could someone finish the other 49% of this blog entry for me?
This is another entry along the “Season of Giving” theme. This holiday season, what better gift to give to a slacker member of the lab than to do their work for them.
You know what really gets me? People (graduate students, postdoc, research associates, whatever) who don’t take responsibility for their research projects and then the P.I., by virtue of needing the project finished, somehow gets others to finish the project and then Irresponsible Researcher gets a first author publication–sometime in a really good journal–sometimes in journals better than anything I’ll probably ever publish in. That really steams me. We bust our butts day and nights for our work. We come up against roadblocks and struggle to get through them without any help and then I see these people who just drag their feet through their research and, because of the P.I.’s needs, get their work done for them. Who knows what I’m talking about?
I was having coffee with a good friend of mine who has an onging project in the lab–a project that I think has a very realistic chance of ending up in the New England Journal of Medicince (for those of you who are not familiar, a publication in NEJM can make a career in academic medicine). This project has been managed so far by a research associate in my friend’s lab and recently required the expertise of a collaborator who works in another field. Since that time, however, this research associate has dumped the project on the hands of the collaborator and now that the project has hit a road bump, the project is sitting still with no sign of progress. Meanwhile, my friend is stuck with a project with amazing potential and a research associate who isn’t interested. Necessity has now forced my friend to do the work to overcome the road bump, get the project back on track and ultimately finished. We spent our coffee talking about how to do this, came up with a plan and then determined the plan entailed work that the research associate had no interest (or possibly ability) in learning or doing. Sad. If this was my research associate, this person would have my foot up… Well you get it, but my friend is simply super nice and just deals with it. So now I am helping my friend to pick up the slack and get this project going again–because–and I mean this literally–this paper could end up in NEJM–it could be huge!!! The crazy part is that it is conceivable this research associate may end up first author on an NEJM paper–a paper that wouldn’t have been if not for my friend’s need to get this project going. Admittedly, this research associate will have done enough work when all is said and done to be most “deserving” of first author but the point for me is that 51%, 75%, whatever (and then giving up) just shouldn’t cut it. If every project of which I completed 51% were finished for me, I’d be applying for departmental chair jobs instead of residency. Moreover, if I had stopped at 51% into everyone of my projects that did succeed, I could have written another 10 papers with the extra time.
Now, yes of course those who actually worked through our projects and problems learn a lot more, blah blah blah, etc. but let’s face it: in the world of academia, the currency of choice is publications. And it just gets to me that these tangible rewards are given out to people who give up on their work just because they find themselves at the right place at the right time. But then again, that is so much of success in academics: being at the right place at the right time. <Sigh> Mudphudder better just get off of the high horse for now.
