Undressing in public
Female Science Professor wrote the best essay I have read in a long time, perhaps ever, about writing block for scientists.
I definitely lost a lot of my modesty after having children – I figure, who wants to look now? – and the same goes for having written a fair number of articles. But, oddly, the ones that matter the most, with the stories I most want to tell, are the hardest to write. FSP explains why.
By writing, they are baring a private part of themselves, and this is extraordinarily difficult and painful for some people. When they put words in a document, they are standing naked in front of other people.
By writing it down, they are making a record of their words and thoughts in a more permanent way, and what they write might be read by other people — perhaps a group of very wise and judgmental people somewhere out there in the scientific universe. This group is in possession of a large stamp that says LOSER. If you write something less than perfect, even in a first draft, they put a giant red LOSER stamp in permanent ink next to your name and you are forever labeled as stupid. They might even write to your mother. The only one who will still think you are clever is your dog.
And much as I like them, I’m allergic to dogs. So who would think I’m clever, then?
I would very much like to see one of those Mad Libs for Doctoral Students.
Tomorrow’s agenda – oops, today’s – is to write more grant application and think up my 5- to 10- minute talk about use of online lab notebooks in wet biology labs for SciBlog 2008. Yes, I’ll blog from there – conferences are kind of vacation because someone else cooks and cleans and makes my bed for me and my clothes choices are limited. Leaves time for writing.
My casually polled science acquaintances say they don’t use online lab notebooks mostly because they don’t see the advantage in them. Or they hadn’t heard of them. They don’t even get to the point of wondering about getting scooped. I’d be interested in hearing other points of view – or even more of the same, honestly. I only have a few slides to present before I yield the floor, but it will be a very personal take without a little more breadth.
Posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 5:19 pm Categorized as:general science, personal You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 26th, 2008 at 5:09 am
Glad to hear you are speaking about online lab notebooks at Sciblog 2008. Matt Brown said earlier there would be a session on this. I didn’t see one in the programme but I see now where your talk fits in. We (Axiope) have been developing an online ELN – primarily for academic scientists – for the past 18 months, and beta testing starts in early September. As e-CAT (our ELN) has taken shape, I have been following the discussion among the science bloggers about open notebook science, collaboration, etc. with great interest. I am looking forward to your talk, and to meeting you, Jean-Claude Bradley, Cameron Neylon, Martin Fenner and others in London.
Cheers.
Rory Macneil
August 26th, 2008 at 5:40 am
Yay! Our session is a panel format, so my talk (and Jean-Claude’s and Bob’s) will be short, so you and others can participate in discussion.
One thing I would have you prepare your opinion on, is about features versus simplicity in the interface. An OLN has to be above all, really intuitive, because no one wants to learn any more tools to do what they already know how to do – that is, type text, or paste files.
I’m psyched I got an answer at all
August 27th, 2008 at 5:05 am
Great! Look forward to participating in the discussion. I will have a think about features versus simplicity (that should not be too hard since we have been grappling with that on almost a daily basis for the past 18 months!)
In fact, I am going to do better than that — I just extracted permission from our lead engineer to give you access to e-CAT so that you can take a look if you like. You will be the first person outside of Axiope to do that! I think playing around with e-CAT–which is designed to be intuitive–will among other things help to focus your mind on the features versus simplicity issue, and indeed on other issues that you probably will be touching on.
A few things to note in advance. 1. This is a beta, or actually a pre-beta, release, so there are still bugs. 2. We are still in the process of finalising a couple of online videos which will show people how to get started. In their absence, I suggest that you spend a few minutes reading three items in the Help section: Introducing e-CAT, Doing an experiment, and Managing data (You can dip into other Help items as you get into playing around with e-CAT).
After you have done that, I suggest that you take a look at an existing experiment that is already in the system. To do that click on My Experiments and then click on the ELISA II experiment in the NIH Cortical Column Project.
Then it might be an idea to create your own experiment. There are lots of useful features (!) like linking (there is something that can’t be done in a paper notebook!) — that is one that is relevant to a person simply doing an experiment. Then there are other things that are better described as capabilities, e.g. the ability to set up and administer groups, comment on experiments, etc.
I could go on longer, but I will stop there. I am going to send you an email with details of how to log in to e-CAT.
August 27th, 2008 at 6:54 am
I’ve just received the e-mail, and am very much looking forward to cutting my teeth on it if I can manage before departure tomorrow morning…
August 28th, 2008 at 3:16 am
That’s great – see you in London!