As:   If you seek an academic career in science, your central focus is research.  Alongside, it’s beneficial to experience teaching, learn whether you enjoy it, and, later in your career, to cite preparedness and ability to teach.  While TA’ing, we suggest a time division something like 30% classroom and 70% lab. 

As:   Which activity dovetails better with your professional goals?  Request a brief meeting with both your advisors simultaneously to agree on a sustainable time distribution, including preparation for each activity.  

As:   Slow down if you feel strongly about learning at your own pace, but understand that your pace and productivity are being compared to your cohort’s.  Your advisor may counsel you to complete your coursework at the same rate your classmates do. 

As:   Carefully catalog each project’s requirements.  If these are untenable taken together, go to your advisor.  In general, however, single projects don’t exemplify training for a career in research.  In your future, at least two investigations will mitigate risks of failure.  It’s wise to maintain a backup project or two.

As: You have a case if you made a concrete substantive intellectual contribution to the work’s conception, design, implementation, analysis, and/or interpretation. Highlight the article sections where your work appears, key these to your dated lab book reports, and take this material to your advisor.   If this step is unsuccessful, consult a university ombudsperson. 

As: Use Anatomy of a Research Report in an initial orienting conversation with each student, as a guide and roadmap to what lies ahead. If you delegate supervision to older students in the group, remain very watchful.  Ultimately your supervisees’ learning, satisfaction, and productivity mirror your care.  Their dedication and outcomes reflect yours.

As: We are very sorry.  Nobody needs this.  Immediately try to ensure a third person is always present, or leave the room if you can.  Next, document each inappropriate contact from first to last, citing date, time, location, and circumstances, for your advisor.  S/he may meet with this person and his/her advisor toward an agreement ending the bad behavior.  Otherwise, your advisor and you have no choice but to refer harassment to the Department Chair.

As: Often, even seemingly external companies or patents are university spinoffs whose ownership accords with laws in the country where services are contracted, conducted, financed, and/or patented.  Reread your employment contract and university’s Intellectual Property declaration.  If questions remain, consult your ombusperson or a campus Legal Counsel.

As: A bold request.  Interested parties should contact your PI, who will surely reply by explaining that the article is as yet (and, until accepted for publication, will remain) too incomplete for viewing.

As: We are very sorry this is happening to you.  Many of us have had this dark experience.  A formal rebuttal is the crux of your response.  Dispute, and provide proofs, point by point.  If you aren’t heeded, your only recourse is to submit the documentation to an ethics committee.

As:  Fortunately it’s easy to remedy this error.  Mention the correction in a brief note thanking the reviewer for taking time to read your work.  Ask your journal editor to forward the note.

As: We sympathize.  It often helps to ask a knowledgeable colleague to prioritize realistic estimates of task and life demands with you, and for you in turn to do the same for that colleague. The sense of drowning lifts a lot when one feels less isolated.  It is equally liberating to accept that there will always be more to do than one possibly can.  Why not, therefore, refresh yourself with a daily walk, swim, coffee with friends, or nap?

Every campus has centers available to you that address virtually every concern or need that may arise: counseling, coaching, tutoring, study skills, health, illness, disability, recreation and relaxation, studying as a parent, finances, harassment, bullying, discrimination, lack of gender and ethnic diversity.   Avail yourself of one or many.

As: What misfortune, we wonder, gave rise to this behavior.  On one side of your ledger, you’re not being taught as much as you could be, and the group atmosphere too is disadvantageous.   What are the benefits of working with this advisor?  Are you learning more than how not to conduct yourself in your future?  Ask your colleagues or lab manager for an explanation of the PI’s taciturnity, and weigh the pros and cons of continuing on.

As: As lab heads responsible for investigations’ caliber and correctness, PIs generally serve as corresponding author.  This distinction is sometimes given to postdocs who propose and design a project, with the consequence of transferring not only plaudits but also liability for errors or fraud.  Here we would make you first author, and the student either co-first author, given your praise for her/his contribution, or not.

As:  Proposals straddle a fine line.  Your goal is to promote yourself and your ideas, yet never at the expense of accuracy.  Hampering outside reproducibility by staying silent about open questions or competing factors will call into question your awareness and grasp of the subject, your ethics, or both.  Slant toward (your) solutions when expressing necessary reservations.   Anatomy of a Research Report gives many examples of how to do this.

As Summary:  You can start with a polite unsigned message in his mailbox: “Dear Professor X, We your supervisees ask that you refrain from touching us.  This breach of advisor-advisee etiquette is causing us anxiety and inquietude.  We thank you for considering our request.”   In this way the group remains protected against retribution while informing him of the issue and its impacts.  If such a note has no effect, re-send it marked “Copy 2;” and if that second note is disregarded a delegation should speak to your department chair. 

As Summary: Probing, testing questions train us to communicate effectively.  Harshly critical, public point-scoring, sarcastic, mean-spirited, or personal questions are inappropriate.  The latter may be repeated clearly and resoundingly, prefaced by “You asked–.”  In this way, you are ensuring that all the audience hears the question’s foolishness.  Continue by answering the question with exquisite courtesy, at face value, as though it were legitimate.  

Moderators should add a request to chat briefly with offenders following the session, and inform conference organizers of verbal abuse or any other untoward behavior.

As:  Your choices depend on how tired you are after your talk, and on how charitable or courageous you feel.   You may listen to the question until its very end, pause for several moments, then ask the questioner to summarize briefly.  Alternately, after ten seconds, you may hold up your hand, palm facing out, and inquire, politely, “Excuse me, what is your question?”

As: Beware inexperienced student reporters who garble, sensationalize, or misrepresent research and background at interviewees’ expense, giving rise to amusement or consternation among colleagues and necessitating follow up damage control.  Courteously and respectfully, ensure as much editing authority as you can.

As: Before the session block begins, alert your moderator that it may be necessary to intervene.  Warn, or more likely remind, her/him of the possible problem, and provide a hard copy of each speaker’s scheuled start and end time.

As: Some requests conveyed as invitations are actually directives, e.g., those from far above.  Still, you might try the following formulation, delivered with deference and in evident desperation: “I sincerely apologize that I’m in full tenure press for the next # months.  I hope that the next time you do me the honor of inviting me to participate, I’ll be in a much better position to accept with alacrity.”  It’s difficult to maintain priorities when requests continuously flow in, but for sanity’s sake you must try.

As:  In our experience, reasons generally cited are neglectful, harmful, unprofessional, and criminal behavior, but these criteria tend to be somewhat subject to interpretation. Assuming the job is conducted scrupulously and well, the chief reason for dismissal, again in our experience, is an unfounded or unproven accusation against a colleague or student.

As: We thank you for caring about this coworker and her career.  Might you know of a senior colleague who can be supportive, direct, and helpful in speaking with her?  Career counseling should already be taking place, but may not be.

A: Very possibly, especially in highly competitive environments. Word may reach you that these colleagues attribute your success to gender politics; do not await or expect congratulations from them.  Instead, take the high road.  Always attribute honors and prizes to your group, colleagues, predecessors, and a strongly supportive departmental and university environment.  Repeat and reiterate that visibility for one is visibility for all.

A: Before interviewing the first applicants to your group, we advise formulating several group performance and ethics standards, and clearing these with the university’s legal counsel.  When interviewing, verbally review the checklist, then date and sign it.

We ask requesters to write their own letter drafts.  You’ll find that many judge themselves more stringently than you would, though the opposite can of course occur.   In this case, we suggest sending a letter that dispassionately summarizes the postdoc’s (unattained) project goals.  Make no mention at all of personal attributes.  Recipients will interpret this correctly.  If you feel strongly enough about this postdoc, place a telephone call.  Declining to write a recommendation at all would create many more administrative and legal problems than you want. 

As: If possible, maintain your boundaries in a very disciplined, scheduled way. You might budget one non-negotiable hour per weekday to group and staff contact, one hour to writing, and one to personal time. On weekends, you could dedicate more time to writing and personal care. Choose TAs carefully and well. Some professional organizations can recommend career coaches payable from grants.

As: In fast-moving science, being first among several is increasingly recognized as irrelevant. For this reason, journals are adopting “complementary research” policies in which related papers are published back to back, benefiting all parties by expanding the substance and reach of studies that are overlapping but not identical, demonstrating the robustness of related results, making replication studies more cost effective, and increasing readership for all authors.

Contact the editor who assigned you the manuscript. Depending on how far from completion your own article is, it may be possible to publish both articles jointly. Should you still consider it crucial to edge ahead, you might return to the bench yourself and/or distribute small sub-project pieces to friends on an emergency basis. However, we advise avoiding a crisis mode for which there is no real need.

As: There are multiple reasons to review, as you know. First, one learns. Second, one hopes that journals or agencies in question will reciprocate by becoming more aware of, and open to, one’s own research. This being so, most of us prioritize journals and agencies most relevant to our research, and formulate for ourselves some rule of thumb such as a ratio of two-three reviews to one published paper of one’s own.

As: Collaborative writing requires a priori agreements such as a timeline and the task plan shown in Anatomy of a Research Report. Generally it is the most senior collaborator who issues reminders; checks and compiles contributions; and redistributes drafts for approval.

As: The authors gambled on a new reviewer, and lost. Submit the same report.

As: Professionally, the gold standard is excellent work well communicated to peers, in speaking engagements as well as in print, rewarded by recognition and financial underwriting.

On a personal level, some would advise keeping your head down, calling no particular attention to yourself, making no waves, pursuing no causes, engaging in no controversy, and remaining quietly deferential to all. We consider that stance not only antiquated but likely to backfire. If you stay a cipher, if your colleagues do not know what is important to you and what you represent, they will be unable to support you now and at tenure time. If you have a choice between causes that benefit outsiders only, and those that also benefit your department or university, you might want to opt for the latter.

As: If it is the head’s prerogative to distribute the funds as he wishes, questioning him, however courteously, will not only fail but create enmity. We regret that you’re unlikely to secure any part of the donation despite your right to fair resource distribution. In fact, the only hope for any positive outcome is future impartiality and greater transparency to come. Consider volunteering for the university budgetary committee. END