“What would you rather have: a paper published in Nature and cited 4 times in the first year or a paper published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry cited 50 times in the same time period?” (Note: the impact factor of Nature is 36, of JBC is 5.3)

Sadly, my answer to this question is: “The Nature paper of course, it’ll help get me a job interview!” Whereas we all know in our hearts that the answer to this question should be: “the JBC publication”, as it clearly had the greater impact on the scientific community.

Perhaps it is just me, but the impression that I’m getting as a member on the bottom rungs of the scientific ladder is that if you don’t publish in Cell/Nature/Science or the next tier below (Nature Whatever, or Molecular Cell/Neuron/Developmental Cell etc.) you might as well pack it in and not even think of applying for a tenure track position.

This point is hammered home here in the UK by the RAEs (Research Assessment Exercises, but now called the REF: Research Excellence Framework) that they do to evaluate Universities. In the  most recent version of this back in 2008, when they took into consideration publications of faculty members, they only considered the impact factor of the journal in which the papers are published in. They ignore the  actual impact of an investigator’s publications (although it is my understanding that for the upcoming assessment this may be changing).

This point was also reinforced by my experience as a graduate student member of a faculty search committee. Whilst on the committee evaluating candidates I noticed that the only candidates invited for interviews were ones with the types of publications mentioned above (10+ impact factor). The great irony of it was that few (if any) of the faculty members on the search committee had ever published in such journals.

The signal to young researchers is loud and clear: “If you’re not publishing in journals with an impact factor of 10+, you might as well not bother publishing at all”. Unless of course you want to be a postdoc the rest of your career. I’m not sure how accurate this sentiment is, but for better or worse it is the one filtering down to us young’uns…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/is-the-united-states-still-the-land-of-the-free/2012/01/04/gIQAvcD1wP_story.html?tid=pm_pop

Looks like Osama Bin Laden may have lost the battle for his life, but is very much winning the “war on terror”…

In addition, there are several postdocs here that have been at the institution (and sometimes the same research group!) since they were undergrads. Indeed, the large majority of graduate students were also undergrads here, and as best I can tell this is common practice in the UK. This is in stark contrast to my experience in some departments in the US where they have a hard and fast rule against accepting undergrads from the same institution into their graduate program.

Thus, coming from a research environment in which academic inbreeding is discussed as if it is a scourge rising from the very depths of ineptitude ready to pull science into the pit of irrelevance, I find it odd that this practice is so rife here in the UK.  Such an observation, of course, causes my American arrogance to kick in and I say to myself “well of course things are just a little backwards on the other side of the pond, I mean, it’s not America and all!”. Well, I need to chickity check myself befo’ I wreck myself on this assumption, as that wonderful attitude is simply not supported by the facts. A recent bit of analysis reported on in Science suggests that the US has fallen to THIRD in the world with respect to citations per paper, behind the UK and Germany:

Marshall & Travis (2011), Science, 334 (6055): 433. Reprinted without permission...biatch!

Thus, clearly academic inbreeding is not having the monumental effect on productivity and impact as I (and others?) were led to believe. In fact, it may very well be beneficial! Now, this is not to say there are not many other factors involved here, as undoubtedly there are. Nonetheless, it suggests that inbreeding really might not be so bad after all…so that cousin you’ve been eyein’ since you was a youngin’…go ahead and give ‘em a kiss, it won’t turn out so bad…your papers might even get cited more…

This is one quintessential British saying I don’t think I’ll ever get comfortable saying (along with the use of the world “lovely” by men). It is the English equivalent of the US greeting “how are you doing?”. It can even be garbled, like it’s US cousin: “Youarite?” kinda’ like “how ya’ doin’?”. Nonetheless, for the first year or so of being here, whenever someone said this to me my response was “Umm, yea, why? Do I not look alright?”, whereas the appropriate response is “Yea, you alright?” or something of the sort (I haven’t really gotten that quite sorted). So if you wanna sound British, say “You alright” in place of “how ya’ doin” (although it seems to mostly be used amongst friends/acquaintances as opposed to strangers). And if you slip and say “how ya’ doin’?”, well then you better expect an actual answer to your question!

Anyhow, so I’m doin’ alright over here in the UK. Had a tough several months as I felt (and still feel to a reasonable extent) that my postdoc isn’t exactly going as I had anticipated (perhaps I’ll write more about this later, or perhaps not…). This was compounded by the fact that I’ve come to the conclusion that, well, I just don’t fit very well into British culture, and I’m tired of tryin’! I feel a bloody helluva lot better since I’ve made that realization and, for better or worse, I’m just going to be my usual obnoxious  self.

That has been the primary reason for my absence as of late from the blogosphere as I thought it wise to stay away from a blog when at a substantial low point…but now I’m (mostly) back and will hopefully get to some of those posts I’ve been meaning to get around to.

Here’s to 2012 being better than 2011!

Cheers!

1) US roads are very poorly marked. Unless you know wtf you’re doing and where you are going, it’s a nightmare. I’ve never been a fan of GPS (Sat Nav) and have always gone the route of maps or Google maps if need be. I was visiting an area on the east coast not far from where I grew up in New Jersey so figured I didn’t need a damn map, but I had a devil of a time finding the “city centre” of one of the towns I had to go to. In Europe and the UK there are tons of signs pointing one to the center of any small town or village. WTF USA…not very tourist friendly I must say….although the one thing the US does to better is street signs. It’s such a pain in the ass in Europe and the UK when you have to squint your eyes to try and see a street sign plastered 25 feet up on the side of the building…yea, that’s useful.

2) Again, the roads…I’ve noticed that roads in the UK and Europe are always marked with respect to cities and not necessarily directions (i.e, M3 towards London, not M3 South). I’ve always find this kind of annoying, but now I see the logic in it. All you need to know is the relative location of a handful of major cities, and where you are going in relation to it, and you are golden. In the US, unless you are on an interstate it can get very tricky, other roads like county roads, highways etc. don’t always run in the direction in which they are named (e.g, 22 east will run north at times…) which can take you way way off. Damn Americans.

3) Alright, the food in the US is about 1000% better, on average, than in the UK. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the area, but just getting a falafel wrap from a street vendor in Philly was better than just about every sandwich made in the UK I’ve had thus far. Oh yea, and if you’re ever in Philly and want the best damn cheesesteak of your life, go to Jon’s Roast Pork (Pat’s and Geno’s are complete rubbish, Jim’s on South Street is decent after a night of drinking, Campo’s, Tony Luke’s and Phillip’s ain’t bad…but Jon’s Roast Pork is THE best by far, 12oz of rib eye my friend)….eat that shitte or whatever RisottoProf says…

4) We Americans are a bunch of arrogant jackasses that don’t give a hoot about the rest of the world…oh well…whuddyagonnado?!

5) I didn’t realize how much I missed the in your face attitude of east coast city folks in the US. While at Jon’s Roast Pork a yelling match broke out between a customer and the guys behind the counter because he waited 40 minutes for his cheesesteaks (the response…SOME PEOPLE WAIT OVER AN HOUR FOR OUR STEAKS!). Now that’s something you don’t see in the UK…wow, it’s funny the things you miss…

Hmmm…I guess that’s it for now…I keep meaning to post about British and American stereotypes, so I think I’ll stop here and leave some juicy bits for that post.

Was exhausted in the lab today (got back to the flat at 1 o’clock this morning after a four day weekend in Switzerland…) but found this little gem of a request in the inbox of my graduate school account. Probably just my grad adviser saying “well I don’t feel like doing it, why don’t you ask this chump”. Nonetheless, it’s pretty damn cool to be reviewing on my own for the first time. I’m sure it’ll become old hat at some point, but it’s a nice rush knowing someone values my opinion (and gets another line on the ole’ CV).

Now, the only question is, which fine ale do I enjoy while reading the manuscript…decisions…decisions….

Of course, this would really only apply to graduate students and postdocs. Perhaps a similar sort of “statistic” would be useful for PIs in which it was a ratio of first:middle:last author (or whatever is the appropriate convention for senior scientists in the field). I’ve noticed some PIs have a ton of middle author papers, much moreso than last author papers.

I’m pretty close to the 1:1 ratio and am trying to work hard to keep it that way. Just a thought as one thing (of many) to keep in mind as I try and position myself to one day apply for tenure track jobs.

Baba Brinkman is a rap artist that hails from Canada. His album “Human Nature” attempts to convey various aspects of evolution (primarily focusing on mate selection) through hip hop. To be up front, on a scale of 1-10 for his album I would give it a 4 (my rating system: I start at 5 and move up or down from there. I don’t start at 10 and then move down), and below I explain my praises and criticisms:

1) The reason it scores as high as a 4 is because the language in which he couches his subject matter is unique to hip hop. The subject matter itself is not necessarily new in the hip hop genre (choosing mates, prisoner dilemmas, understanding one’s own reason for action etc.) but using moderately scientific language and appealing to the scientific method is (even if the appeal is not always well substantiated). This makes his subject more accessible to audiences not as familiar with the vernacular typically employed in hip hop music. One may even argue that it may be more challenging to use more stuffy language to concoct rhymes.

2) The album claims to be “peer-reviewed”. Not sure I understand where such a claim comes from, but one of the more interesting aspects of the album is that after some of the tracks (e.g, track 3 “No Bugs on Me”) he has a scientist giving some feedback on the lyrics in the track with respect to their scientific accuracy. This is a nice touch, except that the presumably scientific explanations do not always address the points made in the song as intended*. Nonetheless, this is a pretty cool idea with respect to such an album that I appreciate as a scientist, even if only in spirit.

3) Brinkman does do a good job of handling a difficult topic in an artistic way. He clearly makes a wholehearted attempt at keepin’ it real with respect to scientific accuracy, and this should be applauded as he does a decent job in this respect. It is not a bad jumping off point if one wants to explore various interesting aspects of evolution.**

4) Finally, the reason the album scores so low for me is that, as hip hop, it fails miserably. Brinkman’s flow is poor and there is little to no variation on it throughout the album. Artistically, if you’ve heard one song, you’ve heard them all. There are only a small handful of spots throughout the album that stick out has having marginally decent flow (and I mean, for one or two lines if you are lucky). Otherwise, he basically ignores the beat and more or less just talks, he doesn’t rap. The beats themselves aren’t half bad (props to Mr. Simmonds I suppose) but they are no good if the artist ignores them as Brinkman does. The other aspect of good artistry that it fails at is metaphor. The focus is so much on using the language of science that he forgets what makes art so powerful…metaphors. His words appeal to the intellect, but not to the heart and imagination, which is truly where art derives its power and influence. If you listen to any good hip hop you’ll find your imagination stimulated and the metaphors presented will drive home the artists point. Appealing solely to the intellect, as Brinkman attempts, does not work in the context of art because you cannot satisfy the intellect with such short snippets of information that do not provide enough facts and discussion to satisfy such a demanding aspect of ourselves.

Overall, the album is worth a free listen to but not worth your hard earned cash. It firmly lands in my “fun hip hop” category of music that I’ll listen to occasionally if I’m in just the right mood but is very far from my hip hop rotation, although it might be more bearable to some folks who only listen to this genre on occasion.

——————————————————————————-

*e.g, in track 3 he notes how various religions argue that menses blood is particularly unclean as compared with blood that comes from the cut of a finger. On the next track he has David Buss come on and explain that there is a hypothesis that menses blood is different than other blood in that it may actually serve the purpose to help prevent a woman from being infected from pathogens carried by a mans sperm. However, this does not actually speak to the fact that menses blood is or is not different from the blood that comes from a cut on one’s finger (i.e, is any less clean). If anything it supports the argument that Brinkman already makes in the previous song that it is still the same blood and that it may actually serve the same purpose as the blood that comes from one’s finger (i.e, bleeding from a wound would also help to reduce the likelihood of infection).

**Note: I added this after the first post because I realize I left this important bit out and the review was not as even handed as I originally intended.

One way to land a postdoc is to send an unsolicited email to someone to see if they have funds and are interested in you. However, finding potentially suitable employers can be challenging. One way to do this is to use the Web of Science, which should be available through your institution (usually a link in the libraries website database page). From here you can do a search based on a number of criterion, one of which is address. All you need to do is pop in the topic you are interested in one field, and the country you are interested in working in another, and voila! While this isn’t perfect, it’s a good way to start tracking down potential employers.

The other resource that is rich in international opportunities is nature jobs.

Finally, you can look into European society websites that have job listings. These are actually quite useful as they appear to be the number one place specific jobs are listed as best I can tell (e.g, FENS (Federation for European Neuroscience) job market, or EMBO jobs (European Molecular Biology Organization) etc).

When I was searching for my current postdoc, I had an offer through just contacting someone (that I found via Web of Science) and one from a job posting on Nature jobs. I ended up taking the latter offer (partly) because it was for longer (3 yrs vs 1 yr).

If anyone else has any other resources for finding an overseas postdoc (obviously this comes from an American perspective) please leave a comment!

Happy searching!