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Killing the Messenger

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By Chet H. Chapin

There's a joke that's making the rounds among graduate students these days that goes something like this:

It's a beautiful day in the forest, and a rabbit is sitting outside his burrow, busily typing away on his laptop computer. Along comes a fox. Intrigued by the concentration displayed by the rabbit, he walks over.

Fox: "Hey there, rabbit, what are you working on?"
Rabbit: "Oh, hello, I'm writing my Ph.D. thesis."
Fox: "Hmmmmm. What is it about?"
Rabbit: "Oh, I'm writing about how rabbits eat foxes."
Fox: "That's ridiculous! Any fool knows that rabbits don't eat foxes!"
Rabbit: "Well now, come with me and I'll show you!"

They both disappear into the rabbit's burrow. After a few minutes, happily gnawing on a fox bone, the rabbit pops out, returns to his computer, and resumes typing. Soon a wolf comes along and stops to watch the industrious rabbit.

Wolf: "What's that you are writing, rabbit?"
Rabbit: "Oh, I'm writing a thesis on how rabbits eat wolves."
A loud guffaw from the wolf. "That's ridiculous! You don't expect to ever get such rubbish published, do you?"
Rabbit: "Not a problem. Do you want to see why?"

The rabbit and the wolf go into the burrow, and once again the rabbit returns by himself. This time he is gently patting his protruding little stomach. He goes back to his typing.

Finally a bear comes along and asks, "What are you doing?"
Rabbit: "I'm doing a thesis on how rabbits eat bears."
Bear: "Why, that's absurd!"
Rabbit: "Come on into my burrow and I'll show you."

They both descend into the rabbit's burrow. In one corner, there is a pile of fox bones. In another corner is a pile of wolf bones. On the other side of the room, a huge lion is belching and picking his teeth.

The moral of the story: It doesn't matter what you choose for a thesis topic. It doesn't matter what you use for your data. It doesn't even matter if your topic makes sense. What matters is who you have for a thesis adviser.

As a Ph.D. student about to finish my thesis, I have to admit that this is the funniest, most twisted joke I've heard in years. The more I think about that little tale (and the more times it comes to my e-mail inbox), the more deeply it resonates with me. Just as a boy is compared to his father and a girl to her mother, so are researchers at every level of their careers still considered the scientific children of their mentors.

I've found that making the transition from graduate student into postdoc has much in common with a debutante ball. In this fine Southern tradition, young women whose parents are wealthy enough to sponsor their entry into society are gathered together to be "presented" in their finest blossom. The assumption is that the well-bred lasses will glow from the reflected lights of both their good nature and good nurture.

Similarly, graduate students of high-powered labs can visit any scientific gathering and find that their association with an academic icon lends them potential and pedigree. Others are not so fortunate.

When I first came to the lab where I've done my graduate work, a postdoctoral fellow there was just cloning a new human receptor gene. My project began with an attempt to clone and characterize the mouse version of this human gene (mice being generally good models for humans). To be allowed to assist in such a cutting-edge endeavor was heady, to say the least.

When the lab published the work on the human molecule in a leading science journal, it received a lot of media attention. Unfortunately, our attempts to clone the mouse gene using the same technique that yielded the human clone failed. What's more, it turned out that the human gene was not what we were looking for after all, and the human clone itself was not even real, though this was impossible to know at the time. I continued to keep the mouse project moving along, however, because it still looked like the best shot at eventually cloning that gene (or a related receptor gene) in the mouse.

Soon after the work on the human molecule was published, other researchers cast doubt on the authenticity of the human clone, and their published letters were accompanied by a defensive response from our lab's authors. By this time, however, my mentor had been featured on NPR and CNN as a result of the possible medical applications of the work.

Then the first author of the paper on the human work left for a second postdoc, and I was left playing catch-up with the mouse side of the story. When my clone turned out to be different, larger, and more difficult to complete than expected originally, my boss began to question my abilities. In fact, it was my detective work that showed the erroneous nature of the human work.

The upshot of all this, I believe, is that that paper published from my lab should be retracted. When I've been brave enough to broach this subject with the first author, he grudgingly agrees that this is a correct assessment. And while my mentor seems to accept my data, he does not seem willing to consider the implications they have on the past publication.

As you might imagine, this has put an incredible strain on our relationship. He has suggested mostly non-science job options to me, and to be honest, I've seriously considered some of them. I've also discussed this matter with the members of my thesis committee, and while they are sympathetic, they are not in a position to confront a tenured peer.

Maybe the moral of the whole story is, no matter how bad things get and how long they take, if you know you're right, you should stick by your guns.

The question remains, do you shoot? If so, when, and where do you aim?

But let's come back to the present: I am happily writing up my thesis and I'm currently looking for a postdoctoral position, which my boss seems to support. Ahh, small victory. This of course requires a letter of recommendation from him, which I have reason to believe will still be positive even in light of our strained relationship, and perhaps even because of the efforts I've made to get to the bottom of this whole molecular nightmare.

Still, I'm left mulling over the nature of scientific lineage and responsibility, and whether you should risk burning bridges by publishing data such as mine without the support of your mentor, or whether you should be satisfied that the accurate version will at least be in your doctoral thesis.

And maybe I'm being paranoid, but I'm wondering what it takes for that burrow-dwelling lion I've chosen to develop a taste for rabbit.