Tag Archives: Science culture

My ideal student, or Cultural conflicts

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Rachel

My lab is a small lab. I don’t have any graduate students, postdocs, or research technicians. I have me and a handful of students. Two undergraduates and one medical student. They undergrads are due to graduate this year. The medical … Continue reading →

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Monolingual

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Rachel

I just realized I had never posted this, which I wrote last month during the Cartilage workshop in Montreal. So here it is at last! This workshop has 35 participants from all over the world. There are several from Montreal, … Continue reading →

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From the inside: the NIH review process

Posted on June 24, 2011 by Rachel

I love writing grants. I love planning the experiments, sorting out all the details, talking to tons of people and getting their ideas and improvements, looking up products and catalog numbers, dreaming big. Building hopes. Then the grant is submitted, … Continue reading →

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Changing my mind

Posted on May 14, 2011 by Rachel

A good scientist is willing to change her opinion in response to evidence and logic. Recently my opinion has changed on a couple of points regarding Academia. Everyone agrees that academia is broken. I don’t know how to fix it. … Continue reading →

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Starve and feast

Posted on May 10, 2011 by Rachel

We have an internal grant of $40,000 near the end of its one-year extension and we hadn’t yet spent any of it. That was because the same proposal had been submitted to external funding and both the external and the … Continue reading →

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Manuscript horror stories

Posted on April 19, 2011 by Rachel

Everyone has a few manuscript horror stories, but when we start sharing them, I seem to win hands-down. Generally the conversation goes like this: “My paper has been on his desk for 2 months!” And I reply, “I had given … Continue reading →

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Evidence based medicine

Posted on March 19, 2011 by Rachel

Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science by David Freedman We are taught that modern medicine is “evidence based medicine”. Evidence based medicine means rigorous scientific studies underlie every aspect of medical practice. Particularly drugs are supposed to be grounded in … Continue reading →

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Mao

Posted on March 8, 2011 by Rachel

The card game “Mao” is so much like academia it should be named Academia, or perhaps academia should be called Ruthless Bloodthirsty Dictator Land. Since I’m not allowed to talk about the rules of Mao, I will illustrate by way … Continue reading →

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The Lab, Part II

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Rachel

I recently reviewed “The Lab”, an interactive video produced by the Office of Research Integrity, in which you can play one of four people who had opportunities to minimize the damage of another person’s misconduct. I had made a beeline … Continue reading →

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The Lab, an interactive video on science misconduct

Posted on February 24, 2011 by Rachel

The Office of Research Integrity developed an interactive video for Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training, called “The Lab”. I am very impressed. The video was very well done. Only one actor seemed distractingly stilted, the dialog was not distractingly … Continue reading →

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