Quarterly Summary: “CAP”ital Action and Effective Communication

Posted April 1st 2010 at 5:38 pm by Dave

This quarter has been a very active one for the Black Hole site, marked most notably by a tripling of site traffic in the month of March. Admittedly, most of this increased traffic was due to Budget 2010 and the sheer panic it invoked in the post doc community. Fortunately, the momentum that I hoped would continue has certainly done just that. Two prime examples of this forward movement over the last quarter have been:

1. The Canada Foundation for Innovation model of autonomy and flexibility was named “world’s best practice” and the contribution to developing both the quality and quantity of research infrastructure was highlighted. The matching investment in people needs to be the focus going forward, let’s hope the policymakers realize this. They have built it… will the scientists come?

If you are a prospective post doctoral research fellow, the answer right now is “probably not” as a flurry of bad press surrounds Canada as a place to complete this part of one’s training. It’s curious because Canada definitely has excellent core components in place for research success with great equipment and buildings, internationally heralded expertise, access to other scientists and patient samples, etc etc. So what’s wrong with the picture? The answer lies in the second burst of momentum from this quarter

2. What exactly is a post doctoral fellow? – in Canada there is certainly no easy answer and it seems that they are classified as trainees, students, or employees depending on which status benefits them the least. In Britain and Australia, a post doc certainly leans toward the employee side of the coin with good wages (often 25-35% higher than Canadian post docs), benefits similar to other employees at the institute, pay taxes, etc etc. In Canada, however, post doctoral fellows often get terrible wages (78% earn less than $40,000 after 10+ years of university training), benefits are inconsistent at best and often absent (though UBC just made an impressive announcement about PDF benefits), and Budget 2010 proposes to make post doctoral fellowships taxable.

The momentum from the Canadian Association of Post-Doctoral Scholars in recent weeks has produced the following:
- An FAQ entitled “What is a post doctoral fellow?”
- An online petition to maintain the competitiveness of a postdoctoral research career in Canada
- A campaign that has gotten recognition for post doctoral fellows in Parliament

Great to see this kind of effort being put forth to improve the trainee environment in Canada. Let’s hope we get some results!

This quarter also saw The Black Hole become even more connected as exemplified by our growing toolbar of excellent links to check out including recent additions of:

Canadian Programs
CIHR Science to Business Program – Program to encourage and enable individuals who have obtained a recent health-related PhD to pursue an MBA
The Science Creative Quarterly – UBC based online collection of scientific articles that are spiced up for a general audience

Excellent organizations/resources for Canada to learn from
The Royal Society – The UK’s national academy of science which is leaps and bounds ahead of the Royal Society of Canada when it comes to public and governmental interaction
The Society of Biology– A whopping 80,000 members who support the strong presence of biology in academia, industry, education and research

Other blogs of interest
Margin Notes – University Affairs blogger Leo Charbonneau tackles many of the institutional issues that are discussed heavily on this site – great insights and wonderfully in touch with the hottest topics.
rENNISance Woman – Self described Cancer Research grant wrangler Cath Ennis and her thoughts form a frequently updated Nature Network blog worth reading!

As for blog entries, Beth has been squirreling away on entries related to the theoretical (What is Science? and Evaluation vs. Research) and the very practical (Talking Science to Non-Scientists and Community Collaboration) sides of science. She also introduced us to the CIHRs Science to Business program which aims to equip PhDs in the medical sciences with MBAs.

I’ve been (again!) a little less focused and was certainly side-tracked in Budget season with entries related to taxes, moving forward from the budget, and the CAPS campaign.

The story of how DNA and genetics became buzz words on everyone’s lips is one that I often share with people about the importance and long term impact that public outreach can have (especially when it comes to a general willingness to support research in the area) – this tipped off two entries ( >The Least Work Principle and
Getting Involved in Science and Society) and was followed up with an entry on my current pet peeve in Britain which is going to consistently underwhelming climate change related talks.

Other entries on the lack of science policy in Canada and the importance of scholarships and networking to one’s future career generated good buzz, but also resulted in a strong criticism of our blog and other blogs for being far too focused on complaining about the situation. While politely disagreeing with this being the case for the Black Hole site, I have made a mental note (and followed up with physical entries!) to give credit where credit is due on the many great things happening in the country and continue to keep an extremely open mind to future solutions.

Hope you’ll all continue to read and contribute, it’s been a fun six months so far!

PS: If you’re interested in writing a guest blog entry or a regular blog column, please do get in touch.

2 Comments

Dave, April 1st 2010 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Financial, General, Jobs, Science Communcation

Quarterly Summary – Trying to make sense of it all

Posted December 30th 2009 at 11:01 pm by Dave

So, in the wake of a very busy December, I realize that we only registered two blog entries this month – a noticeable drop from November’s eleven. But this is the realistic way forward if we want to tackle these issues with the time and energy they deserve, as these “issues affecting trainees” underpin many of the important decisions that are made in an academic career and give decision makers a sense of what trainees are thinking. It’s a lot of information though and in recognition of everyone else being busy as well, I thought a quarterly summary of highlights would be a good idea.

The latter parts of 2009 had four very exciting developments in the Canadian science community namely the launching of the Canadian Science Media Centre, the release of the first CAPS report detailing the plight of the Canadian post doctoral fellow, the creation of and 3000+ signatures on the Stem Cell Charter, and the first formal conference on science policy in Canada. Hopefully this kind of momentum continues into 2010…

In the interim, Beth has started by exploring “what to do with a PhD if I don’t want to be a professor” with blog entries on why PhDs leave the academy, what types of jobs are out there, and how your PhD helps prepare you and the communication of science information to the public with where people get their scientific information and what public science outreach groups are present in Canada.

I’ve been a little less focused, tackling scholarships ( tax information and tying to economic outcomes), trainee demographics, peer review, post-doctoral fellow training (saying NO to the 2nd post doc and the creation of more permanent “scientist” jobs), graduate training (cookie cutter PhDs and making the choice between degree types), and getting scientific information to government officials.

I’ve linked to all of the individual blog entries above if you want a more focused reading on a particular issue, below are what I think constitute the major trends, discussions, and highlights of our first 2.5 months:

Demographics

The trainee community is aging and, while not necessarily a bad thing, it requires us to think about its structure and function. This is critical if Canada wishes to attract and/or retain the best and brightest academics. Additionally, Nature magazine recently damned Canada as a location to do a PDF with this uninspiring blurb.

Comments from that blog entry stimulated some additional homework on top of the US stats reported initially and the numbers are not as bad in Canada as in the US with respect to degree length. The CAPS report released in November 2009 however, clearly shows that the PDF length, remuneration, and even its definition are major concerns moving forward.

Say NO to the Second PDF – good or bad?

Admittedly, I chose this title and wrote this article with the intention of stirring the pot. And stirred it was, both from personal emails that I received and from comments on the site. To be clear, I was definitely not saying that there are no good reasons for doing a second post doc (re-tooling, changing fields, wedded to a city, boss is awful, etc), but if you lack such a reason, I do strongly advocate querying whether or not another post doc will be good for you.

Most importantly though, is for senior decision makers to understand that this is a growing pool of people with a growing series of frustrations – check out the comments section from that post. Another key point in there that was made more explicitly in my first entry and flushed out in that comments section is that the answer to a shortage of jobs cannot be longer post docs, this just puts even more pressure on the system.

The numbers are not lying… the significant majority of PDFs will NOT become professors – you might not like the reality, but you have to ask if academics are not for you and start planning sooner rather than later.

Jobs you can do if you pull the plug

Beth has shared her own story about finding a job after exiting the long dark tunnel and has also compiled a list of jobs that you might consider after you complete the ol’ PhD… please do feel free to add to the list as well or comment with your story or advice to others looking for the first time.

Skills you have acquired while plugged in

Beth also did a great job identifying the skills acquired during a PhD and good ways of thinking about them when writing up your CV and doing interviews for non-academic jobs.

Cookie Cutter PhDs

I tried to encapsulate/define the sinking feeling I get when I compare medical science to a factory where the goal is to generate the data/papers instead of training the individual to be able to run a group that can generate data/papers. Much discussion was generated and there tended to be reasonable agreement that more effort needs to go into developing critical thinking skills and nurturing the curiosity that probably brought people there in the first place.

In sum, the first quarter has definitely encouraged Beth and I to continue sharing the research, ideas and thoughts of our small group of colleagues on this site and we’ll look forward to commenting on new developments as they arise. Thanks for all of the great discussion so far and the encouragement on the blog’s content. I hope 2010 brings you many good things – including an Olympic Gold for the men’s and women’s hockey teams.

3 Comments

Dave, December 30th 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Financial, General, Jobs, Science Communcation

Science is like Baking: The Rise of the Cookie Cutter PhD

Posted November 17th 2009 at 6:57 pm by Dave

Quick hit:

1. A friend of mine (Hana, @teachmescience) forwarded a review on a book that many of you who liked the Say NO to the Second PDF blog entry might also find to be interesting… the book appears to be a troubling, but insightful, commentary on how professors have illusions of grandeur that are causing major problems in the training environment.

2. Writing a research intensive blog entry is very time consuming, so in order to keep up the frequency of postings, I’ve decided to write in pairs: one fluffy opinion dominated piece followed by one that involves the research and information that we’ve collected over the years as more of a resource-rich entry. I hope you enjoy both and will continue to comment, spread the word about the blog, and email your suggestions, questions, etc.

Fluffy entry number one…

Science is like Baking: The Rise of the Cookie Cutter PhD

In medical science, many of the protocols we use for bench work feel like recipes. To nobody’s surprise, it is often compared to baking – add component X, spin, add component Y, mix, “cook” in a gel, etc, etc – and I say fair enough. Many will argue, however, that such protocols are not the bread and butter of an academic scientist’s career which certainly relies on designing the experiments to answer novel questions about the particular system or situation being studied and interpreting an often confused picture to help make sense of that system.

This blog entry contends that we are putting less emphasis on the latter and more on the former and our nation is going to pay a hefty price if we don’t turn the boat around – the PhD is becoming less focused on learning how to think, and more focused on learning how to do. This is a trend that I am labelling the rise of the cookie cutter PhD.

The driving forces of this trend are plentiful, but I’ve tried to highlight some key components:

One PhD = Three papers

It’s even come down to something called the manuscript based thesis (which is not inherently a bad thing, but it can border on the ridiculous) – this is where a general introduction and conclusion are almost literally stapled around 3 research findings chapters that comprise the productivity of one’s degree in the only currency that seems to have not been devalued in the economic crisis – publications.

Professor Production Stress

We’ve talked about the shift in human resources in the sciences. With this shift comes an amazingly tight competition to get the limited number of professor jobs and this means a pressure to produce papers and not the next generation of critically thinking scientists.

Shorter PhDs are Better

Many countries have limits on the number of years one can/should spend in a doctoral program (Britain and Australia are two that come to mind) – admittedly Canadian schools have started “skipping MScs” and requiring course work which certainly adds a year – but three years in medical research is SHORT… some great PhD projects are done in this time, but it certainly does encourage universities and professors to (help) design cookie cutter projects that will get an answer in the required amount of time.

Qualification Fetishes

Many different players in the game are guilty here… organizations who want to have “ten PhDs on staff that recommend X”, individuals who want to have a list of letters after their name to impress others and themselves, newspapers that want to have articles by “Julie Smith, PhD”, and the list goes on… this is great if it means there are more highly qualified thinkers out there in a panoply of careers – but what if they’re all cookie cutter PhDs???

Black Sky Thinking

When was the last time you shot the shit for a few days about where the field was going and what the “big questions” were… a PhD is not a box checking exercise of “did I complete the requisite number of experiments” – it’s an assessment of your thinking ability (maybe even your ability to have a philosophical discussion on your topic)….all too often we feel like it’s night time and we just have to finish that last paper, experiment, etc.

Value for Money

Someone else has paid for you to be here… they want a tangible outcome (a product, a solution, etc). Someone (too often) asks: “why are you spending your day reading or thinking – go cure cancer”. (This “product for money” sentiment is a problem that I also believe is at the heart of the gap in funding, and public support, for the humanities and social sciences – which often have far more to offer when it comes to producing (no pun intended) the next generation of critically thinking individuals – another blog entry for sure)

—

Together, these forces do what I think we should be very very scared of… they apply pressure to churn out PhDs faster, with more papers, with less flexibility in ideas and more rigid (read publishable) research project designs. So, in the end, little effort goes into helping the PhD students think critically about their field – and while I don’t believe this style of training is as far gone in the Humanities… I think it’s coming, so get yourself ready!

Possible solutions?

1. We need new value metrics to help assess someone’s ability to be a leading researcher. References go a long way, but can be biased or over-inflated. Clearly, publications are not going to go away as a tool to get in the door, but they shouldn’t be the only metric to judge academic prowess. Teaching and training by professors are often un-recognized quantities that have a huge impact on the future of science and our country’s “innovation culture” (which everyone loooovvvves to go on about) and we’re giving all the good positions to those who have sacrificed to be a publication machine first and a teacher later (I exaggerate, but you get the picture – and who dares to ask the question if this contributes to fewer women and more men in academia…) – we need to figure out a way to reverse this trend.

2. If someone enters an oral examination at the end of their PhD and it is clear that they’ve not written substantial portions of the thesis, do not understand how the methods or experiments work (or what they can actually tell us), cannot articulate why their research is relevant to the field, have not contributed anything novel, or any other major infraction that many claim “don’t really happen” – they should fail. And the committee approves passage to oral examination should also suffer consequences for letting it get to this stage.

I don’t have any more solutions right now, but this is a real brewing crisis in academic circles and needs much more discussion. What the heck is a PhD, anyway?

I submit to the firing squad…

PS: My PhD supervisor invested an enormous amount into making her students think… this is of critical importance and has certainly burned many of the hours that she could have spent on publishing, recruiting, grant writing, etc…I thank her deeply for this.

PPS: Brad… thanks for the “what the heck is a ____, anyway…” no one will ever forget that WIP.

9 Comments

Dave, November 17th 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in General, Uncategorized

Say NO to the Second Post Doc!

Posted November 15th 2009 at 5:44 pm by Dave

Quick Hit

I had a great chat with someone last night who put me onto two great examples of cutting edge peer review (see last blog entry ):

First, as of 2009 the European Molecular Biology Organization Journal publishes a review process file which details the correspondence between authors, editors, and reviewers – still anonymous, but WOW what an improvement… some light is finally getting into the black box

Second, I mentioned the PLoS group in an earlier post and their journal PLoS Medicine have encouraged optional open peer review, a great start, but I think that in order for this to work, you need everyone to play nice…

***

Say NO to the Second PDF

I’ll warn you in advance, this blog entry is pretty controversial… it poses some difficult questions that we don’t often want to ask ourselves, and I was further encouraged to take this matter head on by a recent comment responding to one of Beth’s earlier entries on Why PhDs leave Academia .

The United States numbers say that the vast majority (>80%) of PhDs in Science and Engineering will NOT become tenure track university professors. In Canada from the CAPS November 2009 report: “In 1986, 34% of Canada’s PhDs were university professors whereas it was 24% in 2001, a decline of 10 percentage points in 15 years. Further decreases are predicted given that enrolment in doctoral programs is far outpacing the increase in full time university professors. In 2007/2008, enrolment at the doctorate level was 40,400, an increase of 62% from 2001/2002.”

I, like others in the PhD and PDF stage, cringe at such numbers. Two major questions that I always have are:

1. Why are 100% of people being trained to become a PI when only ~20% “make it”, with a niggling follow-up of if we don’t “make it”, why do we feel like failures?

2. How many inside of this statistic actively make the choice and how many feel forced out?

The first has plagued policy makers and university administrators for years.  There are a couple of really interesting tensions that contribute:

1. Universities want more PhD students – they make more money.  And I don’t mean your tuition fees…  I mean the nice subsidy that comes from governments to have you enrolled

2. Graduate programs that provide business training (or even full fledged MBAs) to science based MSc and/or PhD students have been criticized for using public monies to fund industry training

3. Many professors want their students in the lab not out exploring alternative careers like journalism, law, or industry

The second is an even tougher one, because little of this data is ever collected and it’s extremely tough to analyze even if it is collected.  It does, however, bring us to a critical point in a PhD/PDFs career – do I make the push for an tenure track faculty spot or am I off to explore something else?  We all have to make the choice… this blog entry argues to make it sooner rather than later.

If I was to get full answers to my questions, the trend would not change, it would simply be easier to understand and eventually manage.  If I imagine the possible answers though, I can’t help but continually arrive at a significant issue that causes big trouble… I believe that the “second Post Doc” is a major source of long term parking charges (both professionally and personally) collected in the Academic Parking Lot .

Here’s why:

1. There is no degree at the end, no metric to be judged on… once you have acquired “post doctoral experience”, the difference between 3 years and 7 years is incremental at best when it comes to looking at your CV. Yes, you’re actually more experienced and more qualified and yes, there are always exceptions (i.e.: chasing a HUGE story that made you move to a different lab that could answer the question), but the difference on paper (unless it’s accompanied by a long series of papers), is minimal.

2. It takes at least 6 months (and sometimes longer) to get established in the new location – this is on top of the time block that you already lost in your first PDF and creates another gap in your record – remember… there’s even another gap waiting if you do land the professor job.

3. Most major granting councils are funding at a rate somewhere in between 15 and 20%. If you’ve been a PDF for 3-5 years and aren’t yet competitive for an academic job – is it reasonable to expect that you’ll be competitive for research grants later on in your career?

4. The second PDF is an extension of the problem that plagues far too many people in our generation – the apathetic I-can-choose-anything-but-I-don’t-know-what generation. It seems that for many of us, you go through high school, do well in science and math because that’s what the “smart kids” are good at (don’t even get me started on how wrong this type of thinking is), you go to a university that has a good chance of getting you into law school, dentistry, or medicine because those are the only careers you’ve ever heard of (really… did you just “know” you wanted to be a grad student/PDF/professor?), you land in a science faculty, realize you don’t like idea of medical school and this “research thing” might be a good route (seems flexible enough, not closing any doors), get convinced/bullied into doing a PhD right away because no big labs want to waste their time with a 2-3 year Masters student, finish that PhD ( 30-40% admittedly do jump ship ), go do a post doc, because you certainly can’t get a tenure track job yet and you’re not ready to “leave science”, and then… you’re here… in the first post doc, why not do a second (seems flexible enough, not closing any doors… right… right?). Yes, you detected some sarcasm in there.

Of course there are exceptions… because post docs are a heterogeneous bunch – some have families that keep them tied to a particular city and others get unlucky with the first post doc and need to extract themselves. The alternatives to a second PDF are plentiful and Beth will be expanding on many of the career options in her blog entries. Another great resource that might help is the National Post Doc Association’s Career Planning Resources page .

The position that I would lobby for that doesn’t exist in many institutes in Canada but is becoming increasingly popular around here in Cambridge is the staff scientist position (though it goes by many different names). In essence, this is the home for the person that loves benchwork, science, and occasionally dwelling on the bigger picture but is not into teaching at the university or supervising students and…they hate the idea of grant writing. It pays well, has as much job security as “normal” jobs, has great benefits, and doesn’t (usually!) require weekends and evenings. I don’t quite have a grasp on where the money comes from or how this is all organized (I’m looking!), but I suspect it goes back to what you can actually have covered in your grant and what sort of core operating funds are available. Check out the Sanger Job Opportunities page for an example.

Personally, I’m tickled by the idea of possibly becoming a tenure track prof, I think I’d love it and I’m setting my sights for it… but… if I’m in the lab of my first PDF and after 3-5 years I don’t even really get considered for faculty jobs, I will definitely re-evaluate and move against the poisonous trend that we are collectively undertaking…

I will say NO to the second post doc and I encourage you all to do the same.

12 Comments

Dave, November 15th 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Financial, General, Jobs

Peer Review and Publishing – the best of the worst?

Posted November 13th 2009 at 10:11 am by Dave

QUICK HITS:

  1. 1. This is RALLY WEEK for the STEM CELL CHARTER – follow their blog , twitter feed, or join their facebook group. David Eaves just made a heartfelt plea on his blog regarding the Charter – I encourage a read! 
  3. 2. TheMarkNews has been flying under my radar for some time now and I’ve just been forwarded onto it (Thanks Trevor!) – it’s a great place to see current opinions on relevant news items from a Canadian perspective. …from their site: At its core The Mark is a national movement to record Canadian ideas and propel the people behind them. It is a collection of thoughts and a tool for facilitating interdisciplinary dialogue and debate between outstanding Canadians.

Peer Review and Publishing – the best of the worst?

I need to have a Cell, Science, or Nature paper to get my academic job.

This, my friends, is what every young medical science trainee has at the front of their brain and will drive many of the topics that come up on our blog. More and more of the major journals are edited by journal editors and not academic scientists and the job relies more on finding what will sell subscriptions/advertising rather than the putting out the very best science (thankfully these groups have some overlap, but you’ve certainly heard people query – “…and how did this get into Journal X?”.

An extremely interesting component of the whole process (and the subject of this post) is peer review. It has been described as the best, but still quite lousy, system we have to assess the quality of a journal article. What was it that Winston Churchill said about democracy?? We’re still working on that aren’t we? – peer review has got to change!

At its heart, peer review, as practiced by most journals, is a system where an editor – after a first round of sometimes extensive culling – will send a paper out to 2-4 academics in a related field of research to query the importance, relevance, rigor, and merits of a particular submission. I recently attended a Peer Review workshop here at Cambridge where 50-60 grads, PDFs, and young PIs spent an afternoon debating peer review with a panel of journal editors, professors, and people from Sense About Science, the latter of whom have launched a public campaign about the merits of peer review and published some preliminary figures in Sept 2009.

One of the most heated discussions was on anonymity in the current peer review system. The vast majority of reviewers, and I can only speak from my own field, are anonymous and the paper authors are visible. The first question to be asked: “Should it be double blind” – resounding consensus was, “it wouldn’t matter, the reviewer would generally be able to tell who the person was anyhow based on their work” – it is also interesting to note that double blind studies have been done and women still come out worse off (a great series of articles are here and here, and a general website with frightening stats and stories re: women in science is here – thanks James Z from a couple of years ago!)

Back to the anonymity issue… if we can’t be double blind how about no blinding at all? This stimulated massive discussion and I came out with the overwhelming feeling that young scientists (who dominated the room and I can’t generalize about professors because they didn’t reach statistical significance…) would be a-ok with open peer review. Some nay sayers brought up potential drawbacks:

  1. 1. I’d be afraid to review someone harshly that’s got more power than me
  3. 2. I don’t feel qualified to be an expert opinion and worry about losing face for accepting an article that turns out to be terrible.

For these arguments, I have some sympathy as I want a job too, but I can’t help responding with:

  1. 1. If you make good points, aren’t personal, and generally do justice to the review, we have to believe that you’ll come out on top, otherwise the system is not worth saving and peer review needs to go… AND… for every enemy you make that has “power” there’s almost certainly a friend to be made that doesn’t like Professor Powerful .
  3. 2. If you don’t qualify as an expert – turn it down…maybe this will put the pressure on journals to find good reviewers and on scientists to stop submitting above the level where something belongs (and yes, this is a massive problem that I’ll go into in a future blog)

The benefits of public reviewers are plentiful, and there are a few ways to achieve it that range in transparency. A) We could simply have names appear only on articles that are published, B) we could publish names and the actual reviews along with the publication, or C) we could publish everything (negative, positive, etc) for the author (or the public to read). Some of these would be viewed as rather extreme, so I’ll detail just the most realistic option’s benefits, those of first method:

  • 1. Every article would have 2-4 names associated with it, giving the article extra credibility – Imagine thinking “ I think Professor X is great and so smart – he likes this article, I should definitely read it!” – this is akin to the Faculty of 1000 site for biology and medicine (though it lacks complete coverage)
  • 2. It would do well to break up networks of back scratching and I’m sure that bioinformatics and statistics folks would love to do the meta-analysis… if you notice that every paper that Professor X writes is reviewed and approved by Professor Y or the former post doc from Professor Y’s lab, then things start to look fishy.
  • 3. It would make reviewers think long and hard before putting their final decisions out there because their name is permanently affixed to the credibility of the article
  • 4. It would discourage journal editors from overruling multiple reviewers – this of course presumes that we’d be bright enough to publish a YES or NO next to the review.
  • 5. On the tail of the last point, you also get the benefit of knowing if a paper was unanimously accepted or if it was a tough sell (and you might even have the nerve to follow up with someone to see why they didn’t like it!)
  • 6. Imagine… you could publicly shame reviewers with stats like over the past 20 years Professor X has never positively reviewed an article by a female PI or first author (which I’m sure would never happen – right? right?)

* If we get into the practice of publishing the actual reviews, it would be an excellent new metric for the assessment of young scientists without extensive publication records. If you can articulate ideas clearly and identify key holes in logic/experiments, this will reflect well on you.

So… these are just some thoughts, mostly meant to stimulate discussion and let people vent about the pros/cons of peer review, anonymous or otherwise…

Next topic: Say NO to the second PDF

3 Comments

Dave, November 13th 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in General, Science Communcation