Dear Dora,

Is it wrong to intentionally mislabel buffer bottles to keep people from stealing them?

- WV, grad student

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Many of us may recognize Chuck Norris as a late-night exercise equipment peddler.  In fact, he was the undefeated Professional Middleweight Karate champion title for six consecutive years, before retiring with a karate record of 183-10-2.  He was the only man in the western hemisphere ever to be awarded an 8th degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do.  That’s serious.

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Anyone who’s ever been to a wedding or listened to an oldies radio station for more than five minutes recognizes the lyrics to the Sister Sledge classic We are Family.  “We are family / I got all my sisters with me / We are family / Get up ev’rybody and sing.”  It’s probably unlikely that we’ve ever huddled around with our labmates to sing the words “We are the ___ Lab / I got all my labmates with me / We are the ___ Lab / Get up ev’rybody and work”… but should we?

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It’s been over twenty years since Stephen Covey first published his best-selling self-help book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  That means it’s also been over twenty years that we’ve been pushing “reading it” to the bottom of our to-do list (“Let’s see, I could either set up another experiment or read some cheesy self-help book…”). But 15 million copies don’t sell themselves, so we figured it was time to take a look under the cover.  In the interest of your to-do list (and wallet), we’ve adapted Covey’s principles to create The Seven Habits of a Highly Successful Scientist…

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At BenchFly, we love science.  In fact, our mission is to make science a better career for current and future generations of researchers.  Within the larger profession, careers in science may fall into one of two categories, non-research or research-oriented, although the distinction between the two is not always black or white.  While those in non-research careers may not physically stand at the bench, their roles in the research process are often just as important.  Therefore, as a profession, it is to our advantage to make sure that the best and brightest scientific minds stay in the field in some capacity- whether in a non-research or research capacity.

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Dear Dora,

My PhD boss does not trust me at all and according to him I am a thief who is selling his lab work to others, but of course I am not doing that.  He checks my results five times – keeping watch on me.  It’s really bothering me…please help.

- Rohit, grad student

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My career path over the years has veered in directions I never would have guessed. As an undergraduate, majoring in chemistry, I thought that engineering sounded completely unappealing because of all the math involved. I also refused to take a single biology class because my mother taught high school biology, and it amused me that my dislike of biology irked her. (That totally counts as rebellion, right?)

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When pursuing research as a profession, it often seems our options distill down to two choices: 1) a career in academics, or 2) a career in anything else.  While ‘anything else’ includes a tremendous number of exciting opportunities, it’s not unusual that researchers might feel a bias towards academics – especially early in their careers.  After all, the academic environment is where most of us start out and as a result, our professional role models are likely academics.

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Work is filled with moments where our minds drift off on vacation, leaving the body carelessly going through the motions in autopilot mode.  Nowhere are the consequences of a poorly-trained autopilot more damaging than in email.   Mess up an experiment, you can repeat it.  Send an angry email to your boss, you can start browsing the classifieds.

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Publications have long been viewed as the currency of scientists.  They impact everything from job offers to funding awards to ego boosts.  However, in last weeks’ poll (How Valuable is a Top-Tier Publication) an overwhelming majority of scientists thought it was a better career move to finish a postdoc in three years with an average publication than it was to stay for six years and finally land a home-run paper.  If the data suggest “Glamour Mags” have lost their appeal by six years, then when does that transition actually takes place?

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Dear Dora,

I have an issue with something going on in the lab and it could have serious consequences for my PI.  Someone recommended I speak with the ombudsman for advice, but I’m worried it will get back to my PI somehow. Are ombudsmen really safe to talk to?

-Anonymous, Grad student

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The business card is a staple in most industries, but they are much less prevalent in science, particularly in the academic community.  For many of us, the thought of handing out business cards congers up images of slimy douchebags at cheesy networking events.  Yet, the reality is far from that fear.  The business card is a powerful professional tool that deserves serious consideration among scientists.  The douchebag, on the other hand, is a different kind of tool and should be avoided in the interest of career development…

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One of the most challenging aspects of performing research is knowing when to pull the plug on a project.  This is particularly true for postdocs, who have a limited amount of time to obtain the results that will act as a springboard for their career.  After graduate school, many of us walk into our postdoc dreaming about the huge paper we’re going to publish and the flood of career opportunities and funding awards that will follow.  No wonder it can be tough to wake up from that fantasy…

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The “deinterlace video” setting is one of the easiest ways to improve video quality and it requires nothing more than a click of a button.  Understanding how video is recorded and displayed provides a solid foundation for documenting your laboratory techniques as well as for looking cool when talking about high definition tvs…

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Here I sit, 5:48pm on a Tuesday.  It’s exactly three hours and 48 minutes after I was supposed to have the weekly one-on-one meeting with my boss.  What have I been doing for the last four hours?  Let’s review.

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We know how hard research can be so we’ve been working hard in the BenchFly Labs to develop a few scientific products we think will significantly improve the lives of researchers in the lab.  Excited about the prospects, we’ve leaked news of these products in our new newsletter we launched a few weeks ago.  Due to the tough economy and limited resources, we can only scale-up production on one of these, so let us know which product you’d like to see on the shelves at your local store.

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Summer is synonymous with one thing: Body odor on the subway?… Yes, but no. Unfortunately large men sporting unfortunately small speedos?… Again, yes, but not what we’re looking for.  BBQ?… Bingo.  A BBQ is the quintessential summer activity.  But unlike pouring gels or running flash columns, firing up the grill is not something we practice everyday.  So the idea of a group of people standing around watching us freestyle on the grill can be stressful, even to those of us who love a BBQ.  Here are two essential grill accessories that will transform us into an instant BBQ master and trick our friends into thinking we know what we’re doing…

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Dear Dora,

My PI constantly tells potential collaborators that we’ve got results we actually don’t have, despite my frequent attempts at correcting him.  I’m worried it’s going to backfire on us and make me look bad. What do you recommend?

- KA, postdoc

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Although we may feel like prisoners in lab sometimes, the clearest confirmation that this is not the case is that we’re not guaranteed three squares a day.  That, and there’s a significantly lower chance of getting stabbed with a shank in lab.  If it were up to a nutritionist, we’d eat three meals a day separated by healthy snacks like fruit or nuts to keep ravenous hunger at bay.  But for most of us, life gets in the way of this practice and more often than we’d probably like, we end up skipping a meal.

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Having spent several years as a fellow starving grad student alongside Dr. Barrilleaux, who wrote an excellent post on creating cheap and nutritious breakfasts using eggs, I was pleased to be asked to follow her in discussing affordable nutrition for graduate students.  I think that the perfect food for lunch or dinner for a hungry student (or for anyone- this is what I eat for lunch on most weekdays) is a combination of beans, rice and vegetables.

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