe that it’s useful to step back at some point and indicate where the individual’s trajectory appears to be headed in your opinion– are they headed for the National Academy? Or maybe just towards being a solid scientific citizen (well funded and publishing in good journals).

Jim

Using wikis and blogs in the intelligence community

There’s a great article by Clive Thompson in today’s NY Times magazine called “Rewiring the Spy”.

Money quote:

Today’s spies exist in an age of constant information exchange, in which everyday citizens swap news, dial up satellite pictures of their houses and collaborate on distant Web sites with strangers. As John Arquilla told me, if the spies do not join the rest of the world, they risk growing to resemble the rigid, unchanging bureaucracy that they once confronted during the cold war. “Fifteen years ago we were fighting the Soviet Union,” he said. “Who knew it would be replicated today in the intelligence community?”

Jim

Happy December

With December at hand tomorrow, we find ourselves in the middle of the holiday season and this is a good time to wish all of those who are friends of the Institute, the very best of wishes! I was off site today, moderating a forum at the National Press Club on alternative sources for electrical power generation–hearkening back to my old days on Capitol Hill. In the meantime, my colleagues at the Institute were dealing with ventilation issues thanks to the complicated process of welding the bridge in place that connects the new building expansion with the old facility (if you can possibly call a 1997 building old). I’m pleased to report that the latest news is that it looks like we have the air issue licked! Or at least I hope so.

Jim

Krasnow Brown Bag Series

Today we began again a Krasnow tradition that dates back to the
Institute’s first year: our brown bag series. We came together a a
whole to review (think of a journal club gone wild) the special issue
of SCIENCE magazine devoted to “The Mind”. That issue came out in
October and was timed to coincide with the Society for Neuroscience
meeting in Atlanta. I wish I could adequately convey in words the
excitement, scientific depth and sheer collegial intensity of the
discussion. New graduate students spoke out with senior full
professors. Dopamine was compared to Acetylcholine. And prefrontal
cortex became “the last frontier”. It’s a great group at Krasnow:
mathematicians, neuroscientists, physicists, philosophers, imagers,
biochemists, cell biologists…..I could go on.

Jim

November signs

The leaves are now nearly off the trees (helped by a couple of rain
storms). The average temperatures are headed downwards and we drive home
in the dark–these are the signs of November at the Krasnow Institute.

In the meantime, the new building is going to be connected to the old
Krasnow facility this week with the demolition of a stair-tower–and
we’re very nearly “closed in” with the construction ready to continue
inside through the winter with move-in now scheduled for April.

In the next weeks there will be some major announcements concerning both
direct hires and the three open searches for new Krasnow PI’s to fill
our new space. I’m extremely excited with the quality of the science
that we’re looking at–the Institute will be qualitatively larger next
Fall, and not only in terms of space!

In the meantime, the functional stimuli apparatus is being installed in
the Krasnow 3T magnet and we’re working on agreements to secure combined
(i.e. fused) EEG, fMRI capabilities for our center.

Finally, we note that Rob Axtell will be taking over as acting-director
of Krasnow’s Center for Social Complexity during the remainder of
Claudio Cioffi’s year at the State Department as a Jefferson Fellow.

So stay tuned! There’s a lot going on.

Jim