Anyone else learned a research “secret” way after they should have?
Back when I was doing research, spent months banging my head against a wall trying to replicate a published result, only to find out (from my tutor actually) the authors used a specific, unmentioned software setting in RStudio. I still have nightmares on how much time I wasted on this project and on trying to replicate the results…..
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The default mode in research is: things will NOT work out. Once you make your peace with that, it gets easier.
I’m old now, but it would have been nice if someone warned me that at conferences, if older scholars seem really interested in your work, be prepared that they aren’t.
I learned: if you really want to understand how someone does a specific protocol: visit the lab and watch the en5ire process. Way, way back: when 2D gels were magic, this was the only way I finally got it to work.
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results but I’m doing the same experiment over and over again and my replicates are all over the place. Also cell culture media is saltier than it looks.
Lesson: most studies don’t have enough data to say anything about anything
Most people don’t care about you or your research. Just a very small number of people are genuinely interested in your career and what you do. Most people – if anything – are interested in what you can bring to them. Does your result collide with what they are doing? Do they even see you as a direct competitor? Do they smell a promising collaboration which could facilitate their own research? Do they see something in your results which you overlooked and see a chance to dig deeper themselves? Also many people who ask you about your research see it as part of their duty (maybe they are on an official board to evaluate you) and are just “doing their job”. I first noticed this after I got my first papers out and I was super proud to present the results at my first big conference – just to realize that barely anyone actually cared. It took me a while to actually understand this and reconcile it with my own fantasy of a research environment. But once I got through this, I even more so embrace the actual meaningful discussions and exchanges with people who are genuinely interested.
People will take you a month to email you back