
Will That Be Trash or Credit? - jawns
http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2012_06_29/caredit.a1200072
======
uvdiv
One of the linked stories is much more interesting:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/science/notebooks-shed-
lig...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/12/science/notebooks-shed-light-on-an-
antibiotic-discovery-and-a-mentors-betrayal.html?pagewanted=all)

Apparently Selman Waksman's 1952 Nobel in medicine is fraudulent, and it was
his grad student who made the discovery (isolation of the antibiotic
streptomycin -- first treatment for tuberculosis). He falsely claimed to have
done it himself and slandered his student to discredit him.

~~~
streptomycin
Here is Schatz's side of the story, which based on my readings about the case
seems entirely true (and thus motivated my username selection):
[http://www.albertschatzphd.com/?cat=articles&subcat=stre...](http://www.albertschatzphd.com/?cat=articles&subcat=streptomycin&itemnum=001)

------
zitterbewegung
I don't have these trust issues with my professor over my research project...
we understand that we will post to ArXiv when the research is done. I think
you should try to pick not just good research projects but also good people.

I started off knowing this professor by going to his office hours. I would ask
questions and he would answer. As I got to know him I realize that he was very
nice.

Paranoia is a part of research though. You have to realize that what you are
working on you don't really want to get scooped though. You do want to keep
your research projects "secret" until they are done. This means until you have
figured out whats unique you shouldn't post to arxiv. But, you are free to
tell others.

Due to the fact that we hear about events like this in news sources it shows
that plagarism and issues of who gets credit are relatively rare. For the most
part science does give credit where its due.

That doesn't mean it could be better. There is a stark disconnect between grad
students and professors. Why don't we value grad students more anyways? Aren't
they creating the future? Shouldn't they make at least $30k? I guess we just
want them to live a bohemian lifestyle until they graduate. Or they must have
rich parents to support them until they are self sufficient.

------
kghose
One of the things that struck me while I was reading the article (besides the
subliminal implication that go-getter graduate students all read Science!) is
that while I new of all the discoveries mentioned, I didn't know any of the
discoverers. I use MRI, but I know the company that makes the machines and the
software, not which obscure dude in some corner of the world first published
the technique.

This is something that is common to all human existence. Enjoy your work and
your own accomplishments. Don't worry too much about the adulation from
others, especially strangers. It is fleeting, quickly forgotten, and there is
that six month rule about adapting to whatever new level of fame/wealth you
attain, so that you keep wanting more.

PS. Another point, PhDs in the UK and Germany often take 3 years. It's only in
the US that the concept of keeping graduate students on leash for more that
six years has been honed to an art.

~~~
mccr8
I believe that in the UK students have a master's degree before starting a PhD
program (whereas in the US they usually don't), so it isn't quite comparable.

~~~
arethuza
"I believe that in the UK students have a master's degree before starting a
PhD program"

Definitely not true - unless this has changed recently. I went pretty much
directly from a 4 year BSc(Hons) to working as an Research Associate while
attempting a PhD.

~~~
mccr8
Interesting. My only source for this is the book "How to Get a PhD" by
Phillips and Pugh.

~~~
arethuza
From looking around it appears that the research councils now require a
Masters degree before they will fund you for a full-time PhD studentship - but
that's the funding body, not the entrance requirement for a particular
university/department. I'm pretty sure that didn't used to be the case (I
considered doing a PhD via a research council studentship before I got offered
an RA post).

Note my knowledge is probably wildly out of date - my experience in academia
was from '89-'95.

There might also be other sources of funding that don't have this requirement
- unless you are converting from another area and need the Masters to get up
to speed I'm not sure what it would achieve. All of the people I knew who did
have an MSc before doing a PhD had done a "conversion" MSc.

------
impendia
As an academic in math (perhaps the lab sciences are different, I speak only
for what I know), I find this absurd. Perhaps mathematicians are nicer than
other academics, but within math I have never heard firsthand of any story of
this kind.

The advice given is breathtakingly cynical. You take risks by sharing your
accomplishment, yes, but if you don't describe your accomplishment to others
then you are depriving yourself of oxygen. Communication is the lifeblood of
science, and in math at least, others are 1000x more likely to help you than
to screw you over.

I would recommend, to anyone pursuing a Ph.D. in math at least, that they
categorically ignore this advice. Hell, I'm confused as to why anyone prepared
to believe this would want to get a Ph.D. at all.

~~~
madhadron
It's an article about biology, where it's actually understating the behavior,
as others have noticed. The subtext that no one has pointed out yet is how
provincial biology is. Biologists fervently ignore other fields. I think it's
partially because they're not as bright as physicists, chemists, or other
scientists, partially because they are poorly trained, and partially because
it would be so embarrassing to have their culture contrasted with a healthier
one.

~~~
bluekeybox
Yes, yes, and yes, however I believe one of the primary reasons why the
academic culture in the field of biology became toxic is that it had become a
common practice to have multiple authors in a publication. Initially the
practice was quite benign because many experiments indeed require expensive
instruments and knowledge of some quite specialized skills, however, this
practice was kept unchecked (there is no real penalty of any sort how many
authors you add to the paper, except that some authors themselves may object
to having to share credit), which allowed for cliques to become established
where you basically have a few "friends", and you try to add those friends to
every paper you publish for some very minor help/advice they offer, and your
friends in turn try to add you to every paper they publish for very minor
help/advice from you. This has become an effective method to boost publication
count and thus ability to obtain funding without doing any real hard work.

------
droithomme
Sucks to be this guy, but that's academia for you and the described situation
is not surprising at all. Academia has all the petty jealousy and small town
politics of rural hick towns populated by the Hatfields and McCoys.

Given that it's a total wash out, this guy should name and shame.

------
xamuel
This is one of the worst articles I've ever seen posted at HN. All seven of
the writer's (extremely paranoid and passive aggressive) tips could be
obsoleted by one single alternative: post your paper on the arXiv. The author
seems to have a tinfoil-hat-tier view of science, and has absolutely no
business selling a book to grad students. The seventh tip in the article ("be
male") makes me wonder whether this writer has any experience at all doing
science in the past twenty years (he mentions Rosalind Franklin, 1920-1958,
way to be contemporary!)

~~~
streptomycin
> All seven of the writer's (extremely paranoid and passive aggressive) tips
> could be obsoleted by one single alternative: post your paper on the arXiv.

That's incredibly naive. If you make a breakthrough discovery in biology and
you unilaterally post it on arXiv (or wherever) before submitting it to a
journal, your advisor will probably strangle you, at best.

~~~
regehr
I'm a professor. If my student unilaterally posted something on arXiv, I would
strangle him/her, at best.

------
hpatel
Credit and recommendation are fundamental to any human endeavor - whether
applied to Ph.D candidates, poverty and access to capital, patents, or a
plethora of other complex societal issues. If nothing else, I always find it
interesting to learn how different sections of the society deal with these
issues.

Though, I did like the other PhD article(<http://www.pgbovine.net/PhD-
memoir/pguo-PhD-grind.pdf>) on HN better as it provides a more balanced story.

~~~
chris_wot
I wonder if Ph.D candidates in Psychology whose dissertations are on credit
and recommendation ever have these issues?

~~~
hpatel
Just cuz you understand the system, doesn't mean you are free from it.

------
a_bonobo
First of all, the link's title is misleading, a PhD-candidate is usually a
first year PhD-student, the text doesn't say anything about that.

Second, is the story supposed to be true or just a story? "Yet my friend, whom
we’ll call Ben, was set to do just that." - the whole thing reads more like a
setup to the book the article is trying to push.

~~~
bedris
... _a PhD-candidate is usually a first year PhD-student_...

This is actually not true. PhD students have to advance to candidacy, which
requires completing a set amount of coursework and passing a qualifying exam;
this usually takes 1-2 years. Therefore, most first-year PhD students are not
yet PhD candidates.

~~~
abhaga
> PhD students have to advance to candidacy, which requires completing a set
> amount of coursework and passing a qualifying exam

This varies from university to university. Some of them do not have the
qualifier exams and you are working towards your PhD from day one. Although
there is usually some amount of course work still involved as overall
requirements for graduating.

~~~
bedris
Fair enough. Every program I was accepted to, though, did not grant you
candidacy from the start as you first had to complete your courses and pass
one or more exams.

~~~
abhaga
I went to CMU LTI and they don't have a candidacy exam. As per this link:
<http://www.cs.uccs.edu/~gsc/phdProgramComparison.htm> UTA and UMD don't have
one. I checked Univ of Edinburgh and INRIA across the pond and they also don't
seem to have one. All this is for the computer science PhD programs only.
Things may be different for pure sciences.

~~~
excuse-me
A few British universities did have candidacy. There was a financial penalty
from the research council if a certain percentage of your students didn't
finish in 3 or 4 years - so the university would make everyone a candidate and
only count them as a PhD student for the stats once it looked like they would
do OK. Eventually this evolved to being a candidate right up to when you
submitted so there was a 100% completion rate but the research councils wised
up to the scam.

------
HackersCapital
The conclusion of the article is sad - the great scientist is becoming a
lawyer. There are already too many lawyers
[http://abovethelaw.com/2011/06/the-oversupply-of-lawyers-
in-...](http://abovethelaw.com/2011/06/the-oversupply-of-lawyers-in-america/)

------
smallblacksun
"Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because
the stakes are so low." -Sayre

------
bhickey
Franklin didn't share in the 1962 Nobel for the simple reason that she was
dead.

