100 papers every students should read

Ever wondered whether you had completely missed some of the most important papers in your discipline? Or whether you just read enough? Well, now you can’t stop wondering, since the answer is right here in this new post. About our latest paper, a paper that recommends to read recommended papers.

In ecology. Yeah, I know, the title doesn’t specify “in ecology”. And it should, since a list of ecology papers is going to be of no interest whatsoever for you guys in astrophysics or neurobiology. Plus, the Sheldon Coopers and Amy Farrah Fowlers among you are now probably going to smirk about our classics. My official excuse is that you should always try to have as short a title as possible, in order to be attractive (after all, we are living in an era of unsalvageable lazy millennials). But the real reason is that I wanted to give my blog a little boost, after months of abstinence, so that was on purpose. But instead of frowning with your judgmental scorn, please consider that I didn’t put sex, GoT or Trump in the title, be merciful, and go forward to all your friends.

Now that you’ve made a healthy re-acquaintance with my annoying habit to not-cut-to-the-chase, I should probably start. After all, rule#1 for a successful blog: short posts (see one of my first entries).

For a few years, I’ve been wondering whether I was missing the important papers, and more worryingly, if my students were. There are now so many papers to read, and so little time to do it, it’s easy to stay confined within a small niche of papers – your area of expertise – and miss the big picture, those papers that made your field, and from which the wise professors probably get part of their wisdom.

So, I have been thinking for quite some time of the best way to come up with such a list. It was not easy, because important papers are a very subjective thing to select, let alone rank. But I came up with a simple solution: ask the wise professors. Or more exactly, ask the 665 experts in the Editorial Board of the highest ranking, generalist journals in ecology, who probably are the best suited to evaluate the worth of papers regardless of their field. After receiving all their nominees, an internet vote and clever statistical analyses by my brilliant co-author and good friend Corey Bradshaw, at the time in sabbatical in my group, we came up with …

(hint: click on the image to get the list – I really must tell you everything…)

This came up with a few surprises, such as the discrepancy between the articles that experts recommend to students and those they have actually read themselves, the fact that the average scientist reads ~40 papers per month (if you thought that maybe you were lazy, now you know for sure), or the huge gender bias in authors of said articles, but, damned, I don’t have any space left (nor you any patience left) to discuss that. I really should learn to focus on the important stuff. Well, this said, for those you interested in the full story, it is now published in Nature Ecology & Evolution. As for the pdfs of those articles, I’m sure they somehow will be found on SciHub…

Ok, remember, you’re supposed to read at least 40 papers per month, so the 100 papers’ list is not going to be a huge additional load in your PhD. So, don’t blame us and go start reading your share. And no, this post doesn’t count as a reading.

 

Oh, and if you find one or several such papers were utterly useless to you, don’t blame me for choosing them, I didn’t. Don’t even blame me for making you read them, I didn’t either…

 

The 100 selected articles:

1. Darwin, C.R.; Wallace, A.R. 1858. On the tendency of species to form varieties; and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by natural means of selection. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 3:45-62
2. Hardin, G. 1960. The competitive exclusion principle. Science 131:1292-1297
3. Paine, R.T. 1966. Food Web Complexity and Species Diversity. The American Naturalist 100:65-75

4. Hutchinson, G.E. 1961. The Paradox of the Plankton. The American Naturalist 95:137-145
5. Hutchinson, G.E. 1959. Homage to Santa Rosalia or Why Are There So Many Kinds of Animals? The American Naturalist 93:145
6. MacArthur, R.H.; Wilson, E.O. 1963. An Equilibrium Theory of Insular Zoogeography. Evolution 17:373-387

7. Hutchinson, G.E. 1957. Concluding Remarks. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 22:415-427
8. Hairston, N.G.; Smith, F.; Slobodkin, L. 1960. Community structure, population control, and competition. The American Naturalist 94:421-425

9. Connell, J.H. 1978. Diversity in tropical rain forests and coral reefs. Science 199:1302-1310
10. Janzen, D.H. 1970. Herbivores and the Number of Tree Species in Tropical Forests. The American Naturalist 104:501
11. May R.M. 1974. Biological populations with non-overlapping generations: stable points, stable cycles, and chaos. Science 186:645-647
12. Gause, G.F. 1934. Experimental Analysis of Vito Volterra’S Mathematical Theory of the Struggle for Existence. Science 79:16-17
13. Chesson, P. 2000. Mechanisms of Maintenance of Species Diversity. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 31:343-366

14. Carpenter, S.R.; Kitchell, J.F.; Hodgson, J.R. 1985. Cascading trophic interactions and lake productivity. BioScience 35:634-639
15. Levin, S.A. 1992. The problem of pattern and scale in ecology: the Robert H. MacArthur Award lecture. Ecology 73:1943-1967
16. Hanski, I. 1998. Metapopulation dynamics. Nature 396:41-49
17. MacArthur, R.; Levins, R. 1967. The Limiting Similarity, Convergence, and Divergence of Coexisting Species. The American Naturalist 101:377-385
18. Tilman, D. 1977. Resource Competition Between Plankton Algae: An Experimental and Theoritical Approach. Ecology 58:338-348
19. Hamilton, W.D. 1964a. The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I. Journal of Theoretical Biology 7:42370
20. Charnov, E.L. 1976. Optimal foraging, the marginal value theorem. Theoretical Population Biology 9:129-136
21. Tilman, D. 1996a. Biodiversity: Population versus ecosystem stability. Ecology 77:350-363
22. Rosenzweig, M. 1971. Paradox of enrichment: destabilization of exploitation ecosystems in ecological time. Science 171:385-387
23. Connell, J.H. 1961. The Influence of Interspecific Competition and Other Factors on the Distribution of the Barnacle Chthamalus Stellatus. Ecology 42:710-743
24. MacArthur, R.; Levins, R. 1964. Competition, habitat selection, and character displacement in a patchy environment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 51:1207-1210
25. Hardin, G.J. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science 162:1243-1248
26. Levin, S.A. & Paine, R.T. 1974. Disturbance, patch formation, and community structure. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 71:2744-2747
27. Felsenstein, J. 1981. Skepticism towards Santa Rosalia, or why are there so few kinds of animals? Evolution 35:124-138
28. Tilman, D. 1994a. Competition and biodiversity in spatially structured habitats. Ecology 75:42401
29. Holling, C.S. 1973. Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics 4:44927
30. Hurlbert, S.H. 1984. Pseudoreplication and the Design of Ecological Field Experiments. Ecological Monographs 54:187
31. Vitousek, P.M. et al. 1997b. Human Domination of Earth’s Ecosystems. Science 277:494-499
32. May R.M. 1972. Will a large complex system be stable? Nature 238:413-414
33. Pianka, E.R. 1970. On r- and K-selection. American Naturalist 104:592-597
34. Brown, J.H. et al. 2004. Toward a metabolic theory of ecology. Ecology 85:1771-1789
35. Ehrlich, P.R.; Raven, P.H. 1964. Butterflies and plants: a study in coevolution. Evolution 18:586-608
36. MacArthur, R.H.; McArthur, J. 1961. On bird species diversity. Ecology 42:594-598
37. Simberloff, D.S. et al. 1969. Experimental Zoogeography of Islands: The Colonization of Empty Islands. Ecology 50:278-296
38. Grime, J.P. 1977. Evidence for the existence of three primary strategies in plants and its relevance to ecological and evolutionary theory. The American Naturalist 111:1169-1194
39. Brown, J.H. 1984. On the Relationship between Abundance and Distribution of Species. The American Naturalist 124:255
40. Connell, J.H. 1961a. Effects of competition, predation by Thais lapillus, and other factors on natural populations of the barnacle Balanus balanoides. Ecological Monographs 31:61-104
41. Holt, R.D. 1977. Predation, apparent competition, and the structure of prey communities. Theoretical Population Biology 12:197-229
42. Anderson, R.M; May, R.M. 1979. Population biology of infectious diseases: Part I. Nature 280:361-367
43. Huffaker, C.B. 1958. Experimental studies on predation: dispersion factors and predator-prey oscillations. Hilgardia 27:343-383
44. Clements, F.E. 1936. Nature and structure of the climax. Journal of Ecology 24:252-284
45. Pulliam, D.W. 1988. Sources, Sinks, and Population Regulation. The American Naturalist 132:652-661
46. Lawton, J.H. 1999. Are there general laws in ecology? Oikos 84:177-192
47. Lindeman, R.L. 1942. The trophic-dynamic aspect of ecology. Ecology 23:399-418
48. Kimura, M. 1968. Evolutionary Rate at the Molecular Level. Nature 217:624-626
49. May R.M. 1976. Simple mathematical models with very complicated dynamics. Nature 261:459-467
50. Trivers, R.L. 1974 Parent-Offspring Conflict. American Zoologist 14:249-264
51. Paine, R.T. 1980. Food Webs: Linkage, Interaction Strength and Community Infrastructure. Journal of Animal Ecology 49:666-685
52. Tilman, D.; Wedin, D.; Knops, J. 1996. Productivity and sustainability influenced by biodiversity in grassland ecosystems. Nature 379:718-720
53. MacArthur, R.H. 1958. Population ecology of some warblers of northeastern coniferous forests. Ecology 39:599-619
54. May R.M. 1977. Thresholds and breakpoints in ecosystms with a multiplicity of stable states. Nature 260:471-477
55. Simberloff, D. 1976. Experimental Zoogeography of Islands : Effects of Island Size. Ecology 57:629-648
56. Schindler, D.W. 1977. Evolution of phosphorus limitation in lakes. Science 195:260-262
57. Kunin, W.E.; Gaston, K.J. 1993. The biology of rarity: Patterns, causes and consequences. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 8:298-301
58. Vitousek, P. M.; Reiners W.A. 1975. Ecosystem succession and nutrient retention: a hypothesis. BioScience 25:376-381
59. Tilman, D. 1980. Resources: a Graphical-Mechanistic Approach To Competition and Predation. The American Naturalist 116:362-393
60. Lande, R. 1980. Sexual dimorphism, sexual selection, and adaptation in polygenic characters. Evolution 34:292-305
61. Tilman, D. et al. 1994. Habitat destruction and the extinction debt. Nature 371:65-66
62. Fretwell S.D. & Lucas H.L. 1970. On territorial behavior and others factors influencing habitat distribution in birds. I. Theoretical development. Acta Biothereotica 19:16-36
63. May R.M. 1973a. Qualitative stability in model ecosystems. Ecology 54:638-641
64. Redfield, A.C. 1958. The biological control of chemical factors in the environment. American Scientist 46:205-221
65. Tilman, D. et al. 1997. The Influence of Functional Diversity and Composition on Ecosystem Processes. Science 277:1300-1302
66. Hamilton, W.D. 1967. Extraordinary Sex Ratios. Science 156:477-488
67. Schluter, D. & McPhail, J.D. 1992. Ecological character displacement and speciation in sticklebacks. The American Naturalist 140:85-108
68. Hanski, I. 1994. A practical model of metapopulation dynamics. Journal of Animal Ecology. 63:151–162
69. Hamilton, W.D. 1964b. The genetical evolution of social behaviour. II. Journal of Theoretical Biology 7:17-52
70. Likens, G.E. et al. 1970. Effects of Forest Cutting and Herbicide Treatment on Nutrient Budgets in the Hubbard Brook Watershed-Ecosystem. Ecological Monographs 40:23-47
71. Odum, E.P. 1969. The strategy of ecosystem development. Science 164:262-270
72. Hubbell, S.P. 1979. Tree dispersion, abundance, and diversity in a tropical dry forest. Science 203:1299-1309
73. Grinnell, B.Y. 1917. The niche-relationships of the california thrasher. The Auk 34:427-433
74. MacArthur, R.H.; Pianka, E. R. 1966. On optimal use of a patchy environment. American Naturalist 100:603-609
75. Tilman, D.; Forest, I.; Cowles, J.M. 2014. Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics 45:471-493
76. May, R.M. & MacArthur, R.H. 1972a. Niche overlap as a function of environmental variability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 69:1109-1113
77. Leibold, M.A. et al. 2004. The metacommunity concept: a framework for multi-scale community ecology. Ecology Letters 7:601-613
78. Axelrod, R.; Hamilton, W. D. 1981. The Evolution of Cooperation. Science 211:1390-1396
79. Gleason, H.A. 1926. The Individualistic Concept of the Plant Association. Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 53:46204
80. Grime, J.P. 1998. Benefits of plant diversity to ecosystems: immediate, filter and founder effects. Journal of Ecology 86:902-910
81. Gould S.J.; Lewontin R.C. 1979. The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptionist programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 205:581-5981017
82. Grant, P.R; Grant, B.R. 1995. The Founding of a New Population of Darwin’s Finches. Evolution 49:229-240
83. Stearns, S.C. 1976. Life-history tactics: a review of the ideas. The Quarterly Review of Biology 51:3
84. Vitousek, P.M. 1994. Beyond global warming: ecology and global change. Ecology 75:1861-1876
85. Janzen D.H. 1967. Why mountain passes are higher in the tropics. The American Naturalist 101:233
86. Carpenter, S.R. et al. 1987. Regulation of lake primary productivity by food web structure. Ecology 68:1863-1876
87. Stenseth, N.C. 1997. Population regulation in snowshoe hare and Canadian lynx: asymmetric food web configurations between hare and lynx. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 94:5147-5152
88. Anderson, R.M; May, R.M. 1978. Regulation and Stability of Host-Parasite Population Interactions. Journal of Animal Ecology 47:219-247
89. Krebs, C.J. et al. 1995. Impact of Food and Predation on the Snowshoe Hare Cycle. Science 269:1112-1115
90. Ginzburg, L.R.; Jensen, C.X.J. 2004. Rules of thumb for judging ecological theories. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 19:121-126
91. Chave,J. 2013. The problem of pattern and scale in ecology: what have we learned in 20 years? Ecology Letters 16:42461
92. MacArthur, R. 1955. Fluctuations of Animal Populations and a Measure of Community Stability. Ecology 36:533
93. Ricklefs, R.E. 1987. Community diversity: relative roles of local and regional processes. Science 235:167-171
94. Levins, R. 1966. The strategy of model building in population biology. American Scientist 54:421-431
95. Anderson, R.M; May, R.M. 1981. The Population Dynamics of Microparasites and Their Invertebrate Hosts. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 291:451-524.
96. Brown, W.L.; Wilson, E.O. 1986. Character displacement. Systematic Zoology 5:49-64
97. Lande, R. 1993. Risks of Population Extinction from Demographic and Environmental Stochasticity and Random Catastrophes. The American Naturalist 142:911-927
98. May R.M. & Anderson, R.M. 1979. Population biology of infectious diseases: Part II. Nature 280:455-461
99. Parmesan, C.; Yohe, G. 2003. A globally coherent fingerprint of climate change impacts across natural systems. Nature 421:37-42
100. Power, M.E. 1990. Effects of fish in river food webs. Science 250:811-81

 

 

PS: if you want the pdf of the 545 nominated articles – including the 100 – you may find them here.

 

 

you want to do a PhD?

yes, ok, I know, you’re from the new generation, you like infographics. Or you’re simply plain lazy and you can’t read a whole page (let alone several posts) even though it’s about your carrier, your future, and probably the most important thing in your life: your future PhD Thesis. But who am I to judge, I’m lazy too. Unable to make the effort to do that much-needed infographics.

And now, thanks to my colleague and friend Fernando Mateos-González (his blog is here), who is both clever and hard-working (and good at this kind of things), most of the tips I’ve given in my posts are gathered in a flashy and powerful infographics, that you can see below.

Enjoy. Perhaps not all in one go, read only half and keep the rest for another day, we don’t want to exhaust you…

Y si hablas español, pero no inglés, aquí puedes leer la versión en español (¡aunque deberías aprender inglés rápido, si quieres hacer un doctorado!)

The Ivory Tower

I’ve heard so many times the saying that curiosity killed the cat. In French we say that quality is a naughty defect (generally to kids, in order to discourage it). That’s utter-bullshit, pardon my English. Curiosity saved men. It’s because we’re curious that we founds ways to compensate our tiny constitution, our ridiculous speed, our feeble health and so on. And it’s because we’re curious that we invented a special job: researcher. People devoted for the sole purpose of satisfying the curiosity of the society, and/or their own.

In return, the very minimum that these researchers can do, it tell the results of their investigations. Otherwise, that’s a bit unfair, no? It’s called staying in the Ivory Tower, the tower where intellectuals selfishly do their work, while staying disconnected from the society. We get paid by the society to find stuff, and we don’t tell what we find? Apart from fueling the lunatic nature of conspiracy theorists, who think every researcher in the world participate covertly to global machinations, this is just failing to do the full spectrum of our very responsibility as researchers. Every researcher should do popularization work, be it public conferences, press interviews, books or documentaries or just press release and let the journalists communicate for them. That’s the fair thing to do, and that’s also a very good exercise to be able to explain complicated concepts, and ultimately also to get more people interested in our discipline.

With that in mind, I’ve been popularizing quite a lot, since my very early carrier. I’ve written a piece about my thesis research during my first year of PhD, against the advice not to do so of my supervisor, who thought – like almost everybody else at the time – that popularization was the realm of bad scientists: those who where not sufficiently strong in research to stay with their peers went to shine with the public, pretending to be smarter than their colleagues knew them to be. Now I’ve written more, from articles to books, initiated several documentaries, participated in several others, given conferences in front of many different audiences, including about every age of school children, and interviews to radio, tv channels and written press. And apart from one or two exceptions, every single one has been a great experience.

In some countries, like my own, the public tends to think that researchers are at best immature society parasites who work on useless questions just because they can. In others, like the USA, they tend to have a better reputation, sometimes up to selfless saviors of the society. Regardless of the general view of our profession, communicating with the public is profitable for the public, is profitable for us and is profitable for our profession.

Of course, when  I say communicate to the public, don’t go telling them all everything. We want to keep all our global conspiracies safely concealed, otherwise our secret plot to take over all the governments of Earth might be delayed…

How I manage my time

A previous postdoc of mine just asked me to post a blog article on how I manage my time. I chose to think that this was meant to be for an advice, rather than for things to avoid.  So there it is: how do I do everything I do in research, while also spending considerable amount of time having a family, running long-distance and playing World of Warcraft, all four of which being notoriously time-consuming.
Researchers are now expected to spend time for (and be good at) a large number of various tasks, often requiring totally different skills, including doing research, writing articles about it (well, and a lot), speaking at scientific congresses but also for at public conferences, popularizing in various formats (written, interviews, etc), networking with colleagues, communicating with journalists and stakeholders, finding, securing and managing grants, acting as an editorial member and a reviewer for several scientific journals, evaluating colleagues, students and grants in juries and committees, teaching various classes, supervising internships, mentoring graduate students and directing postdocs (which is quite different), and sometimes heading a group of research. And if time allows, going to pee every other day.

 

So how do I fit all this into my days? Come to think of it, I don’t have a carefully designed strategy, but over the years I have naturally developed a way of working that allows me to cram in quite a lot.  Here are a few things that I do that help me manage.
First of all, I manage my tasks; I set up priorities. Everyday I have a list of things I have to finish by the end of the day, and while being realistic (otherwise it’s useless), I try to have an ambitious list, and to finish it every day (otherwise it’s useless). So I put in this lists the urgent tasks, those that can’t be further pushed away, plus the important ones that still can fit.
Then, I play Tetris with my priorities: I try to tightly fit various tasks into time holes of the corresponding time and concentration need. If I just spent four hours focusing on a manuscript, I’ll respond to some emails that don’t require a sharp brain, or I’ll browse the Internet for some fitting illustrations for an upcoming talk. If I just have half an hour left before leaving, I’ll find a task that takes me 40 min, and do it more efficiently. Or two tasks of 15-20 min, but I’ll try not to let gaps, unless purposely. And that’s the second point.
Staying efficient. I’m lazy, and I don’t want to spend more time than necessary on things, so I do them as efficiently as I can (because I’m also perfectionist and I don’t want to make them bad). And of course, being efficient is tiring, if you give yourself 100%, then you burn energy, even sitting at your desk. So in addition to managing my tasks and my time, I manage my energy and my motivation. Because without one or the other, you’ll achieve nothing, or at least nothing efficiently. And in the long term, you’ll get a burnout (see my post here about that).
Managing your energy is crucial. The more and the harder you work, the less effective you become, and the more you need to take breaks – either during the days or during the week (or the year). So this may seem like GrandMa’s advices, but you need to sleep well (there are many studies on the effect of one more hour of sleep on work efficiency), to eat well and to rest (your brain) well. That is one of the reasons why I take my whole group to the staff restaurant every lunch so that we can all have a large break at mid day. Plus the food is good there (and remembers, that’s France: while humans eat to live, we live to eat).
When asked to present the distribution of his different research activities, I remember a colleague and friend of mine giving percentages of various tasks, and when I mentioned that the sum was over 100%, he simply answered that he worked longer than 100% of a normal day. That can work, but I think a more efficient (and pleasant) way is to know when you get tired and less sharp, and stop to rest. It’s way better to work 8 hours fully (with breaks) than 6 hours fully without, followed by 3 hours at 50% speed and 3 hours at 25% speed. You’ll achieve less in the end, and will have spent more time, be less rested or entertained and in the end, you’ll like your work less. Rest a lot so that when you work, you can work at 100%. You must remain driven, never dragging.
When I say rest between tasks during the day, you can do like most of my San Diego lab pals when I was in postdoc, play ball in the yard (or go surfing, but that’s not easy here in Paris); you can do like my grand father, who in his time got the world record of criminal case solving by taking a 5 minutes nap twice a day; you can goof off on Facebook, clean up the coffee room, go hunt a roller blader, you can do whatever you find most resting, provided it works for you (and it’s not illegal (or you don’t get caught)).
And last bit of advice: manage your motivation as well. If you have a task that is boring you or that you don’t like, procrastinate a bit. Push it back if you can and do things that are more motivating until either you can’t push it back further, or you have enough motivation/energy to do it.

 

A happy researcher must have three things full at all time: daily planning, energy level, motivation level. Too often they also have a full bladder, but that’s just bad managing. Now I’ve spent a good hour writing this page; remember I told you to alternate hard work and rest/fun. Time for a quick run then…

Ecology: back to the basics

It may seem odd that someone often known as a conservation biologist would promote and defend basic ecology. Yet, I do. I do because I feel basic ecology needs promoting and defending. In a time when environmental crises are so worrying (at least for those who are aware of them), it is normal that people, including scientists, would want to favour applied ecology. That is, after all, a science directly committed to solving environmental issues, such as biodiversity loss, ecosystem degradations, food security, emerging diseases, climate change and the likes.

As a result, the trend has been in the past decades to increasingly favour applied ecology; and because budgets are not extensible, that has been at the expense of basic ecology.

Yet, there are many reasons why basic ecology – or fundamental ecology – is important. I will not enumerate them all here, you’ll probably want to read the article I just wrote, with 4 other authors in the last issue of Trends in Ecology and Evolution, here if you subscribe, for for free here*. But I can still pick up a few, just to arouse your curiosity, because I’m sure you didn’t think of them all, and several might surprise you a bit.

And then not! Go read the paper, I’m feeling lazy today and I’ve been told to keep my posts shorts. But of course, you can use this blog to tell me why you disagree. Because, unlike applied ecology, debate is fundamental in science.

by Ari Weinkle

* you can download the paper from the link on this post or directly from my lab web page here. I shouldn’t offer it like that, but I am in the process to pay for the Open Access and I don’t want to wait until it is available for readers to access it easily.

Judge others!

Among the specificities that make academic research a really special world, one stands out as an amazing achievement: the peer review process. Scientific results exist from the moment they are published and available to the scientific community. So we need to publish, but we need to publish good, verified science and for that, we have developed a system whereby each scientific study must go through a thorough check by independent experts in the field before it can be deemed worthy of publication.

For the reviewer, it means taking time on your already very busy schedule, to provide constructive comments on the work of someone who is likely a competitor, who may even be doing something you didn’t think of, or on which you are currently working.So picture this: you are going to help this competitor publish – because this really should be the ultimate goal of a reviewer – either by accepting the manuscript for publication, and/or by making suggestions for improvement. You will do so on you own time, meaning at the expend of your own work and your student’s progress. You will do it for free. And your altruism and professional conscience will not even be rewarded by gratitude, because you will likely do it anonymously.

So, are we scientists utterly stupid? How can such a system really work in this world? Could you picture Ford sending (anonymously and for free) constructive comments on how to improve the latest prototype of Toyota? Yes, it works for us, and pretty well with that, thank you very much. Of course, there are glitches, with the occasional sloppiness, unfairness or other form of unprofessional behaviour. But globally these are exceptions and this system is really something I am proud to be part of.

There are many reasons why reviewing papers is good not only for the community but also for the reviewer, if only to hone skills of critical thinking. But here I want to insist on the necessity to participate to the system. Indeed, for this system to work, we need reviewers and these are increasingly difficult to find, especially with the rise of publication numbers. Each paper is reviewed by two to three experts, obviously more if it is rejected and submitted elsewhere. So do the maths.

I’ll do a post later on how I consider one should approach and conduct a manuscript review, but for now the message is this: for the system to function, everyone must play along and review at least as many times as he/she has been reviewed. If you count on average four reviews per publication, you can easily check if you are giving to the community, or profiting from it.

Chances are you should review more papers than you currently do! Or, you could also decline the next review request and instead send my post to 100 people, hoping that one of them will be convinced and do more reviews. That will probably even the balance…

How are students selected for Masters/PhDs?

If you have been following my blog – or if you know me IRL – you know that I am a bit provocative at times, and you are probably cynically rubbing your hands at the title of this post. Tsss. This is serious.

So, we’ve seen already how students should choose their research topic (here) and how they should select their supervisor (here). Fortunately, we supervisors also have a say in the matter. In fact, many of us receive loads of applications, and we have to make a selection. So, what are the criteria of this selection? Or rather, what should they be? I mean, apart from the check in the envelope.

Someone made a retrospective study about this, looking at criteria that matched best the less and most achieving students (here). Her finding, quite unsurprisingly, is that previous research experience is the largest discriminator. Not the university grades. Nor the university of origin. The previous experience. Successful, or course: recommendation letters from previous supervisors are one of the most important items in your application file.

This shows that having done some research internships, preferably several, in several places (abroad is even better), is a big plus. Or in this era of ultra-competitiveness, not having done several might be a big deterrent. Also, it is noteworthy that in the European system at least, but it is true elsewhere as well, supervisors tend to take their own Master students into PhDs, both because they know them (and know they get along, that’s important – see here – and how well they work) and because the student has advanced on the project. But then the students were often selected for the Master because they had an earlier research experience.

So it is very clear: if you think you want to do some research later on, stack as much research experience as you can, from early on. If you don’t know, doing an internship in a lab will help you know.

Ultimately, everyone has his/her own system for selecting Master and PhD students. Some rely overly on grades (probably unwisely), some solely on previous experience at earlier levels and some mostly on gut feeling. The Chair of the Anatomy Department of Cambridge once told me that he had, for years, recorded the speed at which graduate students walked in the corridors of the lab, and that it was highly correlated with scientific production. I believe him. Obviously, each one of us has honed a personal method of appreciation over the years, but it seems safe to say that to get that Master/PhD it is easier if this is not your first research experience. And if you don’t come in dragging your feet.

 

 

Personnaly, I use the very effective selection method of paper plane throwing

The Elevator Talk

When you were a kid, you probably have at least once fantasized about meeting your dream actress/singer/sportsman/whatever. And in your worst nightmares, when you actually met them, you were unable to say something that did not sound stupid.

Now that you are all grownup, you may be confronted to a quite similar situation. Imagine meeting a scientist whose work you admire, or whose lab would be a tremendous postdoc place for you (it should go together). Now imagine (no, really, do it) meeting that prof, and having the opportunity to tell him/her what your research is about. “Hello, young anonymous student, what’s your research about?”. And imagine that you come nothing structured with. That you stutter trivialities and forget the essential. And that you keep the rest of your PhD thinking “I should’ve said that!”.

But fear not, my friend, for I come with an advice!

That advice is quite simple really: “be prepared”. Don’t wait to meet a prospective employer/collaborator to know how to expose optimally your projects in a tiny amount of time. Now let me develop a bit (or that post will be too short, and I will again be yelled at): if someone, at a congress or elsewhere, asks you “so, what’s your research about?”, there are only two things you should know.

First, you should be receptive to the attention span your interlocutor is likely to devote to your response. Is it likely to be short? Like you can see behind that someone is already waiting to steal the prof’s attention? Or is it longer, like you’re sitting together in the bus to the tour congress?

The second thing is to prepare for two types of response: one short, and one super short. If a long one is needed, you don’t really need to prepare it. The super short one is what I’ve heard called “the Elevator Talk”: imagine you’ve entered in an elevator with that prof, and she/he asks you what’s your project about. You know you don’t have minutes before one of you leaves. You have to be able to explain not only the question, but also the interest and the approach of your project in about 20 seconds. So the best is to prepare that in advance. Write a few sentences. Straight to the point, but as appealing as possible. About 100-150 words. It should be sufficient to explain what you are doing and why this is super-interesting.

The short version is if the attention span is likely to be a bit longer. For example, you meet the prof in the poster room, or during a coffee break or if after the Elevator talk, you hear “that sounds great, tell me more!”. That’s the “Hall Talk”: you’ll have a bit more time, but you should still prepare what to say and how most effectively and interestingly describe your project. Aim for a few minutes, something like 500 words (but be flexible, pay attention to the prof’s responsiveness, to reduce or expand).

Of course, if you are able also to make a nano-short response, that can be handy; like answering in one single sentence, but in such a way that one wants to hear the rest.

There. That’s all. Oh, and yes, needless to say, for all that there is a third thing that you should know very well: what you research is really about.

 

We all know you’re an impostor in this lab!

(it’s a mere cat)

 

Have you ever had this feeling, that everyone in the lab is much better than you, and that they just haven’t yet realised how inadequate you are? That they perhaps are sincere when they seem to appraise you, but truly, that’s because they don’t know. Because you are better suited than anyone else to evaluate your own intelligence, skills and qualities, and frankly, you know that you understand less and know less than almost anyone here. And you dread the day they find out you’re a fraud, while feeling guilty to have so much undeserved trust put in you. Have you?

Be reassured, it’s not only you. It’s not even only undergrads. I’ve had this feeling (and sometimes still have). Many of us established scientists have. Even some great scientists have, I’m told. In fact, it’s so common, it even has a name:

The Impostor Syndrome.

It’s quite natural, and it can be fought. And it’s important to fight it, as a lack of confidence can be very detrimental for your carrier. A nice compilation of posts on the topic is here.

So stop feeling guilty, stop feeling stupid, ignorant and unskilled, start building confidence on any little achievement you can. It may take a very, very long while to one day suspect that, if everyone is convinced you are not that bad, and that you do seem to succeed, then maybe you’re not that much of an impostor after all (or at least you’re not the only one). Meanwhile, focus on your real, proven limitations and work on them.

Now, I write this assuming that you are very bright and skilled – all my readers are of course – but perhaps you are actually an exception, and a true impostor. You probably are better suited to know…

Should you bond with your supervisor?

I know you like controversial topics, you little rascals, so here is one just for you. How familiar should you be with your supervisor (or with your student if you are a supervisor)? Very good question, I’m glad I asked.

A PhD Thesis is a heavy commitment with (at least) another person during a very significant proportion of your life. It is a journey into enthusiasm, elation, revelations, pride and joy but also into doubt, disappointments, discouragement, stress and exhaustion. It is a journey made of choices and it is built on trust. And it is a journey with a working partner. Neither the students nor the supervisors want to enter lightly into such a journey, with a working partner on whom one cannot depend fully, but also one you don’t like. However, you can like your supervisor/student without befriending him/her. So, should you keep strict neutral, professional relationships, or can you share beers and personal conversation about your brother or your favourite TV shows?

Opinions are not unanimous on this. Many colleagues keep their distances with their students. Many other treat them like a mix between good pals and offspring. I did not bond with my supervisor. Which does not mean that I didn’t like her or respect her. She was nice and she did good, but we seldom ate together or for that matter shared any social event. Same with my two postdoc supervisors. But I tend to bond with my students and postdocs.

I don’t think bonding with any of them has been a problem for either them or me, but it is true that it can be sometimes problematic when the time comes to say “no” or “work harder” or “this is crap”. And I’m sure my students find it hard sometimes for their own reasons. Of course, I can recognise students that would be uncomfortable with this, and I adapt. It takes two to bond. But otherwise, I always found that bonding had made it easier to overcome the unavoidable stressing times, to avoid or forget the resentment, and to enjoy more fully the happy times. In the long run, I think that to bond is globally better for me. And I’d be happy to hear your personal experience on this.

Anyway, whether of not to bond with your student/supervisor is not really a choice, and this post is not about what you should choose to do, because it’s difficult to change the way people interact naturally. So this post is more about whether or not you should fight a natural tendency to bond at work, if you have one. If that’s the way you function better, and the other one seems to be that way too, just don’t feel guilty not to be entirely “professional”. Academia is a special world when it comes to hierarchical interactions. Just do what’s best for the working relationship. But hey, I only said bonding, easy tiger!