My comments on sexism have obviously been taken to heart. There have been witterings from certain male students about 'roosters' and 'hen pens'. One of the female students has hit back, with a commentary on a Far Side cartoon that went up on the whiteboard:
And while I have your attention. . .
FSP has an interesting piece on "Sexism-driven science",
and this email (about indoor football soccer made me laugh (emphasis mine):
We need more girls so everyone is welcome.
The arrangement of chemical stocks on shelves is important. But what causes arguments is whether it should be alphabetical by common name, or alphabetical by chemical symbol.
Obviously for some things — amino acids, or Tris and MES perhaps — the common names should win. However, and the first labmate who could immediately recall the mass of sodium chloride agrees with me, sodium chloride should be under 'N'.
We both automatically look for potassium salts under 'K'. Et cetera.
Wars have been fought over less.
Maxine asks an interesting question in her comment on my previous post:
Do you see women behaving in a sexist manner, also? Flirting, basically, with the powerful males in senior roles, when they happen to be around. Or exaggerated over-friendliness when they spot a "more powerful than them" female?
I'm not entirely sure that I have, but then I might not be sensitive to that behaviour. Usually I'm too buffeted by the Westerns of outrageous fortune to notice what's going on 'above stairs'. Joking aside, it's something to look out for.
And in related news, Chall points out that sexism hurts men, too. This is something I've noticed, especially the bit about it not being 'done' for men to take time off to look after sick children (while their partners, you know, actually work.
I'm not going to whinge about this 'reverse-sexism'. It's not the battle that concerns me most. I am very fortunate here in that I feel I can work at home some days and look after sick Pawns. My day is much more flexible than the Black Queen's, who has chosen to work school hours so that she can be with them in the afternoons.
I also remember a previous (male) boss ranting to a female post-doc in one of my past lives, "Why doesn't your husband take time off when your kids are sick?". Enlightened self-interest? Quite possibly, but hey, if that's what it takes.
One of the advantages of working in a lab with a healthy gender balance is that sexist behaviour does not really get a chance. I can't vouch for the echelons of management, but at least here on the ground anyone attempting to discriminate, put down or otherwise disrespect on the basis of gender is likely to get walloped severely.
I should like to think that visiting speakers would be subject to similar scrutiny.
The problem is that this casual sexism is institutionalized. People, even 'ordinary', 'decent' people think it's normal. And it isn't. The test is to ask yourself,
"If this person was male, would I treat her the same way?"
And if the answer's "No", reconsider. Because I might be standing behind you with a cluebat.
So I know that Fu Manchu has designs on my rather spiffy 'Howie Report' labcoat, but as I strode along the corridor this morning Nurse Donovan stepped out of the offices, stopped, and said
"Wow!"
I mean, OK, so I look good for my age, but "Wow!"?
Wow.
The Black Queen, as she decanted some SOC this morning, was excited. She demonstrated that she can still unscrew bottles with one hand and keep a decent air gap between cap and both bottles (well, maybe not 'excited' as such, but we have to make our own entertainment in the lab).
Sterile technique, she has it.
And then I thought, wouldn't it be great if we could use the power of our minds to do cell culture?
Never mind the million bucks offered by the Randi Foundation; imagine the money we could make selling Telekinetic Culture Hoods to clumsy cell biologists.
What happens when someone gets a new Mac?
An increase in productivity, obviously:
Got in this morning to find that the incubator-shaker that I'd set up last night to grow some protein had been turned off. Which puts my harvesting back several hours.
Started an RNA prep, and went to my special box of Eppendorf tubes, to find that some low-life had taken it and replaced them with a bag of crap Greiner ones. Stores had run out, so I had to break into my secret stash.
There's a fifteen minute break in the protocol, so I thought I'd treat myself to one of the two slices of cake that had been left in the fridge since last week (and were still there last night). You guessed it; some bugger's eaten them.
And it's not even midday, yet.
Went down to a seminar this afternoon, and saw my young apprentice helping the speaker set up the projector. I had just seen a reasonably interesting result fall out of my microarray data.
So I nicked a piece of paper from another postdoc, went back and stole her pen, and scribbled this:
My young apprentice was appropriately interested.
Now, after another couple of hours looking at more species, I'm seeing definite patterns. I still don't know what they mean, but at least there seems to be the possibility of an answer, and I'm beginning to be excited in my ignorance, rather than frustrated at it.
Eek!
This little fellow has been missing since Friday afternoon. Last seen in the Eastern Avenue Lecture Theatre (Carslaw Building), he answers to the name of 'Pokemonk' and is our lab mascot.
Any information leading to the safe return of Pokemonk will be gratefully received.
The major difference between myself, and normal people such as Dr Chou, is that when an email comes round bearing a request for a piece of equipment, say a "magnetic particle separator (or a similar machine)", he will actually puzzle over the request for a couple of minutes wondering if he has missed something obvious; whereas I will witheringly declaim "It's called a magnet" and hit 'delete' without further ado.
M'learned colleague (let's call him Blofeld) upstairs says
IF the Black Knight doesn't make a quip about this, it'll be a sad day!I, of course, WOULD be the one to do it, but I'd like to keep my job
But why do these people keep insist on producing such good material .... can you imagine how frustrating it is to be given so many 'set ups' and 'cues' and NOT be able to deliver the punchline!!
He is referring to this email:
Today, the Lab is 'retreat'ing to Hyam's Beach in Jervis Bay, home of the whitest sands in the world (an interesting claim, that can not be corroborated online. Has anyone got a recent Guinness I could have a shufti at?). We've booked three houses for two nights, and have planned a barbecue, and that's about it.
I'm taking my fishing rods, tackle and hipflask, and me and the Younger Pawn and Dr Chou En are going to try to catch something to throw on the barbie. Failing that, Chou En and myself will sit on the rocks under the full moon and pretend we're fishing. The Black Queen is packing the steaks and sausages and home-brew ginger beer, and one of the students is taking about three thousand board games. It should be fun.
I've been receiving emails from a company with the sub-title "Market Intelligence".
You have no idea how much I hate these guys (marketeers that is. The rep himself is perfectly personable).
Chou En has been feeling a bit got at in the office since I pointed out the faults of wikipedia. I think the conversation went something along the lines of
"So what about answers.com? Can we trust them?"
"Naw, they just lift everything from Wikipedia."
So to be nice to him, I have started a rumour that he can solve solution protein structures just by listening to the hum of the magnet. With a high enough sampling frequency, the capacity to hear radio waves in the centimetre range and the ability to do fast fourier transforms in three dimensions on the fly, it shouldn't be too hard.
Back to emails from companies. Even with his fantastical ability, Chou En is unable to decipher a simple email. He asked a certain company for the price of an NMR tube cleaning brush, and gave a catalogue number. Maybe you can do better. Here is the reply he received:
I think Dr Ginsberg is going soft.
He informed me, yesterday evening, that he got engaged at the weekend.
I think you'd all like to join me in extending mad props. <bounce>
This friendly notice on our lab board
resulted in the following silliness:
This just came round the lab's email list (slightly edited because the author admitted he'd accidentally left a line out):
From: Pete SeegerSubject: T1/2 of TAE = ~ 4 hours
Where has all the TAE gone?
Long time passing
Where has all the TAE gone?
Long time ago
Where has all the TAE gone?
Young students used it all up and did not recycle it and haven't made up fresh stuff,
Every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?
I found this scrap of paper on the floor of the cell culture room just after Easter:
A shopping list, in ink, on scrap paper from someone's thesis draft. Strangely touching.
The picture is not the best quality, but I liked the scene:
C, my esteemed office-mate (on paper he also shares a lab with me, but he's always either in the office or hiding under the NMR machine), is applying for a fellowship, and after tarting up his CV now requires a reference from the Head. This is somewhat problematic for C because the Head has told him to write his own reference, and return it for signing. C asked for my opinion on this strategy and I'm afraid I was not wholly complimentary.
I appreciate that Heads are very busy people and can not physically know all the people in a Department well enough to write a reference. So what is wrong with asking the referenced's boss? This is an unfair burden on C and somewhat defeats the object of the exercise. In an effort to restore harmony to our office I offered to write the reference. Here is what I came up with:
Someone in one of the labs across the corridor had a real "If you're a muppet and you know it do something really dumb" moment yesterday.
There is a large lab on the other side, shared by two groups. Offices flank the lab at opposite ends, and my office is at the proximal end, buffered from the lab space of Group 'G' by a student cube farm. Then there is Group 'K' lab space, and Group 'K' offices. Even though C and myself are in Group 'M', we have office space in 'G', so we get to see all sorts of interesting stuff. And they have a really cool duplex colour laser printer, which is nice.
Anyway, most of Group 'G' is away at a conference, and a first year grad student was all that was to man the barricades yesterday afternoon. So it was not that surprising that he should ask me if I knew anything about the power being off in his lab.
I wondered what the beeping was. All the UPSes and freezers were alarmed, although the ceiling lights and some of the other freezers were still on. I suggested he get hold of the workshop, and they would send someone up to reset the circuit breaker. But the circuit breaker was fine, and for the next two hours our workshop guys, assisted by 4 or 5 blokes from the University Estates office scoured the lab ('G', if you remember) looking for the problem.
A friend at another Institute in Sydney, whom I shall call 'Lieselotte' (it's not her name, but if you'd had the same education I've had you'd understand), circulated a draft meeting notice to myself and another couple of people. The speaker is my previous boss, from the Made-up Results Centre in Cambridge, whom I shall call 'Bruce'.
Bruce, oddly enough, has not let me know he's coming over. Either I've dropped off his radar because I haven't found enough young, Australian talent to sacrifice send over to do PhDs, or he has taken to trusting in the bush telegraph.
Anyway, I dreamed about going to Bruce's seminar last night. I met him on the way, and he took me aside and talked at me for half an hour. Then he tore off one corner of the seminar notice and wrote down four 'secrets' to his success.
We're starting up a post-doc group in the Cage. We have already had one successful pub meeting, and are planning further events. It is not intended to be a political group, a post-doc union such as you find in the US, but a more of a social/support network. The students have an active social calendar, under the name 'Amoeba'. Nothing similar existed for the backbone of the Cage's research efforts, so we decided to organize ourselves, and decided on the name 'Nematoda' (a tad more advanced and hopefully more organized).
The sentence "A free-swimming roundworm thus looks rather like it is thrashing about aimlessly" also seems depressingly appropriate.
We have a name, so we need a logo. There's a competition running for one. Earlier in the week I came across a lovely picture of a nematode with teeth;
and realized that the mouthparts could easily be modified to reflect the Cage's initials. Here, then, is my entry to the logo competition:
This gentleman:
informs me that a llama's gestation period is 11 to 12 months.
He's correct, as it happens, and I wish him and his offspring all the best.
A couple of warning messages about the new operating system from Microsoft came around on the Cage's email list last week. This list is used for everything from requests for reagents through student barbecue notifications to warnings about the bloody deionized water system. The message from our IT guys is "do not install Vista". Which is rather funny, actually, and I replied to the list suggesting that people should not boot Windows at all, because they would be more productive that way.
Fast forward to yesterday and I'd come across this website (again. It's been a while), and I thought what the heck, it's Friday, let's cheer some people up — and emailed the link to the departmental mailing list, with a covering note about how we all needed to be prepared both at home and while travelling, blah.
Scene just now in the lab: Your humble correspondent setting up an RT-PCR experiment. The conversation went something like this,
Black Queen: Are you going to use the new block ?
BK: No. I have a programme on the Eppendorf.
BQ: But it's intuitive!
BK: You mean you can give your samples to a grad student and let them get on with it?
BQ: <That Look>
There was a bit of a kerfuffle in the Cage last year when someone complained of vast quantities of uncollected mail in the 'S' through 'U' pigeonhole. Some of the other lettered boxes were similarly overflowing, and I have sympathy with anyone who has to search through the same 38 pieces of mail to find the promised form/brochure/whatever that isn't there.
Various solutions were proposed, but were met with a howl of protest and threats of legal action against anyone who dared interfere with The Post (Pratchettian moment there, sorry). It was interesting to note that the loudest emails (if emails can have a property 'volume' then these had it) — sent to the entire department, naturally — were from the worst offenders.
With the New Year, there is a subtly different problem. The pigeonholes are once again straining under the weight of payslips and sequencing invoices. And I do not recognize the names. Do new Cage inmates not get shown where mail is delivered? Do they not go for tea or lunch? Do they even care about dead tree communication? If anyone has an entertaining and legal solution to this annoyance, please feel free to let me know.
A colleague the other day was a wee bit angry.
She had to get a photograph or something counter-signed for something official; you know the drill, "I certify that this is a true likeness of Minne Mouse" blah. And there's a reasonably lengthy list of professions whose signatures are somehow worthy of trust in this matter. JPs. GPs. Ministers of Religion. Solicitors.
Dentists.
Accountants.
I am certain that there is a good reason for a certain PI, who has an office of his own, to be sat in the otherwise deserted students' office, playing Solitaire on the computer.
Just as I am sure that there must be something about biologists that makes them form natural accretions in corridors, and outside lifts, and other thoroughfares. It is not just here; it is everywhere I have worked. Tell a lie, it did not happen at one place, where we had a completely open plan building (so open plan that the arse completely fell out of the company, but that is a story for another day).
Is it just biologists, or scientists? There you are, carrying a gel or a canister of fuming nitrogen (or just trying to get to the toilet) and BANG! two or more colleagues have positioned themselves, thrombosis-like, either side of the artery. You say 'excuse me' and go past, while they continue talking. Or you try and sneak behind one of them. Or you push them down the stairs with the trolley as you exit the lift because the bloody thing steers like a cow. Tempting. . .
Mad Scientists 'r' Us.
Hmm. One of my co-conspirators at LabLit.com has started up a new weblog, and called it Some Science. That does not sound too original but it is to differentiate it from his other weblog, Some Lies.
I see a pattern emerging.
One of the things that a visiting alien might comment upon, were it to observe laboratory life for more than a few days, is the strange hours that scientists keep. Working longer than the hours stated on the payslip is a badge of honour in academic labs. Calling someone a '9-to-5er' is about the worst insult imaginable.
There are multiple reasons for this. Academic research is competitive, and to compete with the Americans (say) with their huge labs and armies of postdocs we must work longer hours, we are told. Working all day Saturday means you can be nearly 20% more productive than someone who does not. Imagine if your bank account gave you 20% more interest than other banks! Every little bit helps in the battle for publication and funding. If you stay a couple of hours longer in the evening you can repeat that PCR today, which means you will have stolen a day's march on the competition. You can eat lunch at your desk while you write a paper.
Should I go home now, or do that transformation, set up those cultures, spend another hour here? By squeezing extra hours out of each day I can create the impression of industry and expediency, no matter what the real benefit is.
There was nearly a riot in the tea room last week when we ran out of real milk and only virtually water was left. A debate on the preference for fat milk versus thin milk ensued.
Being a fat milk person myself, I found this quite intriguing as semi-skimmed tends to be favoured in the UK. Here, the majority was definitely in favour of the the whole cow. But then this is a country where allegedly two thirds of men are overweight or obese.
That is something I really do not get, to be honest. That should mean two in three of the blokes in our building are porkers. And they patently are not. So if my sample is skewed, that means there are some real fat so-and-sos in statistical clumps around the place[0].
This is what happens when you start the autoclave without checking that the water level is above the element.
Overheard at coffee:
Oh, we (certain technique-people) are far from physiological, despite what we say in papers and on grant applications.
Which is a refreshingly honest thing for a scientist to admit.
"Nice talk. I understood some words," said the structural chemist to the cell biologist.
It's usually the other way around.
I mentioned that the junior staff in the Maze were to be consulted in the matter of the new Head. I went along to the third of the three meetings that the junior staff representative organized, and I suspect that she was getting a little tired of the affair by then. Oddly enough, most people in this time slot did not bother to show, so it was a reasonably cosy meeting.
We talked about the three self-nominated candidates (and I have to be careful here because one of them passed favourable comment on this weblog as he saw me swearing at the printer this morning, which revealed that (a) he reads this drivel and (b) I am, to one person in the Maze at least, fully nonymous) and their relative merits. As two of us in that meeting are still relatively new to the Maze it was a good opportunity to fill in some juicy background details. My lips, naturally, are sealed and I am very much afraid that you will have to wait for my memoirs before saying anything about that (if, on the other hand, you're authorized by a tabloid editor to offer me, say, half a million Euros I might reconsider).
The chair then asked if we could think of anyone other than the nominated candidates who might be suitable. Unanimously we agreed on one person, who it turned out was also the choice of the previous two meetings. Had this person nominated themself there can be little doubt he'd meet with major approval. The way this works, the Dean can ignore the nominated candidates and ask this Fourth Man if he'd consider doing it. So we shall see.
There's an interesting phenomenon that occurs in labs.
In normal life we find it convenient to label things. It helps us organize our lives, recognize authority, and in some cases limit concepts and people so that we can deal with them; Takei is Japanese, Samantha is an arts graduate, Larvatus Prodeo is a whiny leftist blog. There are labels that, even with the best intentions, demean the very thing that is being labelled but in a way that constrains it sufficiently for us to understand, cope, deal with it.
And more prosaically we label the sugar and the salt so that our pavs lov.
What biologists get up to when they think no one is watching.
. . . But my heart's not in it.
It is quite a change for me to be in a university setting. The Council for Biomedical Research, although avowedly academic in nature, actually had very little to do with the local tertiary education institute. We had on average one graduate student per group, their stipends usually funded by the Council's fiercely contested fellowships. Local students were not advantaged, and the only time we got to see an undergraduate was when one was poached for the summer, via personal contacts.
So being in a full-on teaching department is a bit of a culture shock. I'm surrounded by students. It's not a problem, it is just different. Being old enough (legally, even) to be the father of some of them has not freaked me out; in fact I find it quite invigorating. Not just in a 'I shall mould these youthful, malleable minds to do my bidding mwah hah hah ahem' way, but more in a 'gosh these guys are keen' sense.
I am sure that most people in my lab could pass as perfectly normal members of society. I know that some of them even have real lives, and seem to be able to maintain relationships outside the lab.
Therefore I have been somewhat taken aback by the response to the Axygen 'eppendorf' tubes. A fair proportion of the lab rats have come up to me in the last week and raved - there is no other word for it - about these tubes. All right, they are good, but I never expected such an emotional excess.
It is quite easy in this business to get disillusioned when you look around and see that, for example, the NIH only funds about 10% of RO1 grants and there is no career structure to speak of for postdocs. You begin to wonder if you are any good at all, especially when you reach a certain age and find that you are really enjoying the bench work but seem to have no luck at finding a real job.
I know we've got some hot scientists in this place but one of them ('V') actually caught fire this afternoon.
She lit a match, after noting the head was 'spiky', and some of the sulphur somehow flew backwards and next thing she knew her jumper was burning. V patted it out herself and is unharmed, if a little shaken. There's a burn mark on her clothing, which will be an interesting souvenir from her honours project.
I should have written this up on Friday evening, but seeing as I was driving to Canberra it would have been inconvenient. I did pack the Queen's laptop, but it wouldn't have worked very well in the sauna. So, this post is a tad late. Apologies.
Friday is meeting day in our department. In the morning I set up a PCR reaction, helped a grad student next door with a cell culture problem, grabbed a coffee and went to our regular two-group lab meeting.
We had a fire alarm earlier in the week (a case of 'provocative maintenance'; we had 'them' in to do some work on the fire alarm system and naturally, it went off) and we all looked at the ceilings, muttered under our collective breath, and prepared to evacuate.
As a good citizen I did a recce of our labs to make sure everyone was out and to close the doors. I came across two honours students in two different rooms.
"It's a fire alarm, out you go," I said.
"But my PCR!" said Student #1, pointing forlornly at his icebucket.
"Leave it. Out now!"
Second lab;
"Fire alarm! Outside!"
"But —" began Student #2, pointing forlornly at the centrifuge.
You get the picture.