Anyone want a general chat?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

By which title I mean, of course, that I am procrastinating and if I can't rise above it I'd love to drag you all down with me.

What are we all doing this term, and how's it going?

I'm trying to kick my book proposal into shape after yet another set of comments. I've lost track of how many times it's been 'nearly there' but I think it really is nearly there. Honest.

Hiya,

Yes, two modules I'm more or less doing on my own. One I know a fair bit about, but the other, well I keep looking as I work through the reading.

Publication wise, the expectation is maybe 1-2 for your first post-doc, and then 5 + for your first permanent job - the people I see appointed to permanent posts typically have more like 10. It has gone completely insane as to produce a good paper takes, say, a year. I think quality is often being sacrificed at the expense of quantity in my subject.

My own research just isn't happening whilst teaching is going on - the last thing I want to do when I have a spare half hour is to pick up yet another paper (hello, dogs to walk, a house to keep tidy ...). I'm hoping the break will give me a bit of breathing space.

With regards to lectures, isn't there an option to record them so they can play them back? We've got something called Lecture Replay (I try to pretend it doesn't exist) and know that, on the very rare occasion when someone's been sick, they have recorded it from home, still with slides etc.

Have you all seen this?
www.brianwansink.com/phd-advice/the-grad-student-who-never-said-no

making waves!

marasme unbelievable! (not just the terrible data fishing publications, but the use of an unpaid visitor for 11 months to write papers for them...)

came across it when reading Retraction Watch.
The comments (and replies) on that blog are a great read. Publish or Perish!

the whole p-hacking HARKing topic seems to have bypassed most of my colleague though, so hard to discuss these issues altogether in my school...

sad that many students, interns and postdocs fall into that trap.

Thanks, ivy. I managed, and usefully urgent rushes to the toilet were timed in the change-over between hours (potentially helped by adrenaline). Have almost kicked the UTI - my reaction to the ABs they prescribe really keeps me off work (I'm usually so dizzy I can't stand), so I try to flush them out. A little worried if it doesn't go by a few more days I'll have to go to the GP, but definitely much better now.

We're totally not sophisticated enough to have anything like recorded lectures :) I actually did record something in a lecture slot once, and it tooks months of preparation and had some serious technical faults in the end anyway. I don't see that on the horizon here anytime soon.

Interesting post and comments (although I didn't read all of the comments). I'm afraid I had to google 'p-hacking', but it just appears to be a new name for trying to push your data into something significant?

I think there's a point about taking up opportunities when they arise, but there is also an underlying assumption about infinite time it appears. He even says something about a 'window' of opportunity before other commitments arise - but what about individuals who never have such a window? DH finished his PhD with a toddler in the home. And perhaps some people want to have a life. I ended up saying 'no' to something I really wanted to say 'yes' to before Xmas: people looking for a collaborator with my expertise on a nearly-complete project, but they wanted to publish a paper before Xmas and at that point I was really on the edge of my capability. I simply couldn't've done it. (I barely did what I was meant to.)

I feel like the system is going to continue to promote things like this, though, until there is an actual culture of disapproval over working extra hours. At the moment it's actually understood as necessary (as we've discussed above), plus extraordinary effort above that is seen as highly positive. I wonder if somehow we can instill in the next generation a culture of 'positive' when you manage to do your job efficiently, and work well without needing to put in all-nighters, weekend/holiday work and so on. But I'm not sure that's possible when the basic workload already requires overtime (from those of us capable of it).

That's an interesting article. I had to google p hacking too, but I understand the phenomenon. It's something I come up against a lot as we use large historical databases of info, and hypotheses develop as we see the data. The answer as I see it is then to test the final hypothesis in a completely separate dataset, even if that means artificially halving the original set and keeping half unseen.

bigkids yep, that s a good point, and I wish we spoke about these approaches more often - our statistical support in my institution is null abysmal, and there is noone there to actually instill good practice.

Had a massive argument with a much senior colleague about multiple testing - he didn't see running tens of serial t-test on one dataset such a thing... I was called a stupid idiot for wanting some sort of bonferroni correction applied [yes, I do have classy colleagues]

murmuration we do have what is called 'lecture capture' but I don't tend to use that, I just record myself on a cheap handheld electronic recorder that you might use for interviews. I just took it everywhere with me one year and recorded the whole lot, then put them on the module webpages. I hide them though so they don't all not come and listen to those at home. Lecture capture includes video, ugh!

We don't have anything either Marasme, although as the research councils are focusing on stats and grants are being rejected they seem to be pulling their fingers out

I just signed myself up to a Stanford MOOC to learn more - I am not confident of teaching stats to my PhD students currently!

Grant rejected last week. Today I got the comments and they are fair, and in general things I should have thought of - alongside a lot saying how good my application was and how good I am etc etc. Guess I just need to pick myself up and re-write and re-submit. Bah.

Place marking, as I'd like to join. It seems you are my people.

Reading through the thread reminds me of all the good and bad that goes with the job. I've been on maternity leave and starting back at work in a few weeks; girding my loins!

bigkid nothing more irritating than people saying how great something is and then not giving you the money!

It is in one way fucking irritAting but in another quite cheering. Just need to persevere

That sounds very encouraging bigkids - they really don't say good things if they don't mean them!

Welcome, mother. Do you have any kind of lessened load on the return? We now have a bunch of measures, like reducing teaching and admin for mat leave returners, Athena SWAN-induced, I believe.

sorry to hear, bigkids - a story to warm your heart:

I was selected for what is prob the most prestigious fellowship in my discipline, got intense prep from my uni [inc the big wigs chipping in and coaching me big money in sight], got to the interview, performed really well, got score top marks and.... did not get the award cause they ran out of funds funding the top two people.

At that point, I was pissed off. But they really encouraged me to submit again, raving on how all panel members loved it, reviewers loved it, and gave feedback, to incorporate. I did so, being pressed on by everyone not to missed my "chance"....

yep - did not even get shortlisted. Feedback was "not novel enough or directly relevant / important for this funder". Fuckers

The fuckers!!

Thanks Murmur. Fortunately I'm going back to a lightish load, partly because I'm starting mid-semester when modules are already up and running, and partly because I'm returning to my research project buy-out. I do have to give a few lectures though, and find myself feeling quite daunted, which is ridiculous really.

Marasme, that's infuriating. Honestly, you do have to wonder about the funding application processes sometimes.

Hi pearl. Nice to have you here.

mara - that's such a waste of your time!

Honestly, you do have to wonder about the funding application processes sometimes.

I think one has to take into account randomness, particularly in areas where funding is over-subscribed. In the areas around me the success rates range between 5% and 25% depending on scheme and funder. The difference between being funded and not making the shortlist is often very small.

(Cue engineers/biomedical scientists etc commenting that there is lots of funding in their areas just to make me more fed up.)

I'm a biomedical scientist and average for us is 10-15%. I think every field is suffering at the moment, with the possible exception of stuff that fits into Bill Gates' funding plans!

I'd just like to share that I've finished my marking
Missed the deadline by 24 hours but can't be helped.
Would like but too much to do tomorrow!

Well done Ivy, although I imagine that's not going to endear you to anyone on here! ;)
User, it's the randomness that worries me, although I suppose there isn't an easy way to eliminate it from the process.

Thanks Mother!

On to the next thing....

Regarding funding, I remember seeing a blog somewhere that calculated out the 'cost' of an EU funding bid, including all the time spent by the applicants (in salary) and reviewing, admin, etc., and came to the conclusion that it spent an awful lot of money. Something like more than they were giving out. Sorry, can't remember in detail.

I sometimes wonder if it might be more cost effective to just give money out for research more evenly, without all that time spent on applications. Then people could spend time doing research instead of writing grant applications that don't succeed.

I've definitely noticed the PhD funding situation is getting quite odd - it's less and more clumped. A near-retiree told me recently that getting PhD funding is more difficult now than he'd ever seen. Individuals are scrambling to a variety of 'training centres' and other places for funding - we just interviewed and selected a candidate (who is great, and I really, really hope he gets it and then chooses us...) - but now he goes on to a multi-university panel that's going to end up picking something like 12 students overall, and there were over 100 projects advertised (although my co-supervisors made the point that it's possible not all of them will have applicants). And then weird things happen like a colleague was, like all of us, scrambling for funding in all venues he could, and ended up with 4 PhD students all starting the same year - he was then massively overloaded with supervising them all (they've recently graduated and we've started pursuing the collaboration we talked about just before they started...). But it's not like you can say, oh, I'll only try this one avenue - when the rates are 10% or less - just in case more than one comes through. I remember one year I had 6 projects 'out there', and I got no students at all. At least I've got my first PhD student since mat leave starting this spring. So I hope things are looking up for me there.

Re PhD funding, my pet peeve is the number of studentships in my field that are allocated by centralised interview. Typically, it involves many staff members each spending lots of time developing a proposal with an individual student, all applications being ranked by a small group of people in the dept who are unlikely to be specialists in the project area, (sometimes conducting a second round of ranking at faculty or DTC level), then top candidates being interviewed by this same group of non-specialists.

This process results in PhD students who are confident and glib; able to convince non-specialists that they know what they're talking about. These qualities do not necessarily equate to a good researcher, however, and such students have tended to produce ok but not stellar dissertations (and a few have quit). Meanwhile the thoughtful, introverted type of student with spectacular analysis and writing skills won't get a look-in.

It also favours projects and sub-disciplines that have a user-friendly "hook" that non-specialists can understand and appreciate. Such research is beloved of universities for being headline-friendly but not all research in a dept is like that (nor should it be). Meanwhile, highly theoretical projects, and those that are pure basic research on specialist but fundamental topics, don't get a look-in.

And of course, this process is an enormous waste of time for 90% of the staff and students who work on research proposals but don't get funded. Worse, it means the same supervisors tend to repeatedly get students from the scheme due to the accessible topic of their research, while others never get students. And of course not all staff members can nab an interested student with whom to develop a proposal, particularly if they don't teach at Master's level, or are ECRs not yet at the stage of being emailed by random students looking for PhD positions.

It's not sour grapes, either, btw - I've had a student win a studentship via this process, and I've been one of the non-specialists on the interview panel so I know how hard a job it can be. But I believe the process itself is wrong. Far better to target staff members strategically (e.g., ECR who's never had a PhD student, anyone returning from leave with no PhD students, etc.) and select one per studentship to be funded this year. These staff members could then be supported developing a strong project that will definitely get funded, then let that staff member interview multiple candidates for that project.

End of rant 😡. My dept is very change-averse so I can't see it changing anytime soon, but I can dream!