Thursday, July 12, 2012

Radio Silence

Sorry about the quiet. It's hard to blog right now when I'm essentially mourning the loss of two years of data, because my co-author didn't do proper due-diligence, and I trusted what he gave me. Paper was submitted for review, and while most of the review was positive, and I think we'll be able to get the first paper out, a recommend reference has more or less invalidated everything we'd lined up for the next few manuscripts. The reference in question is experimental data that my co-author couldn't find, and points out some flaws in our potential that can't be ignored for the other manuscripts.

It doesn't help that I would have left my PI if I didn't think I had 3-4 papers worth of data when I considered leaving. So I'm also kicking myself about that.

I guess it's a good thing I'm working on 4 different projects at once. Still sucks.

3 comments:

  1. I'm sorry... How long have you been with the PI? It may not be too late to leave yet, if you are really unhappy. I just "adopted" a physics student who I am joking is a "recovering experimentalist." After 3 years of busting his butt in the cleanroom on some very challenging projects and getting nowhere, he's working out great in my group, and seems pretty happy and is productive. If you would like to talk offline, feel free to email me.

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    1. I'm starting my 4th year, but thankfully, everything going wrong is part of the project that wouldn't die, rather than what is supposed to be my thesis. I actually have had some recent breakthroughs on my thesis project, which is helping me stay sane. So as much as it sucks to lose this data, it won't affect when I graduate.
      Plus, now that we've made it through the manuscript process once, I've learned a lot to make it go faster next time.

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