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What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

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Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#11

Post by lijason »

in_cahoots wrote: post #5
shmageggy wrote: post #4

Coming from another field, 23 years as a post-doc seems insane to me. Is this common in some fields? I never thought of post-docs as (semi-) permanent positions or something one would spend a major chunk of a career doing. I always thought of it as a transitional position, something people did while they worked on getting their own funding or transition to industry. Am I wrong or are there different standards in diff…

I’m also from another field, but 19 papers and 5 first-author papers over 23 years is a huge red flag. Many graduate students wind up with 3-4 first-author papers by the time they graduate. I don’t know what he was doing with his time, but the publication record seems to be the elephant in the room.

To be fair, even though it seems low, paper output/metrics are very field dependent.

Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#12

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

23 years of post-doc with 5 first-authors? That's really all you need to know: that's a terrible publication record for someone looking at tenure-track.

A decent target is an average of one first/last author paper a year. Two one year and zero the next isn't a problem, but one every five years certainly is. This doesn't even get into the 'careerism' of picking safe but dependable projects; anyone making reasonable choices about what to investigate and how to go about it can hit that kind of rate. It takes a lot of work, but that's very much the state of the field.

This guy isn't a PI.

He's not leading a research group, nor does it seem like he's all that interested in doing so. It sounds like he's interested in performing research in someone's lab, a staff scientist.

There's nothing wrong that; it would be quite nice if there were more long-term career opportunities for people like this. They tend to be the people that develop the highest skill in actually performing experiments. They are useful, not just for their own productivity, but for the expertise and continuity they can bring to a lab. They are incredibly valuable for graduate student mentorship. They occupy a wonderful space that is otherwise vacant due to the demands placed on other lab members.

Generally only larger labs can afford such positions, and the competition of cheap post-doc labor means that many are stuck in eternal post-docs where they are underpaid, underappreciated, and given inappropriate expectations.

Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#13

Post by gshulegaard »

gone35 wrote: post #2

Accept your data. According to one PI, success depends more on the people doing a project than on the topic of study; some people make their project work no matter what the topic is. Others block their own way to success because they require too much evidence. I, for one, have always been excessively critical of my own data. Although I am a meticulous experimenter, whenever my results seemed to confirm my hypothesis,…

You are reading that completely differently than how I read it. I personally think that the author is reflecting on the fact that he may have been not focused enough on completing a single task before starting another. It sounds (and this is speculative, I don't want to put words in the author's mouth) like the author would start with a hypothesis, run an experiment that generates data that appears to support that hypothesis, but then start running tangential experiments disproving alternative hypotheses to further strengthening the original hypothesis. Hence his refelection:

> I am not advocating the reckless publication of unverified data, or recommending being so careful that you end up publishing nothing — but there is a difference between being reckless and shooting yourself in the foot.

To me, the author is looking back and now realizes that he may have been too cautious in that he was running too many experiments to publish one result and that there is a spectrum of caution and that he may have missed the sweet spot. As others have pointed out ~19 papers (and only 5 first author) over 23 years seems to be a low publication rate, which I think the author is reflecting on.

I agree that the incentives are messed up and these upside down incentives are a driving force behind the reproducibility crisis, but I wouldn't take this quote from the author and say it is an illustration of the reproducibility crisis.

Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#15

Post by Will_Parker »

prestonh wrote: post #3
gone35 wrote: post #2

Accept your data. According to one PI, success depends more on the people doing a project than on the topic of study; some people make their project work no matter what the topic is. Others block their own way to success because they require too much evidence. I, for one, have always been excessively critical of my own data. Although I am a meticulous experimenter, whenever my results seemed to confirm my hypothesis,…

What's good for the field (we've decided) is when we only allow a 5% Type I error rate (95% of published positive results are correct). What's good for the individual is to drive their Type I error rate up just enough so that they can publish as much as possible without getting caught.

A 0.05 p value very much does not mean there's a 95% likelihood of the result being true. It's a fallacy that is far too common.

Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#16

Post by jurassic »

Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #12

23 years of post-doc with 5 first-authors? That's really all you need to know: that's a terrible publication record for someone looking at tenure-track. A decent target is an average of one first/last author paper a year. Two one year and zero the next isn't a problem, but one every five years certainly is. This doesn't even get into the 'careerism' of picking safe but dependable projects; anyone making reasonable ch…

I don’t know the norm of the author’s specific field but I had the same reaction: His publication record is not even in the ballpark of where it probably should be for tenure.

I feel so sad that the scientific industry is set up such that guys like this can plod on two decades or more past the point they should have realized they weren’t on a tenure trajectory. Now he’s 40-something and has to start over in something else (data science?), probably with very little saved for retirement and possibly having missed out or significantly delayed other aspects of life (marriage, kids, house). Why didn’t anybody tell this guy to start his career in private industry 15 years ago? Every PI in every lab he touched should have seen this coming.

Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#17

Post by whatshisface »

jurassic wrote: post #16
Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #12

23 years of post-doc with 5 first-authors? That's really all you need to know: that's a terrible publication record for someone looking at tenure-track. A decent target is an average of one first/last author paper a year. Two one year and zero the next isn't a problem, but one every five years certainly is. This doesn't even get into the 'careerism' of picking safe but dependable projects; anyone making reasonable ch…

I don’t know the norm of the author’s specific field but I had the same reaction: His publication record is not even in the ballpark of where it probably should be for tenure. I feel so sad that the scientific industry is set up such that guys like this can plod on two decades or more past the point they should have realized they weren’t on a tenure trajectory. Now he’s 40-something and has to start over in something…

>Every PI in every lab he touched should have seen this coming.

People are surprisingly willing to let you accidentally pour your life in to something that only marginally benefits them, that's why you have to be ever-vigilant against the many opportunities you'll have to do that. Some people are prone to slipping into the mentality of the ideal feudal peasant: "life is bad here, but the lord of the estate isn't going to grant me any freedom, so I'm just going to focus on making the best of it." A mentality like that would be great for someone who had no freedom, and indeed it would make the best of an immutable bad situation, but I see a lot of people slip in to it even when they do actually have the ability to jump to a different life track. Scientists are especially prone to this because they're pre-selected for high levels of tenacity and low levels of impulsiveness.

Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#18

Post by blancheneige »

chrisseaton wrote: post #9
shmageggy wrote: post #4

Coming from another field, 23 years as a post-doc seems insane to me. Is this common in some fields? I never thought of post-docs as (semi-) permanent positions or something one would spend a major chunk of a career doing. I always thought of it as a transitional position, something people did while they worked on getting their own funding or transition to industry. Am I wrong or are there different standards in diff…

Obviously not everyone can promote all the way up, and not everyone wants to. There’s nothing wrong with someone doing good competent work at the level of a postdoc for as long as they want. We have a postdoc in his 40s in the lab I used to be in and he does excellent work as part of a group. I don’t think he wants to run his own lab and why must he?

Idk he might eventually grow tired of living off tuition and taxpayer money.

Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#19

Post by chrisseaton »

blancheneige wrote: post #18
chrisseaton wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously not everyone can promote all the way up, and not everyone wants to. There’s nothing wrong with someone doing good competent work at the level of a postdoc for as long as they want. We have a postdoc in his 40s in the lab I used to be in and he does excellent work as part of a group. I don’t think he wants to run his own lab and why must he?

Idk he might eventually grow tired of living off tuition and taxpayer money.

Would becoming tenured change that? I would have thought both postdocs and tenured researchers would usually be funded mostly by research grants.

Re: What principal investigators taught me about my failure to land tenure

#20

Post by retsibsi »

gshulegaard wrote: post #13
gone35 wrote: post #2

Accept your data. According to one PI, success depends more on the people doing a project than on the topic of study; some people make their project work no matter what the topic is. Others block their own way to success because they require too much evidence. I, for one, have always been excessively critical of my own data. Although I am a meticulous experimenter, whenever my results seemed to confirm my hypothesis,…

You are reading that completely differently than how I read it. I personally think that the author is reflecting on the fact that he may have been not focused enough on completing a single task before starting another. It sounds (and this is speculative, I don't want to put words in the author's mouth) like the author would start with a hypothesis, run an experiment that generates data that appears to support that hy…

> As others have pointed out ~19 papers (and only 5 first author) over 23 years seems to be a low publication rate, which I think the author is reflecting on.

Low compared to what? Compared to the expectations set by his fellow scientists in a field shaped by the norms and incentives in question.

There's a circularity here (and in the earlier comment by Obi_Juan_Kenobi): apparently this guy's real problem was his own low productivity, which we know because he published less than his colleagues and competitors -- therefore his case can't tell us anything about the warped incentive structure that favours publication maximization over intellectual integrity.

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