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I am looking for people to write, either anonymously or not, about their department and the things you love the most about it or hate the most about it. I would prefer glowing descriptions of departments not in the top 10, since 11-30 are still every bit an excellent department 31-60 are fantastic and 61-200 produce good science like everyone else. Below 200 may waste space… I guess. But there aren’t many PhD granting departments below 200. Since (nearly) every department has visitors here (except Penn State?) I hope to get more than just a few good entries. I welcome submissions from the top 10, of course. Here is what I’m looking for:
- Description of the facilities, instrumentation, etc.
- How you think the department compares to the NSF ranking (US News can’t rank a fucking grad program to save its cover)
- How do the faculty get along? Is there vicious animosity like at Indiana University or so-harmonious-it’s-disgustingly harmonious relations like at Brigham Young? Are those wrong assumptions?
Two of the world’s finest institutions are already represented in the blogosphere. I candidly refuse to blog about my institution, which is also one of the finest in the nation. So, it’s up to you, good user. Remember, I’ll publish anything you submit and will do so anonymously (if you ask), so if you want to flame your department, knock yourself out, but think about it first. It is, after all, your department. You may use the form below, which will email your submission anonymously:
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Just for clarification, US News (& World Report) does not rank. They publish rankings based on surveying faculty throughout the nation. I am not sure how broadly the survey but there are certainly school on the list I have never heard of before.
A few individuals are asked to rank hundreds of departments with a single grade out of, I believe, five possible scores. Obviously, a physical chemist is more likely to grade an entire department strong if their physical chemistry division is strong. The same is true for other concentrations.
Therefore, most of us rely on historical perception of the strength of a department and changes, either positive or negative, affect the rankings only over long periods of time.
Oh, you mean academic departments (cuz my department here at my little biotech rocks my socks, I must say!).
heh. sorry. i forget that my audience is becoming quite general. Feel free to describe something else. You can email me a delicious recipe, for instance.
I bitch and moan about my department a lot in person and in the blog (I’m too lazy to find the links- suffice it to say, everyone should just read everything on it anyway, it’s grade A stuff, okay?) but I rarely say good things about it. Just my hilariously pessimistic nature, I suppose. People who go here, who know why they are here and have few misconceptions about grad school are usually pretty happy here. People who are unsure about their future or why they are in grad school or whatever tend to get creamed here. I’ve had my share of doubts but for the most part, I tend to keep my criticisms of the school and my reasons for being occasionally unhappy separate. Not many unhappy grad students do that, and I find these people to be utterly irritating, as most of them (myself included) have only themselves to blame. All in all, I like this place. The people are, for the most part, friendly and laid-back, there really isn’t any cutthroat competition (rare, I hear, for a top 10 school) and I seriously doubt I’d be more or less miserable if I went anywhere else. The place is not without its criticisms, but all in all, not a bad place to be, I think.
I think plenty of PSU alumni visit here, it is just hard to tell from the IP address!
Haha…so true about IU…so true
Anyone care to elaborate on goings on at IU???
It’s a thermodynamic anomaly in that it is perpetually imploding.
Just out of curiosity, Kyle, why are you doing this?
Doubt I’ll say anything about my department.
For altruistic reasons I’m sure.
Mitch
I’m curious about departments that don’t get a lot of notoriety. I’m also sick of watching people get ignored when they tell them they are from “X university” (where X<35) as if X University doesn't have a pot to piss in. So, I'm far more curious about "X" and think the world should know that fantastic science comes from more than 100 universities across the US, not just 10.
It is not, contrary to what you are thinking, to air dirty laundry or for the sake of yellow journalism.
Hello everybody,
Today is my final day at Scripps. I was a post-doc in Peter Schultz lab in
the chemistry department. I want to tell you one of the
strangest things I faced in my scientific career.
In one of our group meetings (called mini-meetings in Schultz lab) during
the beginning of my post-doc in 2002 Sheng Ding (then a
PhD student) came up with an idea to synthesize PCR-based siRNAs
(short-interfering RNA) at a significantly less cost of $500,000.
After listening to his idea which was jointly presented by Lianxing Zheng,
a then post doc, I said in front of everybody that “I
guarantee that this approach will not work.”
Well, I was not liked by Pete for saying that and he agreed to synthesize
the library anyway for 8000 human genes (It actually was
produced at a cost in the range of $150,000). The paper was published in
PNAS (Title: An approach to genomewide screens of
expressed small interfering RNAs in mammalian cells; Lianxing Zheng, Jun
Liu, Sergei Batalov, Demin Zhou, Anthony Orth, Sheng
Ding , and Peter G. Schultz: Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 Jan
6;101(1):135-40.). Lianxing Zheng was the first author, while
Sheng Ding and Peter Schultz were the corresponding authors. During this
time Sheng Ding has become a faculty member of the
Scripps chemistry department and apparently this was his first paper as an
independent faculty.
Many people in the lab were trying to use this library, including me for
two different screens, but unfortunately nobody could
reproduce their primary screen results. Three months after the publication
of the paper Lianxing Zheng (the first author) said in
a mini-meeting that the PCR-based siRNA library DOES NOT works and Pete
made himself a FOOL.
Most strangely, Pete instead of doing something about the paper got
extremely annoyed with me and told me one time that if I speak
about it I wouldn’t get his support for anything. I was harassed so bad
that my choice was either to leave the lab then and loose
two years of work and a paper (on which Pete started giving nasty,
sometimes abusive comments) or take everything and keep quite
and get a job and then leave. I have got a job now and been fired four days
before my actual ending date because of not showing-up
for meeting with Pete Schultz. Well, I am least interested to talk to him
because I have no respect. I consider him the most
dishonest scientist and the lowest human being I have come across in my
life. I am very happy that I am fired, because under no
circumstances I will support such science and his behavior.
As my friend XXXX told me that nobody will trust me. Well, I know that.
Pete will come with his own version. But just ask the
following questions:
1. What was the reason Sheng Ding started looking for jobs one year after
getting the faculty position here? I believe he had
good interviews but then stayed no at Scripps. Then what was the reason
to look for jobs at the first place (may be Pete
thought that he scarred me enough and I am dependent on him and I will
not speak).
2. Why Pete have Lianxing a bad reference for a job to Novartis. His one
line was something like “he worked hard without knowing
what he is doing”. I come to know this from Lianxing. I must mention
that on Pete’s back Lianxing told a number of times that
the library does not work and Pete is trying to hide it. (Four years
after publication notbody in the lab is using it.)
3. Why ZZZ ZZZZ (the technician who PCRed the mouse library, this was
synthesized after the human library) got fired.
4. Why Pete forced me to publish my cell cycle screen using another siRNA
library into PNAS in return to transfer my H1B visa.
Last but the most important thing is that this is not a general practice in
this lab and most of the people I the lab are very
hard working, good and honest scientist.
I received this via the email submission process thingiee above. I did not feel comfortable posting it in the main page, however; it is worthwhile to open this up for discussion if this is indeed true. The author wishes to remain anonymous. I rather wish I hadn’t received it, since it puts me in a very awkward position.
omg i loooooooooooove chemistry gossip. Is it true? I have no idea. Sometimes it makes me wish I had stayed a pseudonym, so I can help spread more gossip, but it’s probably better for me not to do that.
I’m going to put out here a postulation called Excimer’s Law of Chemistry Gossip.
Given enough time and enough talking chemists, everyone will end up looking like an asshole.
I wish you could have edited it for grammar…but I understand.
Kyle, sorry to cause you consternation. I’m willing to let the small blogging community know that I’m the one who sent it, and I’m not the postdoc in question. If you’re an authority figure and want to take retribution on me, then read through the blogs and figure out who I am. It shouldn’t be too hard.
You all should know that the postdoc in question did not remain anonymous when posting this internally, but since I made the *ethically* questionable move of sending it to Kyle (without the postdoc’s permission) I removed his name. I will not disclose his name without further communication from him.
I feel that I did the *morally* correct thing, as the postdoc and I had communication prior to the email being sent out (where I strongly discouraged him sending it out) — communication wherein I told him that if he sent it to an internal emailing list, I would broadcast it to a larger community, to discourage him from doing so unless he was damned sure that’s what he wanted to do (I’m really shortening the details of the conversation and the convoluted logic that resulted in us arriving at this point but I’m not going to lose any sleep over what I’ve done).
to clarify, I’m the one who sent it to Kyle, the postdoc disseminated it to an “internal” crowd of ~2k.
Oh right. Also, I believe him, FWIW. Even if he was sort of a lazy ass towards the end of his postdocship. Wouldn’t you be after that?
Rebuttal:
The two postdocs (accuser and Lianxeng) apparently had quite flattering letters of recommendation.
And no one in the lab is using it anymore since, apparently, better technologies have come around in its place.
hm… So a post-doc sent this to all of Scripp’s? That’s cute. At least Pete has a sense of humor. And who cares if better technology has come along? The question I want to know is, “does it work”?
Scuttlebutt is that it doesn’t — postdoc in independent lab attempted to make a (much) small library using the technique and muttered something about maybe there being “special strains with residual recombinase activity” and “the gene seems to just pop out of there because the promoters are incompatible”. But it could just be a matter of different hands.
However tracking down articles which cite the PNAS paper shows that people have been able to do similar things (albeit with different plasmid backbones/promoter sequences).
Arrrhhh…..
I be hearin what ye said about old Pete Schultz. I’d be seein him about and you bet I never be mistaken him as someone to be playin trivia games with.
The ramblings of a pissed off disgruntaled and FIRED post doc. I’m sure to believe everything that’s coming out of his mouth.
Sounds rather damning. Since all parties will know who you are, your anonymity is a bit compromised. You might as well put your name behind those claims if your going to put someone else’s feet in the fire.
Mitch
Another Penn Stater (recent B.S. grad) who visits here. Believe me, there are quite a few of us who visit scientific blogs, if not this one.