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I think it is highly dependent on field. My field, biology, is basically like flipping a coin. Do you graduate in five years or nine? Will you come out with

I think it is highly dependent on field. My field, biology, is basically like flipping a coin. Do you graduate in five years or nine? Will you come out with a golden road to tenure or a life destined to work sad, lonely, post-docs? Flip that coin! No matter how smart you are, the Gods of Biology are fickle. You may end up with a shitty protein, an assay that only works when the moon is aligned with Venus or cells that only grow when you swirl counter-clockwise. As much as people like to pretend Biology is science...the sad truth is that a lot is practically voodoo incantations to the protocol devised 15 years ago by a post-doc. It's one of the main reasons I left. You have to be Smart, Persistent AND Lucky. I'm fine with the first two, but when my career is hinged on luck...well, I started exploring fields that didn't quite as much require blind faith in the universe. :(

kanzure 14y ago
I wish there was some way to fix the situation with protocols in biology. Maybe we could attempt to identify the reasons that they suck, and then fix those reasons. There was a stackexchange site for protocols called methodmint, but nobody used that. Biologists either hate the internet or they hate computers because all of the attempts to get informal web communication happening have failed (even by email). It complicates things even more.
- master_gopher 14y ago
  I don't think it's either of those things - biologists and biochemists just seem to be ridiculously busy, in part because of spending to long in the lab trying to get your crap to work. Every lab I've been in has an inefficient process by which people share, modify and troubleshoot their protocols amongst themselves - but that's convenient because you can ask the guy on the bench next to you. How to get researchers to invest more time and effort, communicating with people they don't explicitly have to, is the problem.
- djt 14y ago
  Dont forget that each machine you use is slightly different, so there are protocols that exist for those labs and those particular pieces of gear set up that way.
drpgq 14y ago
I did my PhD in ECE specifically computer vision and had a decent time, but pretty much everyone I encountered during their PhD in biology had some horror story to tell.

kanzure 14y ago

I wish there was some way to fix the situation with protocols in biology. Maybe we could attempt to identify the reasons that they suck, and then fix those reasons. There was a stackexchange site for protocols called methodmint, but nobody used that. Biologists either hate the internet or they hate computers because all of the attempts to get informal web communication happening have failed (even by email). It complicates things even more.

master_gopher 14y ago
I don't think it's either of those things - biologists and biochemists just seem to be ridiculously busy, in part because of spending to long in the lab trying to get your crap to work. Every lab I've been in has an inefficient process by which people share, modify and troubleshoot their protocols amongst themselves - but that's convenient because you can ask the guy on the bench next to you. How to get researchers to invest more time and effort, communicating with people they don't explicitly have to, is the problem.
djt 14y ago
Dont forget that each machine you use is slightly different, so there are protocols that exist for those labs and those particular pieces of gear set up that way.

drpgq 14y ago

I did my PhD in ECE specifically computer vision and had a decent time, but pretty much everyone I encountered during their PhD in biology had some horror story to tell.