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Left Out of the Loop

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By Olivia Eyre

Advice columnists like Dear Abby and Miss Manners say that you're not supposed to worry about what others think of you. Note that none of them work in academe. Recently, our laboratory has interviewed three candidates for postdoctoral positions, and the reaction of my colleagues to them makes me wonder how I will be received during my own search for a postdoc.

The first candidate, Ms. Geographically Challenged, was looking to join a lab in our institution because her significant other was already committed to a postdoctoral job in the area. A group of women in my lab sat around kibitzing about the fact that Ms. Geographically Challenged had applied not only to our lab but to another one in the building. "What is she thinking, applying to two completely different labs? She needs to be absolutely committed to one or the other. She must not really be that interested in either one, she's just doing it to be close to her boyfriend."

Granted, our lab and the other one she applied to work in somewhat different areas, but we are two labs who use molecular biology and genetics to approach questions about a certain class of gene regulation. Certainly not apples and oranges, more like Red Delicious and Granny Smith. I replied to my colleagues, "Someday, you too will be geographically challenged, and you ought to have respect for a fellow woman scientist."

Perhaps I'm a bit oversensitive. As I mentioned in my last column, my husband and I have decided to relocate to Midwestern City. Some of my colleagues believe that I'm selling myself short by choosing the Midwest over Boston or the Bay Area. I'm excited about our coming move but also a little worried that I'll be perceived as Mrs. (Dr.!) Geographically Challenged in my own interviews, all of them at the only major research institution in the city. I can't even draw an obvious parallel between the four labs where I have applied: They all work in fairly different areas of biology.

In the end, Ms. Geographically Challenged was not invited to join either lab because she didn't have adequate experience. The reaction to our next candidate, Ms. Pragmatic, worried me even more.

Ms. Pragmatic gave an excellent talk that impressed everyone in the lab. She had done an enormous amount of high-quality work. My adviser offered her a job the very same day, and people were excited about the prospect of luring such a good postdoc.

But just a few days later, Ms. Brownnoser swept into town. Ms. Pragmatic had asked about the amount of work expected, the types of projects available, the management style of my adviser, and the housing arrangements and costs. Ms. Brownnoser was just so glad to be interviewed by "such a top-level lab" where "you all do such wonderful work" that she didn't have time to ask any of these questions.

Buttered up by Ms. Brownnoser, the interviewers in my lab turned against Ms. Pragmatic: "Why did Ms. Pragmatic ask us all of those questions about the workload and the operations of the lab? Who does she think she is to ask those questions of a lab like ours? She should just be happy to get an interview, like Ms. Brownnoser was."

Naturally we have offered Ms. Brownnoser a position, and she has accepted. Ms. Pragmatic is still undecided, but my hunch is that she will go elsewhere.

Although I kept my mouth shut in discussions about these dueling postdocs, I grew increasingly worried about my own attempts to find a lab that would be a good fit with my career goals. Frankly, I'm tired of the calls at home from my adviser on Sunday mornings and the constant pressure to slap something together and send it to a journal whenever we get wind that competition might be nearing our door. I want to join a lab where it is acceptable to work efficiently but to go home at the end of the day, and I would like to work for a less mercurial scientist.

Unexpectedly, my fears about what interviewers would think of me have been overtaken by new worries about what my adviser thinks of me. A fellow graduate student took me out for coffee and gently led the conversation toward the topic of our laboratory's licensing deals. Our lab has developed a new technology that is spawning licensing deals worth several hundred thousand dollars with biotech and pharmaceutical companies. I was involved in the initial stages of establishing the technology and made several insights that were important for turning it from an idea to a practical tool.

My understanding had been that I was going to share in some of the proceeds from this licensing. My fellow student told me that the money was beginning to roll in, and the first checks had been distributed. I had apparently been excluded.

The distribution of money from these licensing deals is quite murky in our lab. Generally, licensing agreements divide proceeds between the institution and the research adviser, who is then free to distribute that money at his or her discretion. The dollars can be poured back into the lab, into the adviser's pocket, or distributed among people who worked to develop the technology.

My adviser has always promised his students and postdocs that any money from these deals would be distributed among those of us who developed the technologies. When my adviser's own supervisor licensed a previous technology, the supervisor took essentially all of the money for his personal use -- a practice that my adviser has decried.

Lately, however, I've noticed that my adviser hasn't tried to fill my thoughts with dollar signs. Instead he's focusing on the newer lab members who still have blood, sweat, and tears left to give. I'm on my way out of the lab and will no longer be of use to him.

During our lunch, my confidant informed me that another student in the lab is sharing in the proceeds, even though she played a much smaller and less scientifically demanding role than I had in the development of the technology. Then my labmate told me about a series of conversations he had had with my adviser. When my informant suspected that I was to be excluded, he confronted my adviser and said that he felt I should share an equal part. My adviser demurred, and assured my friend that I would be "taken care of" and not to worry about it. My friend then said that he wanted his portion to be divided equally between the two of us, because he felt that it was completely wrong for me to go unrewarded for my work.

My friend's generosity left me speechless. However, just because he received some of the money in the past doesn't mean he will in the future. Initially, the proceeds were all going to be divided among the developers of the technology. Now, my friend tells me that some of the money is going into a "war chest" for future research. The remainder will be distributed. Just how much is at the sole discretion of my adviser.

My friend has given up trying to find out the status of the agreements, because my adviser now refuses to discuss them and has blocked communication between us and our licensing office. Admittedly, my friend can be rather persistent, while most of the rest of us are not inclined to press our adviser too much.

From one viewpoint, the licensing money was never guaranteed and certainly wasn't the reason that I came to graduate school. On the other hand, I feel that my adviser uses the licensing money as an ever-receding carrot, to draw out more and more effort in response to the promise of future reward. At the end, it isn't clear that the reward will be there -- and it certainly isn't required to be. Back when I told my adviser that I might consider working in a corporate laboratory, one of his biggest criticisms was that when you work in a company, your discoveries become the property of your employer. He implied that academic scientists are lucky because we can financially benefit from our discoveries -- unless of course your adviser decides to use the money to reward some lab members over others.

I was initially distraught over this. In some way, I feel that the decision to exclude me diminishes the scientific contributions that I have made. I am afraid to confront him, however, because he could quite legally decide that sharing the money is too much of a hassle, and keep everything for himself or his lab.

In any case, my friend will shortly be leaving the lab as well, and he may then be excluded as I am. All I can do is focus on finding a postdoctoral lab that is a better fit and try to look at each opportunity with the perspective I've gained in graduate school.