Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Lurgy
I was brimming with enthusiasm and ideas which is quite unusual for me coming back from a break. Unfortunately I am struck by lurgy (probably due to spending the weekend standing around in cold muddy fields with millions of scummy people) so I am not getting on quite as well as I hoped.
In other news I got the comments back from the paper I submitted, my boss is a bit narked but I'm not too bothered about them, they certainly seem better than the corrections I got for my PhD thesis. It's a pain and it seems like the reviewer didn't really get the point of my work or quite understand the point of the system I have developed but it's not entirely unexpected and hopefully I will be able to get it sorted out quite quickly.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Diversity
I'm currently working on my CV and having a rethink about what I want to do when my post doc contract expires next year. I am thinking that there is still lots I want to contribute to this field of research and would really like to continue in academia a bit longer. Anyway I realised there is no one around here to speak to about moving on, applying for grants, working on CVs or similar. Everyone just seems to go from PhD onto various grants and there is no real interview or application proceedure, people just get kept on as long as there is money from somewhere for them to do something. No wonder this department is a state. It seems a bit unhealthy to have such a static workforce, with nobody with fresh ideas or perspectives coming in. Even though I did my PhD at the same university as I am currently working at, at least I have moved faculty and work with completely new people and lab groups.
Plotting Data
I spend a lot of my time extracting data from different graphs, manipulating the raw data in various ways and generally plotting and pimping graphs so that they are clear and easy to understand. Personally I prefer my data presented in as close to raw format as possible with maybe just the odd modification to correct baselines and remove noise so that the plots are simple, clear and easy to interpret. While the data can be manipulated to give a straight line I much prefer to see the data in the original plot as it's much easier to spot deviations or anything strange which might be going on. I understand that before the days of computers for everything, rearranging data to give a straight line much simplifies things, but with programmes such as SigmaPlot, OriginPro, Igor, and Prism to name but a few pretty much any data can be fitted to quite complicated equations so there is no reason to do double reciprocal plots or whatever.
When I read a current paper which determines constants using double reciprocal plots or other methods rather than fitting to the original plots I can't help but be rather sceptical. Either they really know nothing about the subject and don't realise the potential errors of analysing data this way (which doesn't instill confidence in the rest of the paper) or they know their data is a bit shonky and this is the only way to get a fit out it (which again makes me sceptical and wonder what they are not saying). I recently saw that some of my data doesn't fit to the commonly accepted model and rather than forcing my data to fit by using different plots or removing data points, I just submitted it without any fit and then commented about why it doesn't seem to fit and deviates from general accepted principles - I just hope the reviewers think like me!
When I read a current paper which determines constants using double reciprocal plots or other methods rather than fitting to the original plots I can't help but be rather sceptical. Either they really know nothing about the subject and don't realise the potential errors of analysing data this way (which doesn't instill confidence in the rest of the paper) or they know their data is a bit shonky and this is the only way to get a fit out it (which again makes me sceptical and wonder what they are not saying). I recently saw that some of my data doesn't fit to the commonly accepted model and rather than forcing my data to fit by using different plots or removing data points, I just submitted it without any fit and then commented about why it doesn't seem to fit and deviates from general accepted principles - I just hope the reviewers think like me!
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
I have been getting super slack this week as it's now the third week my supervisor has been away and I haven't got any materials at the moment to do any experiments (I need to wait for the boss to return from holiday and authorise my purchases so I can actually get the stuff I need to make up new samples). Anyway I've been ticking over OK the past couple of weeks brushing up on my maths, checking over the literature, going over data and reanalysing it but I feel I've got as far as I can with that and am flagging a bit this week. Anyhow today I've just started writing another paper (even though I don't have the key experiments done yet!) and I'm excited at how much easier it is. It took me flipping ages to write my first paper on this project partly because I was generally a bit depressed and finding it hard to do anything, and also because it was a lot of reading around the literature and trying to tie my new results in with the current information out there. Anyway this new paper is a direct follow on so I can pretty much rehash most of the introduction and all the methods in this new paper then plug in my new results and discussion.
I didn't realise how much I have learnt so far in this post doc until now I think as everything has been quite hard but now I really feel like I get it and have ideas of my own. My next big personal challenge is chatting with my boss when he gets back from holiday about the ideas I have come up with and whether any of them are actually worth pursuing. This is quite a big deal for me as I hate saying what I think to bosses/people in authority, I have the terrible habit of talking myself out of things, which when it gets really bad I talk myself out of trying anything and end up feeling miserable, depressed and unproductive. It's all a (probably unfounded) fear of looking stupid and being ridiculed for being stupid or not properly understanding something.
I didn't realise how much I have learnt so far in this post doc until now I think as everything has been quite hard but now I really feel like I get it and have ideas of my own. My next big personal challenge is chatting with my boss when he gets back from holiday about the ideas I have come up with and whether any of them are actually worth pursuing. This is quite a big deal for me as I hate saying what I think to bosses/people in authority, I have the terrible habit of talking myself out of things, which when it gets really bad I talk myself out of trying anything and end up feeling miserable, depressed and unproductive. It's all a (probably unfounded) fear of looking stupid and being ridiculed for being stupid or not properly understanding something.
Monday, August 04, 2008
Virtuous
So today I did my 45 minutes of maths and went to the gym this evening for the first time in ages.
In other news my friend M failed her PhD today, but that's for another post.
In other news my friend M failed her PhD today, but that's for another post.
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