Surfer dude, Ghadiri lab website 2001-2005
The internet is not just for porn. Science professors can have websites too. For example, you can find the website of a chemistry professor by the name of Reza Ghadiri if you search for "Ghadiri lab" or "Ghadiri group website". Or, you might find this page instead. Which is fine, since there is not much to see on the actual Ghadiri Lab website anyway. Has not been for many years.
Check the Internet Archive for yourself. 2001-2005 was the Surfer Dude era, and all the Ghadiri group had to show you was this here. "A new site will be arriving soon", it said. In 2003 I have actually seen a Ghadiri group website made by a student in the lab. He even made CGI animations to showcase recent projects in the lab. Reza must have preferred the surfer dude though, because that website never went online. In 2005 the surfer went away to make way for a plain page entitled "Ghadiri website under revamp". It read "The Ghadiri web sie [sic] is undergoing reconstruction. Please try again later".
About four years later, in 2009, came the current version of the Ghadiri Laboratory website. It does not look like it is under construction any more. Look at all the buttons: links, photos, research, publications, news, lectures... 11 sections! Great, start clicking. Did you fall for it? Only two sections really exist: 'Home' has a sentence copied word-for-word out of faculty listings on scripps.edu, and the 'Contact' page has the contact information (also available from Scripps online directory).
As you can see, Dr. Ghadiri does not seem to be eager to communicate much information about his group to the outside world. And why would he be? He could put up a list of current and past group members. Except then you would find out about all the students who quit the lab. During a five year period, I have seen four students leave the Ghadiri group — all two years or more into the PhD program. The number of those who stuck with Prof. Ghadiri and got their PhD diplomas in the same time period? Two.
Another problem with group member lists and group photos is that you can count the people. This gives you an idea of the laboratory's horsepower. Then you can look at the (somewhat thin) stream of publications coming out of the lab. Put two and two together, and you are onto the Journal of Reza's Desk.
You should not have a website about something you do not want to attract attention to. Perhaps, in case of Prof. M. Reza Ghadiri that something is his research group. Then why the charade with "under construction" signs, "revamps" and fake links?
Another, more vivid, example can be helpful here. Go to the website of a Nobel Prize-winning chemist E. J. Corey, www.ejcorey.com. Click on the "Members' Data" button to get to the page which "provides the complete list of current and former Corey group members". Search for three names: Felix Chau, Fung Lam, Jason Altom. Not there? Strange. They are E. J. Corey's students who committed suicide.
In my previous post I used the word "medieval" to describe the way PhD students are exploited to power academic research. Here is another principle Academia of today adopts from the Olden Days of Chivalry:
Keep up appearances whatever you do
comments for this post
I've been a student of science for over 10 years. Most of that time I worked in academic research labs. The last and the longest time – in the laboratory of Dr. 
That E.J. Corey site has to be the worst thing I have ever seen.
I am half expecting it to ask me to "Insert Disk 2" every time I click on something.
Maybe you should not look for a conspiracy where there is unlikely to be one? Not every single research group even has a website. Many are not up-to-date, or just as much "under construction" as Reza's.
I really fail to see the big deal here.
With regard to the Ghadiri group website, my key points here were: 1) it is probably not such a good idea for Reza to have a group website; 2) there are no technical reasons for Dr. Ghadiri not to have a website; 3) the whole thing with non-working buttons and "new site arriving soon" might be a bit misleading to visitors. I also found it interesting that despite of all this and the fact that nobody forces Reza Ghadiri to have a website, the homepage keeps going through different versions of being "under construction". Big deal or small — if you got all this, you have not really failed.
It seems like Reza recently updated his site. Maybe a response to your posts?
Agreed. After all, the website has only been under construction for a few years. Everyone knows it takes at least a decade to finish a website. Geesh.
And how many left this world in the years after they left the Corey!
The things I could tell you about my Ph.D would make your eyes bleed...
Please tell us. PhD newcomers should know them...
hm let me guess, PI wanted to spin up a biotech, had a golden child grad student who got the results he needed. Those results it turned out were questionable, probably due to creative terminantion of experiments at the point where they hit appropriate p values (by the nature of random walks) - no retraction. Several grad students on the project left the lab en masse, and were washed out after having spent three or so years in a the arms of a charismatic PI.
before you get all creeped out, I was there, bob. You might remember me as the grad student who correctly predicted that the stock market was going to tank in 2008.