And you are… who?
It is a common myth among grad students that people Out There know your name. There is no better way to explode that myth than to go to a research conference.
No sooner than you have sat down, you notice that the guy next to you has written Recent Important Paper in your field, and moreover that his paper even cited yours! Enthusiastically you introduce yourself.
"Hi, I’m So-and-So."
Famous Guy* stares at you blankly, then stares at your name tag.
"You’re at University X," he says, reading it from the tag. "And you work with…?"
"Professor X," you say.
"AAAH, yes. Professor X. And which project do you work on?"
"Well, uh, I work on such-and-such which is related to your recent paper on such-and-such."
"Ah, yes," he nods. "I suppose your name looks familiar."
In (my part of) the world of science, most papers are viewed as the work of the professor in whose group they are done. In part, this is because the problems are usually formulated by the professors. The work is technical enough that a grad student can’t even hope to find an original problem to solve on his or her own, but must depend on the professor to point one out. And out there in the scientific community, no one really remembers the grad students’ names– not until they grow up and become professors themselves. If you want to break the rule, you have to be VERY outgoing at conferences.
*I could say FamousWoman, but they are in short supply at the conferences I attend.
I’m interested in this “problem-defining” thing you wrote about. How do the professors learn to define problems that are original? Is it just through experience with the field? Or do they just know what the field considers an appropriate PhD-level “problem?”
Comment by skookumchick — July 25, 2006 @ 1:13 pm
Are you, like, a chemist or something?
When I was a grad student (and cars were called horses, and planes were used to shape wood…), I had a chemistry student housemate. He said that when students wrote papers in his department, the professor got first authorship even if he had no direct input into actually doing the work. I didn’t believe him. In every (geology) institution that I’ve worked in, the first author is the person who actually writes the words, and is usually also the person who performs the experiments (especially if they are a student). Supervisors who had significant input into drawing conclusions from the results got last authorship; professors who didn’t care were lucky to make the acknowledgements, usually as a funding source.
Comment by Lab Lemming — July 27, 2006 @ 3:42 am