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We are incredibly fortunate to live in this era. We’ve got a front-row seat to watch the collision of the internet and science. Over the next decade, we can expect major changes in the scientific process – from teaching to learning to the way we think about publication.
Whatever happens, we, BenchFly, pledge that the following statement will always be true:
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I’m a third generation chemist, following in the footsteps of my father and grandfather. Some of my earliest memories include weekend trips into the lab with my dad. Although they were by no means every week, as I grew older the trips were frequent enough to instill in me a genuine respect for research and it’s role in society.
As an undergraduate, I joined an organic chemistry lab and quickly found out that the NMR was not, in fact, a huge cotton-candy machine, as I had imagined when I was a kid.
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Choosing a good scientific problem is essential for being a good scientist. But what is a good problem, and how to choose one? The subject is not usually discussed explicitly within our profession. Scientists are expected to be smart enough to figure it out on their own and through observation of their teachers. This lack of explicit discussion leaves a vacuum that can lead to approaches such as: choose problems that can give results that merit publication in valued journals, resulting in a job and tenure.
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The moment when a new idea is conceived is incredibly energizing. The moment when a boss shoots it down is not. In my experience, having a strategy to manage this situation is key to getting the approval needed to move the project forward.
In this post, we will present a universally effective “three-ory” as an approach to deal with this problem.
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Leaving my postdoc also meant leaving my health insurance. In Massachusetts, where health insurance is required, that means you’d better find some more, quickly. So I got on the phone and made a few calls. This is the exact conversation I had with an insurance salesman, no kidding:
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The world of science can be surprisingly small and news travels fast. When speaking your mind about potentially sensitive professional and ethical issues, privacy is essential.
Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. We’ve designed BenchFly to give you added protection in the part of the site we think you’ll need it most.
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I did a lot of cloning as a graduate student, and even more as a postdoc. In total I’ve now cloned somewhere around 300 constructs. As we all know, one of the real bottlenecks in cloning can be the ligation reactions. Using traditional ligase, it takes three nights (set up ligation, transform bacteria, pick colonies) to get to purified DNA. And this is assuming we haven’t had to insert any black magic ceremonies to get the reaction to work in the first place.
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The lab notebook is probably the single most important document you maintain as a scientist. It records protocols, stores data and serves as a legally-binding record of your work. But let’s be honest, we all neglect our notebooks to some degree. This is nothing to be proud of, but it’s reality. Sometimes it’s our fault – “we’ll download that data from the computer later”… and sometimes it’s more naïve “we just didn’t know what to do.” Unfortunately, neither is a good excuse.
What follows are 3 steps to keeping a proper lab notebook.
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There will be many times in our careers when we will find ourselves in a new job environment. Whether we’re starting as a tech, grad student, postdoc or faculty, the transition period can be tough. And let’s face it, scientists aren’t exactly known for their social graces. The combination of stress and awkwardness can be explosive and leave people on both sides of the fence with a bad taste in their mouths
Luckily, there are a few very simple steps we can take to keep our new colleagues on our side.
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You have recently married that special someone and you want to spend every waking moment with them. Or you’ve decided this is the year you’re finally going to run that marathon. Whether it’s a human, a hobby or an alternative passion besides science (I know it’s hard to believe), finding time to balance your lab life and social life can be hard.
No need to worry, follow these steps and you’ll be well on your way to that magical place they call…”balance”. Your social life can science life can finally stop bickering.
