[PRL] Fwd: TP Msg. #1073 The Astonishing Secret to Getting Jobs, Grants, Papers, and Happiness in Biomedical Research ( and other areas as well)

[Mitchell Wand]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rick Reis <reis at stanford.edu>
Date: Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 9:20 AM
Subject: TP Msg. #1073 The Astonishing Secret to Getting Jobs, Grants,
Papers, and Happiness in Biomedical Research ( and other areas as well)
To: tomorrows-professor <tomorrows-professor at lists.stanford.edu>


But if in an astonishing proposal the data look compelling, if the
approaches are sound, and if the experiments will most likely work, and in
so doing possibly change my thinking about the universe (okay, my little
corner of the universe) then it will move to the top of the stack. It has
to. I have to do whatever I can to make sure it gets done.

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Folks:

While the posting below focuses on success in the life sciences, the advice
applies to most disciplines. The article is by Douglas Green, Department of
Immunology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN.* It is from
The Scientist, December 21, 2010 [http://www.the-scientist.com/toc/2010/12/].
For more information on how to subscribe see: The Scientist - Magazine of
the Life Sciences, http://www.the-scientist.com/ © Copyright 2010, The
Scientist, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.


Regards,

Rick Reis
reis at stanford.edu
UP NEXT: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

                                              Tomorrow's Research

            --------------------------------------- 1,036 words
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         The Astonishing Secret to Getting Jobs, Grants, Papers, and
Happiness in Biomedical Research

I didn't notice at the time, but there was a point in my life when I
more-or-less stopped asking successful scientists how they did it, and
someone asked me. And while I offer neither evidence nor assertion that I am
successful (indeed, I think I have a great way to go), the fact that I
somehow can continue to do this, and occasionally be asked about it, might
be regarded as a kind of success. There are some of us who mark success by
tenure (a concept that serves as high comedy among my friends who are in
business), "impact factor" (ditto), or the recognition of our peers (which
is a wonderful thing, but not why I embarked on this career). But I'm going
to go with the first definition: getting to do this thing we do, biomedical
research, for now and for the foreseeable future.

But like many of my closest colleagues, for a long time I felt like the farm
boy Wesley, who was kidnapped by the Dread Pirate Roberts from the movie
"The Princess Bride" (which, if you haven't seen, will be far more useful
for your scientific career than anything I can offer here). Every day,
Roberts would say "Goodnight, Wesley, I'll probably kill you in the
morning." Wesley studied hard at swordsmanship and other piracy skills, and
one day, when his captor retired, Wesley was given the ship and the title,
and became the Dread Pirate Roberts himself. More or less, this is what
happened to me, without the pirate part, and my mandate here is to try to
tell those of you who may be looking for some success yourselves how you
might do this, too.

So here goes. If you are committed to this path, and want papers, grants,
and employment for now and tomorrow, I can sum up in two words what it is
that is asked of you, and really, everyone who works in science: Astonish
us. That's it. (There is a maxim that says, "If it fits on a bumper sticker,
it isn't true." While I generally ascribe to this, it does not apply in this
particular case. That said, no, I do not have this on my car's bumper. It
might encourage the wrong sort of driver.)

Really. Look at it this way: When I have a great stack of grants to review,
I know that only one in ten or so will likely be "F'ed". (On U.S. study
sections, we are not allowed to say the word "Funded." Somewhat foolishly,
we say "F'ed," and we know what it means. Such is the way of government. It
also lightens the mood when we are reviewing grants. Of course, most
proposals will be "F'ed," which in this context means "Not Funded.") But if
in an astonishing proposal the data look compelling, if the approaches are
sound, and if the experiments will most likely work, and in so doing
possibly change my thinking about the universe (okay, my little corner of
the universe) then it will move to the top of the stack. It has to. I have
to do whatever I can to make sure it gets done.

I hear a line of advice all the time that I can confidently tell you is
nonsense. It goes like this: "In order to get your grant supported, it has
to be letter perfect, with absolutely no mistakes, and every experiment you
propose has to already be done." Don't believe this, it just ain't so. We
get this advice from folks who don't get their grants supported (and hey,
I've been there), who see nit-picky reviews that point out every little
problem, no matter how trivial. Hence the advice. But this misses the
subtext. A favored application has astonished the reviewers, who can be very
forgiving about mistakes, chancy experiments, and the occasional missing
control if they are convinced that the work has a real chance of affecting
how we think about something important.

So okay, you have to astonish us. And if you do this with what you propose,
and if you follow through, great papers and a promising career will come in
time. But how can you do this? Most likely, nothing in your training has
ever prepared you for this challenge. Indeed, it sounds impossible. But
here's the thing: Most of you, reading this, already know the answer.

Sometime in your past, you read, saw, or heard something about the universe
that astonished you, so much so that you simply needed to know more about
it. And the more you learned, the more astonished you became. And this
approach to knowing something amazing, which could not have been known by
reason or belief or any other method, convinced you that however astonishing
it all is, it is as close to "true" as we can get, in a way that satisfied
you. Many people love to be astonished by all sorts of means, but this path
to astonishment worked for you, and hopefully still does. It's why you
became a scientist.

The rest is relatively easy. The trick is for us to remember to apply this
to our own research: Which avenues of investigation will lead us, not only
to information that may be useful, but to something remarkable? Sure, much
of what we do is not surprising, amazing, or astonishing, but has to be done
anyway. But go beyond the drudgery? Why do we need to spend time, energy,
and resources to answer a question? Somewhere at the end of the Yellow Brick
Road of your efforts there must be something wondrous you can envision. If
not, follow another road.

This is not salesmanship, branding, or trickery; it is not "grantsmanship."
This is at the most fundamental core of what we do, as humans, following our
evolutionarily selected impulses to explore our world, in this case with the
technical and conceptual tools available to us as scientists. And there is a
bonus as well. When we actually achieve our own moments of astonishment in
our own research, however fleeting, these represent our real success. The
sort of success we got into this to attain. The other kinds will follow, and
we may not even notice.

* Douglas R. Green studies cell death and survival at the Department of
Immunology, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN. He recently
wrote "Stress in biomedical research: Six impossible things," Mol Cell,
40:176-178, 2010. He is also the author of Means to an End: Apoptosis and
Other Cell Death Mechanisms, available from Cold Spring Harbor Press. He is
a member of the Faculty of Cell Biology at F1000. For his latest
evaluations, click here.


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