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increasingly annoyed findings
-There is a power supply totally missing from one of my amplifiers. Those amplifiers each control two chambers and supply power to both of the connected microphones, so those "recordings" are from microphones with the power off completely and are, yes, useless. This explains two thirds of the missing data I was upset about last night.
-One of my colleagues, a labmate who does recording work but usually in another building, walked off with it and didn't tell me during a lull when I was not running experiments. (This was probably in a week-long lull when I was troubleshooting other things, shortly after I spent most of February getting the chambers in working order.) She left the amplifier itself in place, so without going over the setup end to end, it's pretty hard to notice exactly what is and isn't there.
-Actually, I've identified exactly when the lull was. It was in the end of March, shortly after I had verified that all my hardware was working properly and functional but while I was busily trying to nail down issues in my recording stimuli without wasting further animals. There has been no power going to my microphones in the bottom two chambers for all five runs of animals made within that time frame. This includes every single run that I thought had been executed correctly and for which I thought I had complete data.
-I do not feel I should have to be on top of the possibility of random components of my equipment going missing.
-I am not entirely sure WTF is up with the remaining chamber, but I suspect that my white amplifier was slowly going bad and/or slowly blowing a fuse again. I have replaced that white amplifier now.
-I have now spent my entire weekend carefully checking and cross-checking all of my experimental apparatuses. They work okay now.
-I am fully prepared to sell this labmate down the river if my boss complains to me about not having had the foresight to be checking this data as I was going. Actually, I will be selling the labmate down the river regardless, because he needs to know this data is missing and also: what the fuck.
-I do not particularly like this labmate and have similar issues in the past, which my boss has tried to both-sides during all conflicts because he fears open conflict. He has repeatedly asked me to minimize problems with her and be cordial to her. I will therefore be dumping this bullshit in his lap and accepting no criticism for this, because, again: WTF.
-Actually, because my boss repeatedly told me not to look at the enormous piles of recording data that came off this paradigm prior and to focus on publishing a manuscript he has now been ignoring my emails on for a week, I will be accepting no criticism period for failing to notice this earlier. Pushing me faster yields mistakes, and there's only so much I am actually capable of or willing to work.
-White amps are now going to be switched off unless recording is actually in session, and I need a checklist of all the things needing to be switched on and off as there are now... at least six devices that need to be on while recording and off otherwise.
-Fuck me, I really wanted to have more data than this before Evolution.
Probably coming later: a thinkings-out-loud about accepting responsibility and who really does and does not need to be nudged to do that.
-One of my colleagues, a labmate who does recording work but usually in another building, walked off with it and didn't tell me during a lull when I was not running experiments. (This was probably in a week-long lull when I was troubleshooting other things, shortly after I spent most of February getting the chambers in working order.) She left the amplifier itself in place, so without going over the setup end to end, it's pretty hard to notice exactly what is and isn't there.
-Actually, I've identified exactly when the lull was. It was in the end of March, shortly after I had verified that all my hardware was working properly and functional but while I was busily trying to nail down issues in my recording stimuli without wasting further animals. There has been no power going to my microphones in the bottom two chambers for all five runs of animals made within that time frame. This includes every single run that I thought had been executed correctly and for which I thought I had complete data.
-I do not feel I should have to be on top of the possibility of random components of my equipment going missing.
-I am not entirely sure WTF is up with the remaining chamber, but I suspect that my white amplifier was slowly going bad and/or slowly blowing a fuse again. I have replaced that white amplifier now.
-I have now spent my entire weekend carefully checking and cross-checking all of my experimental apparatuses. They work okay now.
-I am fully prepared to sell this labmate down the river if my boss complains to me about not having had the foresight to be checking this data as I was going. Actually, I will be selling the labmate down the river regardless, because he needs to know this data is missing and also: what the fuck.
-I do not particularly like this labmate and have similar issues in the past, which my boss has tried to both-sides during all conflicts because he fears open conflict. He has repeatedly asked me to minimize problems with her and be cordial to her. I will therefore be dumping this bullshit in his lap and accepting no criticism for this, because, again: WTF.
-Actually, because my boss repeatedly told me not to look at the enormous piles of recording data that came off this paradigm prior and to focus on publishing a manuscript he has now been ignoring my emails on for a week, I will be accepting no criticism period for failing to notice this earlier. Pushing me faster yields mistakes, and there's only so much I am actually capable of or willing to work.
-White amps are now going to be switched off unless recording is actually in session, and I need a checklist of all the things needing to be switched on and off as there are now... at least six devices that need to be on while recording and off otherwise.
-Fuck me, I really wanted to have more data than this before Evolution.
Probably coming later: a thinkings-out-loud about accepting responsibility and who really does and does not need to be nudged to do that.
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this is absolutely fucking terrible. I am so sorry you are being so undermined and so obstructed and just... wow. w o w. I Cannot.
I just. Wow.
Hurrah you for post mortem and CORRECTLY IDENTIFYING THAT YOU COULD NOT, UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES, HAVE REASONABLY PREVENTED THIS. What! The fuck!
(I am just... absolutely fucking boggled at your supervisor being all Lol No Need To Check The Data. Wow. Wooooooooooow.)
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He absolutely will tell me that it should have been on me to check the function of the sound chambers before each and every time I used them so mote it be, but also... like... I haven't really had the time or focus to do these things while I'm trying to get these out the door? Especially given the sheer magnitude of trying to visualize the files. I mean, it's easy to say "you should just look at them," but doing so requires either a) using the cluster computing system to create a virtual environment, which it took me I think a week or two to learn how to do and get everything installed for, or else b) reading the file on MY LAPTOP ONLY (the desktop I use will choke if it even tries) and then cutting the recording and looking at a subsection of that, and I honestly hadn't had the energy and focus to sit down and look at all the playback sections. Anything else--well, the hardware worked okay (and it did, before April) and I couldn't be assured there was a recording OF anything at any given time, and checking all four sound chambers takes me at least 20m if everything is working perfectly, 20m I can't spend on the talk or the manuscript or or or or....
it's very, very frustrating.
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WHAT THE HELL, LABMATE
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YEAH SHE DID DO THAT
I DON'T GET IT EITHER
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what a absolute lab monkey.
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Preach.
This all sounds SO BAD AND INFURIATING holy GOD, I'm so sorry. I'm...glad you have a 1/4 of th data, I guess, but WOW. I'm so stressed thinking about managing all of that,sending you many good viiibess and very much looking forward to the musings on responsibility. <3
(I uh would definitely strangle to death someone who took my equipment WITHOUT ASKING oh my GOD)
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I'm really tired of expending this level of cognitive energy on dipshit things like this, jesus.
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So, where I'm from, we have this wacky legal theory called "theft". That's the technical legal term-of-art for "taking without asking".
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Christ on a crutch.
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The long answer is that academia is the very last bastion of the medieval master/apprentice system, and each PI effectively runs their lab like a tiny fiefdom, with incredibly little oversight. As far as managing students goes, PIs typically receive zero formal training in management at any stage of their careers. The closest they get is an analogous journeyman stage, postdoc, where they work in a lab after receiving the doctorate for a period of one to two years doing research full time.
My research is technically not even what I am paid to do much of the time: nominally, during the school year I am a teaching assistant on assignment to a specific instructor, who herself probably has no formal training in management. I'm contracted to work for her for 20 hours per week while classes are in session, which may or may not reflect the actual time I allocate to teaching in any given week. My research, by contrast, is not paid or even formally treated as labor. I occupy a strange grey area in between student, like the undergrads, and employees, like the professors, and at any given time which I qualify as is usually whatever seems most convenient to my bosses.
Each PI runs his lab like a fiefdom with extremely limited oversight, most of it coming from his peers. His graduate students will typically be junior presences in a department for five to ten years, but a PI in a tenure track field may well continue to work alongside those peers until one of them either chooses to leave and accepts a job offer in another area, retires completely, or else dies.
Each individual graduate student is overseen by a committee of these peers and their PI or PIs,chosen by the level of relevance to the student's research. One of these PIs must be from outside the department, which is intended as an outside oversight; in practice, these PIs usually have enough relevance to the field of the student and PI to be frequent collaborators, and in my particular field most people are actually cross listed in multiple departments.
And technically all of that oversight is specific to a student and that student's progress, not the oversight of the PI. Frankly, my PI is generally considered one of the best in the department because he does genuinely care about his students and want them to succeed. He's "just" bad at time management and not actually great at mentoring. But just actively meaning well and trying is enough to put him right up there in terms of reputation, because he's not actually required to do even that much to retain his job.
OT: Medievalism digression
*cringe* Sorry, you punched my medievalist button. No, it's the very last bastion of the whole canon law thing. Academia never went through the master/apprentice system. The idea that, for instance, the cops shouldn't be involved when a PI rapes one of their grad students goes ultimately back to the idea that universities are religious institutions and all their members are thus clergy, and thus that the state has no jurisdiction over them, they're strictly and solely regulated by the Church. (Don't know if you know about this. A lot of people don't. Do you want more explanation?)
And, in any event, if one master's apprentice stole from another, I don't know that this meant one couldn't take it to the justice system, such as it was. The "we are exempt from secular law" thing you're dealing with I don't think has any precedent in the master/apprentice system.
As far as managing students goes, PIs typically receive zero formal training in management at any stage of their careers. [... cut for length...]
All of this sounds weirdly beside the point. Why does how terribly your PI handle this sort of thing matter, if we're discussing a prosecutable crime? Now, I appreciate that pressing charges against a fellow student might not be the height of diplomacy. That's why I'm asking if there's some other system of recourse within the university. Not just one to somehow force your PI to do the right thing, but to do the right thing despite your PI.
Because this whole thing sounds really weird from the outside. Not (just) that your PI is blowing it off. But that you're thinking about this as solely an in-lab conflict.
It sure sounds like a line got crossed here that's a bigger deal than "someone was mean to me and isn't treating me fair". The sort of line-crossing that is often grounds to get authorities involved.
Re: OT: Medievalism digression
...you know what, you're totally right on that. I was really just aiming for "it's a weird and honestly pretty fucked up system with some incredibly extreme power differentials as a historical artifact that should have been revised a century ago but... wasn't," but I'll defer to you as someone who knows way more about medieval Europe than I do!
The points about secular law are... huh, that's something I'm going to have to chew on. My main problem is that the system of duties and obligations is so poorly fleshed out that it's unclear what the source of recourse actually is if my PI does not choose to discipline her/say "don't do that again" and holds me responsible for the loss of data, either explicitly or implicitly (by holding me to the same deadlines to finish even if I can't make up the data loss in time). If he does one of those two things but only one, there isn't an ongoing problem exactly--or at least, not one I currently have the resources to contest.
(Financial situation went absolutely to shit today, and I'm genuinely somewhat concerned that I can't afford to pay my bills even with loans in the short term, so that is... distracting. In general, the pattern of the past seven years is alternating severe stresses from work and either my family or my living space, and it means it's harder for me to pause, breathe, and properly evaluate alternatives to fix things in the long term than I would like it to be.)
Okay. One thing at a time.
One thing that's factoring in for me is that I am genuinely unclear that I can make the argument that I am 100% not at fault here, because the lines of communication over this acoustic equipment are vague and very poorly laid out. I have clear "ownership" and responsibility for it over literally everyone else in the lab, but she also uses the same equipment for her work in some places, and she's set up a secondary recording setup no one else has access to using the same equipment. She may legitimately have thought she was entitled to it, and she appeared to genuinely believe I was not currently working in the chambers at the time she took it.
Why she didn't fucking tell me I don't know, though. But like, I'm trying to consider what disciplining her beyond "don't take anything actively set up in that room" even gains me: the animals are dead, all I can reasonably do is move forward; there's nothing she can give me that will fix the problem. The limiting factor is time, and if this gives me more time to finish, that's... workable; if I'm not given more time to make up the losses, then I get mad.
I've emailed him again requesting clarification on this equipment issue going forward--he's out of the country and hasn't responded--and requesting that he email me when he gets the message. We've got a joint lab meeting on Tuesday, and I've pointed out that this will come up in front of everyone if he doesn't let me know that he's thinking about how to come up with a situation that will work for everyone.
It sure sounds like a line got crossed here that's a bigger deal than "someone was mean to me and isn't treating me fair". The sort of line-crossing that is often grounds to get authorities involved.
The problem is that I genuinely have no idea who the relevant authorities are or would be, and I have no idea what on earth any of the oversight bodies I do know about would do about the situation aside from defer to my PI. The structure of a lab is such that it is almost entirely controlled by the PI, and the only mechanisms I know of for intervening in a PI's management of his lab really only kick in for cases of very serious misconduct: sexual harassment, plagiarism, failing a student without cause, that sort of thing. Technically and formally, I am not normally an employee for the purposes of my research, I am a student--I register for "classes" every semester and everything and "pay tuition" with a waiver because I am employed as a teaching assistant. And most of the point people for contact on things like this are his peers, some of whom I have directly observed letting much worse behavior than being disorganized and avoiding conflict go without intervention.
Re: OT: Medievalism digression
Does your school have an ombudsperson? Mine did, and that's sounds like what you're looking for: someone whose job it is to know whom, if anyone, to talk to about serious problems.
The fact that you're a student and not an employee doesn't really pertain, I don't think. Importantly, what this person did sabotaged your research, and that is a violation of academic norms of a kin to plagiarism.
I am genuinely unclear that I can make the argument that I am 100% not at fault here, because the lines of communication over this acoustic equipment are vague and very poorly laid out. I have clear "ownership" and responsibility for it over literally everyone else in the lab, but she also uses the same equipment for her work in some places, and she's set up a secondary recording setup no one else has access to using the same equipment.
Good god, the cable was deployed, yes? It was attached at one end to a piece of electronics and an the other to a wall socket. This isn't her taking something out of storage so that it wasn't there when you went to go get it for yourself. It wasn't even coiled up on a table. She literally had to tamper with your experimental set-up to take it.
If so, it ABSOLUTELY WAS 100% HER RESPONSIBLITY TO ASK YOU BEFORE TOUCHING IT. JFC, you do not go around ripping pieces of equipment out of other people's experiments without clearing it with the experimenter first. The lines of communication are IF SHE WANTS SOMETHING YOU OR ANYBODY ELSE HAS DEPLOYED, SHE USES HER WORDS TO ASK FOR IT.
And while whether or not you're given more time makes the outcome better for you, your time is not free, either. This person, by sabotaging your research, is also delaying your completion of your degree by however long. This person wasted your funds - your living expenses for this time period, the expense of the subject organisms who died without being properly utilized - by what she did.
This is such profoundly unacceptible behavior on her part that I have to wonder if there is additional animus behind it.
I confess one of the reasons I am so outraged on your behalf is all the stories I've heard from African American scientists (particularly, I remember reading a report from MIT with anonymized stories about things students experienced) about sabotage - things tampered with, documents destroyed – and stories I know about sabotage in other competitive academic environments (bowstrings cut before conservatory examinations, e.g.). I'm suspicious that this is actually deliberately an attempt to undermine your work and progress, either because this other person feels they are in competition with you or because of actual hostility towards you personally.
I'm not saying you should assume there's a deliberate intent to jam up your academic work. I'm saying the possibility is on the table and needs to be considered.
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...what I'm saying is, yeah, your labmate is a naturally-occurring asshole-or-disruptive-and-problematic-individual, but that's a hazard of workplaces (and many other places) and dealing with them correctly is part of someone's job. In this case, your boss's. If he did his job, there should at minimum be much less of an issue. So in a sense, the real problem you have is unfortunately poor management.