Смертоносная аспирантура в Гарварде

все вопросы, касающиеся поступления и обучения в аспирантуре
Cherep
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Смертоносная аспирантура в Гарварде

Сообщение Cherep » Ср дек 29, 2004 10:17 am

Первым про слухи упомянул Гриф, мне хочется продолжить этот чёрный пиар. Собственно, мне до лампочки и професср Кори, да и покойные студенты мне не родственники. Можно считать, что делать мне нефиг, поэтому я это и постю. Статья доступна не всем, поэтому выложу целиком.

Вкратце по-русски.
Третий (?) суицид в группе Кори. Погибает один из лучших его аспирантов Джейсон Элтом (в частности помогал Кори вести его курс органического синтеза).
Защитники Кори говорят, что всему виной его амбиции. Чел взялся за синтез очень сложного природного соединения, причём сознательно выбрал самый сложный из проэктов которые Кори ему предложил. Отказался от любой помощи. Более того, он синтезировал две части этой молекулы (из которых потом можно было синтезировать целевую).
Шеф сказал, всё, хер с ней, защищайся, а потом какойнить постдок доделает. Но чел вызвался возится дальше. Но ничего не получалось. Кори, якобы, не прессовал его. Один из постдоков говорит, что даже за несколько недель до самоубийства Элтом говорил ему, что Кори напишет ему (Элтому) хорошую рекомендацию на академическую должность (то бишь профессора). Но, в своем посмертном письме к Кори Элтом написал, что Кори потерял к нему уважение. Якобы Кори сказал, что Джейсон не внес в этот проэкт никакого интеллектуального вклада. Кори всё это отрицает.
В тоже время другие говрят, что Кори вполне мог испортить репутацию своим аспирантам, несмотря на нормальные отношения. А от рекомендационного письма зависит карьера. А руководитель один. Да и Кори известен тем, что любит прессовать аспирантов и постдоков. Поэтому многие руководителя бояться!
Работают 7 дней в неделю, спят на кафедре и тп
В итоге, несмотря на репутацию "любимого сына" Элтом тоже боялся получить от Кори отлуп.
Единственное позитивное от этой трагедии, что начались дебаты о том, как улучшить ситуацию, что судьба аспиранта находится лишь во власти одного руководителя. Ну и вобщем, вроде бы сделали комиссию по три профессорв на аспиранта, которые решают судьбу дисера и тп.
Copyright 1998 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education
October 23, 1998
SECTION: THE FACULTY; Pg. A12
LENGTH: 2936 words
HEADLINE: Harvard Faces the Aftermath of a Graduate Student's Suicide
BYLINE: ALISON SCHNEIDER
BODY:
No one ever expected Jason D. Altom to kill himself, least of all because of his relationship with his graduate-school adviser. But in August, Mr. Altom, by everyone's estimation one of the best graduate students in Harvard University's chemistry department, swallowed cyanide and left behind three letters blaming his Nobel Prize-winning adviser for his death.
A month after the suicide, the chemistry department approved nine changes in its advising system -- changes that everyone agrees are a positive response to an otherwise tragic situation.
Many people at Harvard think that that is where the story should end. The suicide was an irrational act; it's impossible, they caution, to try to make sense of it.
But Mr. Altom's death has raised questions about graduate-student advising that other observers at Harvard believe need to be aired. The suicide is symptomatic of the pressures and the skewed power relationships infecting graduate studies, they say -- problems that exist at most universities but that loom large at elite ones like Harvard and are particularly corrosive in competitive departments like chemistry.
Too often, some students fear, suicides get written off as tragic flukes, but that sort of thinking is flawed, they say. For every Ph.D. candidate who kills himself, there are hundreds who become clinically depressed, drop out, or grimly endure bad situations in silence because of poor relationships with their advisers. This year, it was Mr. Altom; next year, it could be someone else, the argument goes.
In fact, it has been. Mr. Altom, who was about to enter his sixth year at Harvard, was not the first chemistry student to kill himself. There have been eight graduate-student suicides at Harvard since 1980. Four of the students were in the chemistry department, and three of the four, including Mr. Altom, worked for the same research adviser: Elias J. Corey.
Last year, Fung Lam, a first-year graduate student in chemistry, was found dead in his lab 10 days after joining the Corey research group. And in 1987, Felix Chau, a third-year student, took his life as well.
Fans of Mr. Corey, of which there are many, get upset when the other suicides are mentioned. There's no evidence that advising bore any connection to the deaths, particularly that of a student who was only in Mr. Corey's group for two weeks, they say. Mr. Corey is getting tarred for tragedies that are not his fault.
The professor agrees: "What I'm sensitive to is innuendo, McCarthylike smears that can be brought to bear on me as a person and on the people in my group. The last thing I want to see someone do is concoct a specious argument that there was something wrong with the relationship that I had with this graduate student."
Mr. Altom's suicide notes tell a different story. His parents, who declined to discuss their son's death with The Chronicle, released one of his letters to The Harvard Crimson. According to the campus newspaper, the letter, written to James G. Anderson, chairman of the chemistry department, opened simply: "This event could have been avoided."
"Professors here have too much power over the lives of their grad students," the letter continued. Having a committee of professors involved earlier in the evaluation of a student's work would "provide protection for graduate students from abusive research advisers," Mr. Altom wrote. "If I had such a committee now I know things would be different."
Just how different is uncertain. Remorse over Mr. Altom's suicide is universal; consensus is not. But some facts are clear.
Mr. Corey is widely viewed as the greatest organic chemist in the world. In 1990, he won the Nobel Prize. His theory of "retrosynthetic analysis" changed the way scientists think about molecules by teaching them to work backward, breaking down structures, one bond at a time, into their simplest components. He is also a master at creating small, complex molecules -- structures chemists routinely call "artistic" and "beautiful."
The list of the nearly 600 people who've passed through his research group, known in some circles as "the Corey School," reads like a Who's Who of chemistry. Many of the finest chemists in industry and academe learned their science at his side. Some 150 of them are professors.
By all accounts, Mr. Altom was poised to become one of them. He was considered the finest student in the Corey group -- the one who bore the closest resemblance to his adviser: talented, meticulous, relentlessly hard-working.
Everyone concurs that Mr. Altom seemed to have the kind of relationship with his adviser that other students envied. The two men conferred constantly. And Mr. Altom helped teach Mr. Corey's advanced chemistry course, an honor that most graduate students covet.
Opinions about what went wrong differ radically. Of the nearly three dozen sources for this story, many individuals, worried about damaging their careers, would speak only on the condition of anonymity.
Mr. Corey's defenders say his research group is one of the most intellectually vigorous and demanding in the world. They work with him because they're hungry for the challenge and the unparalleled rewards that go with it. As for Mr. Corey, they add, he's an outstanding mentor -- the kind of man who turns down speaking engagements so he can spend time with his students. To his face, most students call him Professor Corey, but among themselves, he is "E.J."
"There are a lot of faculty members who couldn't tell people on a month-to-month basis what you're working on," one of his former students says. "E.J. could tell people on a week-to-week basis."
Problems with his mentor didn't push Mr. Altom over the edge; his own ambitions did, Mr. Corey's defenders say. When Mr. Altom joined the group, Mr. Corey says he suggested three different projects at three different levels of difficulty. Mr. Altom chose the most rigorous one -- the synthesis of a molecule so complex that some people have dubbed it chemistry's version of "the Holy Grail."
Mr. Corey suggested that Mr. Altom work with another student, but he opted to go it alone. The project proceeded spectacularly. He built the most difficult half of the molecule. Then, he built the other half. All he had to do was link the two halves.
His adviser told him that he could stop working and start writing his thesis. The "total synthesis" of the molecule could be done in a postdoctoral fellowship, Mr. Corey says. But Mr. Altom was convinced that he needed to synthesize the molecule as part of his Ph.D., if he wanted to win a top academic post, his friends say.
The synthesis eluded him, and the failures mounted. Shortly before his death, he thought he had succeeded. He was wrong.
Several students in the Corey group say that their adviser was nothing but supportive in the face of Mr. Altom's failures. A few weeks before the suicide, the two men met to discuss Mr. Altom's future. "Jason came out of the meeting on cloud nine," says Brian Stoltz, a postdoc in the Corey group and Mr. Altom's lab mate. "The tone was that if he wanted an academic job, E.J. would support him. If that's not clear support from your adviser, what is?"
Something evidently changed. In August, Mr. Altom took a day off from his lab work to write up his research report, something graduate students do every six months to assess their progress. The next day, he was found dead in his apartment. He left behind notes for his family, his department chairman, and his adviser.
The letter he left for Mr. Corey indicated that he thought his adviser had lost respect for him, sources say. They say the letter noted that Mr. Corey had recently told Mr. Altom that he had made "no intellectual contribution" to his project.
His adviser is stymied and shattered by the letters. He says he never questioned Mr. Altom's intellectual contributions. "I did my best to guide Jason as a mountain guide would to guide someone climbing a mountain. I did my best every step of the way," Mr. Corey says. "My conscience is clear. Everything Jason did came out of our partnership. We never had the slightest disagreement."
Tom Gant, a former postdoc in the group who shared a lab with Mr. Altom, agrees. There isn't a doubt in Mr. Gant's mind that "what killed him was that molecule." Mr. Altom's mile-high expectations set him up for crushing disappointment, his friend explains. "He should have done what the rest of us do, bear down and say, 'I'm not going to let this molecule whip me.' "
Instead, Mr. Altom blamed his adviser for his setbacks, Mr. Gant says: "I'm angry. I didn't know Jason was going to bow out with a Pyrrhic victory speech, but that's what his suicide note was. He took out others when he took out himself." Blaming Mr. Corey for Mr. Altom's pain compounds the tragedy, Mr. Gant says.
Mr. Corey thinks he has been unfairly maligned, too: "That letter doesn't make sense. At the end, Jason must have been delusional or irrational in the extreme."
More than a few observers suggest that it's Mr. Corey and his supporters who are deluding themselves. People are blaming Mr. Altom's suicide on mental illness instead of using it as an opportunity to assess the cutthroat culture of top-flight graduate programs and the potentially dangerous climate of the Corey group, they say.
Andrew Black, a graduate student in chemistry who lived with Mr. Altom, doesn't blame Mr. Corey for his friend's death, but he also doesn't think his roommate was delusional: "Anyone who's going to take his own life is obviously in some way mentally ill, but to say he's delusional is to write it off without thinking."
"Corey has a reputation for being mean," Mr. Black says. "It's a reputation that's never been dispelled. He's also revered. He must on some level know it, but he doesn't do anything to stop it."
More than most students, he adds, Mr. Altom feared and revered his adviser. But he wasn't the only student who felt this way. "There was so much fear in the lab," says Brian Lawrence, a Ph.D. student in chemistry and a member of its student-run Quality of Life Committee. He left the Corey group to work with another professor. "People have a perception that Corey can make or break your career."
That fear is not unfounded, students insist, and it's not limited to Mr. Corey or to the chemistry department. Good jobs, prestigious grants, even tenure depend on strong letters of recommendation. For many students, the only letter they have is from their adviser. That leaves many of them feeling that their fate hinges on the whims of a single person. Those worries are magnified in close-knit communities like chemistry, where the wrong word in the right ear can ruin a career.

Much of the pressure stems from the culture of high-stakes chemistry, where people care more about the science being produced than the people producing it. "There's a religious fervor to the way science is carried out here," explains Paul Nghiem, a chemistry postdoc. "What's unsaid here is that people put in a Herculean effort and put the other aspects of life far down on the list of important things."
The result: Many students work seven days a week until the wee hours of the morning. Their vacations are few; their outside activities nil. Working 70 hours a week or more turns the lab into your life, students say. And when your science turns sour, there's nothing to fall back on.
A lot of the pressure comes from peers, says Megan Pratt, a graduate student who left chemistry for neuroscience. "People would brag, 'I slept in the group room last night because I was working so hard.' There's a mindset that if you leave the lab at 6 p.m., it means that your project is not the most important thing in your life."
Critics suggest that much of the pressure comes from advisers, albeit implicitly. Advisers control when Ph.D.'s graduate, and they answer to no one, students complain. In a decentralized university like Harvard, autonomy is the norm; accountability is not, observers say. And the chemistry department is infamous for being one of the most independent departments of all. The stakes are perhaps the highest in the Corey group, where people work for a man whose reach is 600 students long.
"Corey has a larger-than-life reputation," a department colleague says. "With that, a cult of personality has developed that isn't always fair or healthy. I think his students worry a lot about how to please him and how to do the right thing."
Mr. Altom certainly did. In part, that was because of his own drive, but people familiar with the Corey group insist that he also had very real and rational reasons to fear that, despite his status as the favored son, his adviser might turn on him and dash his hopes for an academic career. It had happened to others before, they say.
"If your chemistry was going well, life was good," says a former member of the Corey group. "If it was going poorly, your life was poor. And effort seemed to be a moot point. Mistakes weren't tolerated."
To stay in Mr. Corey's good graces, it's said that his students try to create the illusion that they never leave the lab. Several people confirm that his group members frequently bring two jackets to work so that when they head out the door, it still looks like they haven't left the building.
Those who had fallen from grace with Mr. Corey were sometimes subjected to the silent treatment for months on end, sources say, and several students were kicked out in their fifth or sixth year.
Several former students say they heard far more criticism than compliments, a tactic they say Mr. Corey uses to push them on to greater heights. "Corey said to one guy, 'A competent chemist wouldn't have this problem,' " Mr. Lawrence recalls.
"If you didn't care about your chemistry, he'd lose interest," says a former student. "But if you cared, he'd push you and the chemistry as far as he could. That's Corey's greatest fault when it comes to pushing. He doesn't know when to stop."
People familiar with the situation say he unintentionally pushed Mr. Altom too far. A student who had more perspective on his project and less reverence for his adviser might have shrugged off remarks about the intellectual contribution he'd made to his research, Mr. Altom's friends say. For Mr. Altom, it wasn't so easy.
What's troubling, says a former chemistry student, is that other professors in the department knew Mr. Corey could be harsh to students, but looked the other way because the science produced was so good, and the adviser's status so stellar.
Mr. Corey and his many supporters disagree. He says he does not give students the silent treatment, and believes his criticism is constructive, not destructive.
Hundreds of his former students contributed glowing letters about their time in his lab to a commemorative book put together for his 70th birthday last July, Mr. Corey proudly points out. But two of> them, who spoke anonymously to The Chronicle, had very different stories to tell about what it was like to work for him.
Their stories are similar to ones told in other departments at Harvard. Last year, Hailei Ge, a first-year graduate student in computer science, jumped from a campus library to his death. His suicide sparked a campuswide debate about advising.
Harvard's Graduate Student Council asked Ph.D. candidates to fill out a survey on advising. People complained about advisers who didn't read theses or only met with their students every two years. Others bemoaned grueling work schedules.
The council drafted advising guidelines and a bill of graduate-student rights. But the proposals have not been implemented.
"I'll graduate in a year and a half," says J. Paul Callan, a Ph.D. student in physics involved in the advising debate. "The chances these changes will happen by then are less than 1 per cent. The chances of it happening in 10 years aren't much better. The political will to do it isn't there."
Harvard has sought to improve counseling and services for Ph.D.'s, says Paul Martin, a physicist who was dean of the engineering school when Mr. Ge killed himself. But he thinks it's hard to legislate faculty-student relationships. "To try to find a formula or rule that will help people is a little bit simplistic," he says.
The fact that the chemistry department did find the will to make changes gives some students hope. The department, known for being more competitive than collegial, will be holding monthly dinners so students can get together informally with the chemistry chairman. There will be colloquia exploring alternative careers to academe, an annual lecture on how to deal with the stresses of graduate education, and confidential channels set up for students who need psychological counseling.
The centerpiece of the plan involves pre-thesis committees -- a group of three professors, including the student's adviser, who will meet individually with the Ph.D. candidate on a yearly basis to discuss his or her research and career goals. The underlying hope: to increase contact with other professors so that no one person will have total control over a student's future.
Members of the department's Quality of Life Committee proposed that change three years ago, but professors rejected it. They feared the time commitment would be too great. Last month, the professors gave the proposal their unanimous support. No one questions whether Mr. Altom's suicide had anything to do with it, but everyone says they wish it hadn't.
Последний раз редактировалось Cherep Ср дек 29, 2004 10:33 am, всего редактировалось 1 раз.

Cherep
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Сообщение Cherep » Ср дек 29, 2004 10:29 am

А вот и молекула-убийца, если интересно

Изображение

Называется Haplophytine.

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Serge
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Сообщение Serge » Ср дек 29, 2004 11:36 am

меня эта статья достаточно сильно впечатлила. и в очередной раз заставила задуматься о жизненных приоритетах. конечно, я и до этого слышал о подобных инцидентах, но все же.
интересно, но ведь у нас в стране такого не происходит. и как мне кажется вовсе не из-за великой душевности наших руководителей, а наверное от того, что у нас нет ученых сравнимой с Кори величины. в России не работает ни одного нобелевского лауреата по химии, и это говорит о многом. и никакие отговорки о корпоративности американцев в порядке присуждения этих премий тут не работают. нету у нас нобелевских лауреатов, и все тут.
although we appreciate diversity in our company being conservative we cannot accept any unexpected efforts to reach one's cbrtkm

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Egor
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Сообщение Egor » Ср дек 29, 2004 11:47 am

Serge писал(а):меня эта статья достаточно сильно впечатлила. и в очередной раз заставила задуматься о жизненных приоритетах. конечно, я и до этого слышал о подобных инцидентах, но все же.
интересно, но ведь у нас в стране такого не происходит. и как мне кажется вовсе не из-за великой душевности наших руководителей, а наверное от того, что у нас нет ученых сравнимой с Кори величины. в России не работает ни одного нобелевского лауреата по химии, и это говорит о многом. и никакие отговорки о корпоративности американцев в порядке присуждения этих премий тут не работают. нету у нас нобелевских лауреатов, и все тут.
Ну, и люди к жизни относятся проще, думаю =))
Вот, вычитал недавно, что на Ямайке - 0.4 самоубийства в год на 10 тыс. чедловек, в России - порядка 20. США -30, Японии -45. Менталитет =))
Вот, просто в России, если не получается сайнс, чел кладёт болт на сайнс и уходит в бизнес. Знакомая девушка после 2хлетних попыток клонировать белок плюнула на всё, вышла замуж, забеременала, работает сэйлзом (биочипы, кажется) :wink:

INEOS
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Re: Смертоносная аспирантура в Гарварде

Сообщение INEOS » Ср дек 29, 2004 12:48 pm

Cherep писал(а):Третий (?) суицид в группе Кори. Погибает один из лучших его аспирантов Джейсон Элтом (в частности помогал Кори вести его курс органического синтеза).
.
[/quote]
Ага, говорят еще, что студенты/аспиранты оставляют предсмертные записки типа "Не смог синтезировать вещество А, жизнь не имеет смысла" :)

Cherep
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Сообщение Cherep » Ср дек 29, 2004 1:12 pm

Serge писал(а): а наверное от того, что у нас нет ученых сравнимой с Кори величины. в России не работает ни одного нобелевского лауреата по химии
По физике есть. Аспиранты-физики тоже цианидом травились? Вобщем в статье говорится, что авторит Гарварда велик, авторитет его химфака не менее велик, авторит работающих там профессоров тоже велик, поэтому то что творится внутри по-большому счёту закрывали глаза и не хотели знать. Пока гром не грянул.
Ващето вся эта погоня за премиями и прочим это как Большой Спорт. Многие не выдерживают постоянных нагрузок и физических и психических. Но кто про них знает? Про тех кто сошёл с трассы.

Serge, твой последний абзац можно трактовать как "У нас нет нобелевских лауреатов по химии, потому что наши профессора не сношают аспирантов так, чтобы производительность их труда давала гениальные результаты на Нобеля. А не сношают потому что или balls отсутствуют или незачем (умных мыслей нет)". Верно?

И ещё наверное в тех долбаных нобелевских премиях по большому счёту идей аспирантов и постдоков нехилая пропрция.

ГриФ

Сообщение ГриФ » Ср дек 29, 2004 5:37 pm

согласен с Егором. думаю, нашим людям не придет в голову безумная мысль кончать с собой из-за прессинга со стороны шефа.
а насчёт Нобеля - у Kochi его нет, а мёртвый постдок есть

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Сообщение ИСН » Чт дек 30, 2004 1:25 am

О котором (мёртвом постдоке) Кочи сам рассказывает людям, не интерпретируя это как самоубийство.
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Люди-то к жизни относятся не проще (вон сколько самоубийств! поди, первое место в Европе, нет?), но в России наука не настолько высоко котируется, чтобы провал в науке считать провалом в жизни.

Cherep
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Сообщение Cherep » Чт дек 30, 2004 1:36 am

Да, и ещё наверное карьера в науке не столь сильно зависила от рекомендаций начальства?
При СССР так вродебы "научный коммунизм" и прочие вещи были важнее.

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slavert
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Сообщение slavert » Чт дек 30, 2004 4:04 am

Мне кажется, в науке как и в любой творческой области много людей со слабой психикой. А что без рекомендации даже в индустрию или QA не берут?
Ну и Кори то же виноват - видит человек неадекватно себя ведет, надо его в отпуск отправить.

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Сообщение slavert » Чт дек 30, 2004 4:06 am

В продолжение темы - речь правда про биолога


Slaves to science
For post-docs, finding a supernova is easier than finding a job.
By William Speed Weed
- - - - - - - - - -
February 28, 2000 | S ally bounds up the stairs two at a time. She fumbles with the key, then bursts into the lab. With fingers still frozen from the morning air, she takes a tray of hockey-puck-size clear plastic cups out of an incubator. The cups contain fish embryos and water. She drops some of the fluid onto a slide and looks through the microscope. There they are, little spheres with dark paisley inlays.
These particular fish are growing without hearts because Sally knocked out a gene fish need to grow hearts. She can now study this missing gene by watching what doesn't happen in its absence. She had to get the fish out of the incubator at exactly this stage of development -- just as the organs are forming, but before these fishlings die when they discover they have no hearts. Having not left the lab until midnight, Sally overslept the 6 a.m. alarm.


Poor Sally. With wan skin and greasy hair, she looks like a drowned mouse in bed-rumpled clothing. Sally repeatedly scratches her left underarm. Sally (not her real name) is a post-doctorate, one of 40,000 scientists in America caught between graduate school and professorship. They are science's slaves, indentured to the promise of an academic job and whipped by the fear of not getting that job. So they toil like Sally: 80 hours a week for less than $30,000 a year, running her advising professor's lab, doing his research and writing papers that redound to his greater glory as much as her own: It used to be that Ph.D. candidates and post-docs would do the work while the professor hogged the credit; these days they share the credit, though not the work.
Sally likes her advisor. He always acknowledges her efforts, and he is doing his best to get her a faculty position somewhere. But he also relies on her sweat. These fish-embryo trials have to be completed before he gives a presentation at a summer conference. He's not the one getting up at 6 every morning, and he won't really be writing the presentation. But Sally must "keep up the good work" until she herself becomes a professor.
According to Eleanor Babco of the Commission on Professionals in Science and Technology, no one tallies how many science faculty positions are vacated every year, but it is clearly not enough to hire each year's group of science Ph.D.'s, because the pool of in-limbo post-docs keeps growing. Non-science Ph.D.'s don't have such a formalized system. They can be lucky enough to get a professorship right away, they can jump to another line of work before returning to the academy or they can drive a taxi.
Science Ph.D.'s are not allowed to leave if they ever want a professorship. They are put into this bottleneck, this holding pattern called the post-doc where they must work as hard as they absolutely can in order to stand out and be chosen. Sally cannot afford to sleep in. She cannot afford to take time off. She cannot afford to give her real name to the press because complaining is looked down upon. All she can do is hope hope hope that some department somewhere will someday hire her on as an assistant professor of genetics at $42,000 a year.
Sally is single, lover-less and 32 years old.
Among a number of "Far Side" cartoons about eccentric scientists, she has posted a news clip over the lab table: "Law firm raises starting salaries to $150,000." "Those kids are 24," Sally says. "They did three years of grad school. Are they worth that much more than me?"
Academic science, especially in the biological fields, has grown healthily in the past decade. But the research and the lab work have become more complex, requiring more worker-hours to run a scientist's lab. The overproduction of Ph.D.'s provides science professors a source of cheap, high-quality labor. Most post-docs find they have no alternative. What could they do? Drop out after eight years of education? Leave the august halls of Newton, Einstein, Pasteur and Gould?
"It's unthinkable to most," says Sally as she scribbles some numbers into a lab book. "Unthinkable for two reasons: One, you say to yourself: 'Here I am, I have been growing fish embryos for eight years. I am very good at it. Who else in the world cares?' You have dedicated your life to something so narrow, so inconsequential, that you have to see it through to consequence. You wait it out and publish with the hope that your work is someday cited by some researcher who discovers something else that a decade later leads to a new drug to cure cancer."
Sally scratches her armpit and checks to see if I noticed. The second reason dropping out is so hard, she continues, "is the science-is-an-elite-club mentality. Maybe it's that scientists were always geeks and so when we succeed, we say non-scientists are a second class of intellect. Whatever the reason, most career-track scientists think that people who go another direction are failures, pure and simple.

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Сообщение slavert » Чт дек 30, 2004 4:39 am

Еще интересная вешь - советы по поводу, стоит ли делать PhD (взгляд американцев)


I've seen people enter graduate school for wrong reasons. Basically the wrong reason to embark on a course of research is in the hopes of getting a better job. If future jobs are an important issue, students should be shown that a master’s is the best route. A Ph.D. is really demanding and can be a very frustrating course of study. It should only be undertaken if you really enjoy research. A Ph.D. does not guarantee a job.

Don’t do it. The hours are too long. The training period is way too long and you just get really tired of being this poor. In chemistry, the job market is okay, but not great. I love chemistry, but I just am not sure that it is worth this.


Think really hard about what you hope to gain from going to graduate school, if the years of stress/abuse and near poverty are worth it in the end. If you don’t hope to teach, it’s easier to get a job in industry if you don't have a Ph.D., especially in chemistry.

Know exactly what you want to do while in grad school. This may mean taking time before entering (i.e., working in industry or as a technician) in order to fully gauge the commitment and time it requires to get a Ph.D. If one just jumps in, there is danger of spending far too much time getting paid far too little money and ending up overqualified and disillusioned with the entire system.

Cherep
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Сообщение Cherep » Чт дек 30, 2004 10:58 pm

Да, ясен перец, что получать Ph. D. да ещё в химии только ради денег - глупость. Assistant professorу плотют не такую большую деньгу. Чуть ли не 50000 всего.

А в Америке без рекомендаций никуда.

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Сообщение Phobos » Вс янв 02, 2005 8:35 am

Мне кажется, что в отличие от физиков или даже химиков-теоретиков, в оргсинтезе слишком четкий критерий успеха - или ты синтезировал вещество, или нет. Если нет, то ты не можешь сказать - да я такой крутой, вот два фрагмента сделал, осталось соединить лишь. Ибо если сам не соединил, значит, вполне возможно, изначально была выбрана неправильная стратегия - очевидно, к такому выводу Элтом и пришел. У меня самого на докторате была неприятная ситуация, когда, синтезировав всю открытую цепочку макролида, я просто из-за нехватки времени не успел закрыть ее в макролактон. Другое дело, что никакая работа не стоит того, чтоб из-за нее кончать с собой, а также пренебрегать семьей, друзьями и свободным временем. Потому что верно было замечено в статье: на каждого покончившего с собой есть еще сотня впавших в депрессию, запивших, получивших инфаркт или разваливших семейную жизнь (причем это относится не только к постдокам. Например, Karl Djerassi, который изобрел одну из первых противозачаточных таблеток. Кажется, его дочь стала наркоманкой, а жена покончила с собой).
В физике же любая работа может быть озаглавлена "General application of something" и пройти с формулировкой: внес глубокий вклад в понимание процесса (например, истечения струи на вертикальную фаянсовую стенку и стекание по оной вниз в канализацию).
Wodka trinkt man pur und kalt, das macht hundert Jahre alt!

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Сообщение Кролик » Вт янв 04, 2005 11:05 pm

Из этой истории вывод. Лаба не должна становиться жизнью :!: , как было принято в группе Кори. Хорошо иметь еще занятия (увлечения), не связанные с профессиональной деятельностью, ну и общение, семья... Видимо, абсолютизация работы, даже такой, как работа в науке, все-таки не совсем естественна и многократно повышает уязвимость к неудачам :( . Да, чтоб чего-то добиться, надо жертвовать, но - с умом.

Cherep
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Сообщение Cherep » Ср янв 05, 2005 2:14 am

Кролик писал(а): Лаба не должна становиться жизнью :!: , как было принято в группе Кори.
Абсолютно верно, только есть один момент насчёт "было принято". Мой шеф был постдоком у Кори. Периодически он рассказывает разные байки. Например, была такая. В самом начале шеф спросил, сколько времени он должен проводить в лабе. Кори ответил, ну, если ты умный то и за 8 часов управишься. То есть формально было принято получать какаието данные, но не торчать в лабе какоето фиксированое время.

Вобще-то ответ Кори можно трактовать по-разному. Сомневаюсь, что синтетики, даже если умные, всегда за 8 часов находят решение проблемы...

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Сообщение Кролик » Ср янв 05, 2005 11:35 am

Cherep писал(а): Мой шеф был постдоком у Кори. Периодически он рассказывает разные байки. Например, была такая. В самом начале шеф спросил, сколько времени он должен проводить в лабе. Кори ответил, ну, если ты умный то и за 8 часов управишься. То есть формально было принято получать какаието данные, но не торчать в лабе какоето фиксированое время.

Вобще-то ответ Кори можно трактовать по-разному.
А как же та деталь в статье, что люди носили с собой два пиджака (куртки, может быть), чтоб один, уходя, оставить висеть на вешалке и создавать тем самым иллюзию, что они вообще не уходят из лабы? Это меня больше убеждает, чем процитированная двусмысленная фраза Кори.

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Сообщение Phobos » Ср янв 05, 2005 6:36 pm

Я слышал, что лет 15 назад в одном из универов Колорадо один докторант, которому руководитель все не давал закончить степень, решил проблему с другого конца - взял молоток и размозжил шефу голову. После этого футболки с изображением молотка были чрезвычайно популярны среди студентов универа.
Wodka trinkt man pur und kalt, das macht hundert Jahre alt!

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Сообщение Cherep » Чт янв 06, 2005 4:21 am

Кролик писал(а): А как же та деталь в статье, что люди носили с собой два пиджака (куртки, может быть), чтоб один, уходя, оставить висеть на вешалке и создавать тем самым иллюзию, что они вообще не уходят из лабы? Это меня больше убеждает, чем процитированная двусмысленная фраза Кори.
Именно!!! Они боятся навлечь на себя гнев начальства!
Cherep писал(а):Сомневаюсь, что синтетики, даже если умные, всегда за 8 часов находят решение проблемы...
Ну не получается, например, супер-пупер-мега идея.
Кролик писал(а):Лаба не должна становиться жизнью
А дома ждут, например.

Проще ведь сказать, я пришёл в 6 утра (свет горел). А потом ушёл в библиотеку (куртка была).

Вот что менее убойно?
"Я вот был (в смысле мой пиджак был), работал (свет то горел), но в этих условиях не шло, я сходил в библитотку (может, якобы, а на самом деле в кабак или домой), ботал статьи Профессра Такогото и собираюсь теперь сделать тото (ну, литературу то они читают)"
или
"Я пришёл как положено к 9 утра, в 12 сходил на ланч, в час пришёл, в 6 вечера ушёл. Ну не получилось, я завтра в библиотеку схожу. А что получилось не знаю, послезавтра спектры будут"

А ответ Кори действительно двусмысленный. Хотя снова повторю формально принято было "кончил дело - бухай смело"

Более того, в таких больших универах как Гарвард, да и в любой большой группе шеф очень часто в разъездах. Ну нет его неделю, например. И увидеть его можно только в определённые часы. Вся надежда на соседей по лаборатории. И нет впринципе смысла их обманывать. Так что "пиджаки-куртки" и "свет" - это не частая отмазка.
К чести Кори (по словам шефа) он очень часто был в лабратории и чуть ли не 2 раза в день совершал обходы подчинённых. Впринципе, прессуха нехилая, но в тоже время он СОВЕТОВАЛ. А Кори не глупый мужик и в химии толк знает.

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Сообщение Кролик » Чт янв 06, 2005 1:21 pm

Сherep, ты так образцово поддерживаешь обсуждение в своей теме :) , а у нас здесь ввели каникулы с 1 по 9 (точно не помню: может, и по 10, потому что лично у меня не каникулы, а сессия :wink: ), и писать некому :roll: . Подожди, праздники кончатся... 8)

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