To give your PI a review and/or tell a story, post a comment below with:
2) what you want to say (what the prof's like as a PhD or postdoc advisor, any interesting stories or anecdotes, etc)
Think of PI reviews as "backwards" recommendation letters: written about professors and aimed to help future graduate students and postdocs worldwide with their choices. You can also write about anything you witnessed that might be interesting or serves to illustrate a point. It's anonymous, unless you want otherwise.
If you feel safe enough to provide the advisor's name, that would be great and most useful, but if not, you are welcome to share your experience leaving all the names out. You can still mention the name of the academic institution or, at least, the country.
The hope is to generate some traction by collecting an initial dozen or two reviews in order to justify launching a standalone website with all the bells and whistles. So, reviews are needed the most, but you can also help simply by sharing the link to this page with others.
PI Reviews
Jeffery Kelly, The Scripps Research Institute, USA
Joseph Takahashi, Northwestern University (now UT-Southwestern), USA
Maciej S Gutowski, Heriot-Watt University, UK
Wonhwa Cho, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Welcoming your participation since February 28, 2011
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. 
This is a good start. I am thinking about writing something about my PI, but I found it is not quite easy to write a review. My boss is not a particularly bad professor. But it is hard to put her into the "good professor" category either. I will spend some time to write a candid review about her.
Jeffery Kelly, The Scripps Research Institute, USA
jeffery kelly is very intelligent and has an incredible capacity for turning out relevant projects with impressive results, that use sideways thinking and, sometimes, challenge the status quo.
graduate students thinking of starting their career with him should be careful. i think he means well but, sometimes professor kelly has awkward interactions with his students and postdocs. he also will sometimes blatantly play favorites. often that is well deserved, but sometimes it is not. he has a preoccupation with a student's ability to write and that will create an prejudicial impression on him at the start. it is difficult to overcome that, but it is also possible to turn around a good opinion into a bad. he may also play mind games with you. sometimes they are reasonable, especially in the beginning as a grad student when you need to be whipped into shape, but toward the end it will get tiresome and you will want to be treated like an adult.
antother problem is that he is a chemist by training and sometimes the lack of experience shows, there are often times when postdocs and grad students presented data that were very questionable and dr kelly lacked the capacity to challenge them - unless he had reason to disbelieve the result. he is very very book-smart in biology. but don't expect him to be able to help you with your pcr or western blot, even though he will simetimes go through lab asking if there is anything he can help you with. this is a huge problem since often grad students get assigned expansive projects that are risky and that no one else in the lab is working toward. when you fail it will be your responsibility to figure out how to cut your losses and do something that works, and to figure out when in your career it's time to do that. there is zero emphasis on technical development, so again that will be your responsibility. do not be afraid to rely heavily on postdocs and fellow grad students for real advice and technical assistance. keep in mind that dr kelly is very book smart and sometimes his suggestions will be very much worth it, and it's your responsibility to know when to ignore him and when to follow him zealously. hint: if he suggests using a flashy new toy, that is a red flag. a good rule of thumb is the KSS principle.
writing a paper with dr kelly is a nightmare. expect at least 40-50 revisions. upwards of 300 revisions are heard of, especially if a paper has a coauthor pi from elsewhere in the institute and there are multiple rejections because the objective was to get a high impact publication. no matter how hard you expedite the process, there is a chance that dr kelly will insist that writing the paper with you has never been harder in his experience of writing many papers, in spite of evidence to the contrary.
that said you should pursue a project with dr kelly, if you can look at yourself, and honestly say you can: aggressively follow the KSS principle, are willing to fight back from time to time, can avoid bells and whistles, and you are independent enough to figure stuff out on your own. of course every grad student thinks that of themselves in the beginning, so YMMV. finally: the lab really is set up to do some solid, old-school, science, and it is a pity that a lot of effort is put into projects that are not really solid at all.
Hi,
In an attempt to support your effort, I started a blog dedicated to "PI Reviews":
pi-reviews.blogspot.com
Do you have an idea to prevent the contributors from being revealed due to the stories they tell?
Just don't make yourself uniquely identifiable from the story. It's mostly common sense. Don't say anything only you would know, skip the details on how you know, avoid using first person, etc.
Hi Andrei,
Thank you for the hints. I appreciate your efforts to reveal the everyday human-right violations in academia. I think we should find a way to encourage thousands of grad students. If we could provide a way to stay anonymous, I believe that the grad students (and postdocs) would be eager to reveal the skeletons in the cupboard.
Ummm... Yeah... Except that: a) I don't know of any human rights violations in academia, neither am I trying to uncover any; b) the idea (right here at least) is not about "the skeletons", it's about information – and raving, positive, neutral or balanced reviews are as much welcome as highly critical ones; c) I'm not going to spend my time trying to encourage people I don't know to do something they don't want to do; d) whatever the anonymity level, I don't actually think more than a few people/year will want to write about their current, or even former, PIs (I won't mind being proven wrong, but still).
Other than that, sure, no problem. )))
Well here's one way to keep the identity of the writer secret: if you make it so that the reviewer is talking about someone else's PI (ie: they comment on the PI based on their observations from other students' experiences). Another way is just to have a generic rating system with categories related to their roles as mentors.
well one way is to make the reviewer comment on a PI who is not his/her own. ie: the reviewer can base their comments on their observations/rumors in the department. Another way is to make generic categories with a numbering system related to the PI's role as a mentor.
A random text generator would make it even more anonymous. And even less useful. But here's a thought: if you're afraid to talk about your professional life, it just goes to show how screwed up it really is.
Maybe a simple rating system can help, like Anonymous 36c1 says. Just list a few characteristics, such as PI's creativity/intelligence, willingness to help with career progress, total number of postdocs who have landed tenure track positions, past five year publication acumen (total impact factors of primary papers / number of postdocs and graduate student), past five year publication quality (average impact factor of primary papers), past five year publication deviation (total impact factors of primary papers of the most productive trainee - total impact factors of primary papers of the least productive trainee), etc. I think this kind of system can provide more objective assessment. If you or somebody can make it as simple as clicking radio buttons, more people will likely do it, and it is safer for those who worry too much detail of their research life may endanger their very existence in the academic environment.
Those are great indicators. Not to take away from that idea, and it should be formalized, but that is also the kind of stuff professors already try to get out there. What I am really interested in and concerned about is the cost of the results. How many grad students are chewed up and spit out for the figurehead to get the positive results? Considering that probably less than half of grad students end up in an ideal situation, that is what someone considering joining a group should be most concerned about. No point in planning to be lucky.
Exactly. So, isn't there anybody else out there who can recommend (or not) an advisor they had experience with? It's been a month, fair amount of discussion, but only one review...
Well, I have a lot to tell but I need to find a way to stay anonymous before I let everybody know about how abusive my PI is.
Not yet. There are almost two ways of looking at it. There is the macro and the micro. Checkit- the review is based on the assumption that the identity of the student doesn't matter. In other words, plug me into your experience and I can expect my experience to be the same. Otherwise, it's just Scadenfreude. In one sense, the identity of the advisor doesn't matter to an extent because your reader needs to be open to the possibility that a different advisor will act the same. You could also start with anonymity on the professor's side. Maybe just name the institution. Later, add more details. I know it's not what Andrei wants ultimately, but it might help get over the anonymity hump.
That's not a bad idea. Ok, let's make revealing the advisor's identity optional.
That's two in favor of a radio button free-for-all. Brilliant... Problems with this:
1) if all is open and anonymous, anybody can rate any prof any way they like for any reasons any number of times;
2) just how meaningful is a "x out y based on z votes" rating, especially when z is small, especially for something vague and/or subjective?
Text-based reviews allow for communication of facts and justification of opinions. That's real information, useful and verifiable. Sure, there's some risk of being probably not caught or accused but perhaps suspected. If that's scary enough to stop people from talking, I say forget it. To those who are not happy with the bullshit – there's nothing wrong with you, get out of there, it's not too late.
I am postdoc now. Finished PhD one year ago in record 3 UK years. Still no proper publications only number of prizes from the school and positives reviews of internal and external examiners. Brilliant work has been done and blah blah blah. No matter how hard you work how bright you are, these all are nullified by your supervisor. Reasons do not matter, there always will be some. What matters is that you always lose. Do not go for PhD. If you go for it do not say you were not warned.
I am in a similar situation. Surprising how little a PhD student could do to force his PI to fulfill obligations towards the student. Practically nothing.
Joseph Takahashi, Northwestern University (now UT-Southwestern)
Terrible PI who did not care for postdocs nor students. Never gives any definitive advices for experiments but gives many advices that are time-consuming and inefficient. The funny thing was that he would always complain about cutting down on cost even though he was the one who suggested those costly experiments. He is not particularly bright either. Very unoriginal, in fact. Mostly what he does is copy other people's new techniques and experiments done in flies and apply it to mice. His postdocs typically spend 8 years, and his grad students typically 7. None excel in research after staying in his lab.
It is not a surprised to majority of graduate students. Beside all these facts listen above. Even worst than that, he or them tweezing everything of your stories around and told another stories to your committes. Schools or Univeristies were never care about students even they have been forced to receive the bully calls. It is very important to choose a good supervisor who definitely will not lie, cheat, care about the project in spite of how great they are or how intelligent they are.
In graduate school, my PI was definitely gearing me up for the professor track. He had me write grants, papers, a review, had me proofread his grants and other papers and train some students. I did begin to consider alternate careers there just because the funding situation was starting to become dismal. I attended talks by invited speakers with non-bench careers. Seeing how the funding situation was getting worse my boss even recommended the FDA training program, which I almost wish I would have applied to.
Still, I had many academic achievements while in graduate school and wanted to pursue academia. I was coming out of grad school ranked in the 50s, so I though a three to five year postdoc at a famed research institute would help my chances. I was accepted to a postdoc in the lab of an early stage PI at the institute. The work was out of the realm of my dissertation project, but I was told that was a plus to be involved in something different. I had to reason with myself that if I did not have successes that would eventually work into fundable projects by year two, I would use the third year to find an alternate career. It turns out that is what I am currently doing and as of last week my main project was scooped anyhow. In some ways, I had started preparing earlier than I initially expected. At the end of the first year, I got involved in our institutes postdoctoral association. In the beginning of my third year, I started hitting the alternate job scene as hard as I could by attending talks and trying to network. A few months into the third year, I discussed my new plans with my boss. He is supportive of my career decision, but at the same time he may have lost interest in my project, which as of last week doesn't matter as much. I will still try and publish the material though. It was three years of hard work using transgenic animals and primary cell culture. I just never had real breakthroughs that would be Nature, Science or Cell worthy. The paper that scooped me didn't make it into those journals either. It isn't that you need those journals to be recognized in academics, but it helps a lot. Otherwise, the other way is a very well-networked PI, but again my boss is in the early stages of his career. Networking in academia is definitely difficult considering everyone is trained to be super-critical.
Anyways, I am more than anxious to move into my next career. I have a paid internship set up to go into science policy and I will never look back. I am ready to aid science through assisting in its communication to governments and the public and I am also ready and willing to move away from the bench. It's been fun, but adios!
As an aside, this past December I gave a research talk to my department and my boss introduced me as coming from graduate school with no experience in this particular field. I got the sense he was protecting me, and possibly himself, from too harsh criticism. I also took it as an added sign that I needed to do something else. Interestingly, this was before I discussed my intentions of leaving academia.
thanks for sharing. you are brave.
People assume that their story is personal, but this sounds very similar to mine thus far, and eerily similar to others. You simply cannot believe "the dangle" propaganda they tell you. When something doesn't pan out they can quickly switch their "investment" in you to something else. The new guy thinks the prof is investing in them but they are just as liquid to the professor as the toilet paper Wall Street was pumping and dumping.
Professor Maciej S Gutowski, Heriot-Watt University, UK
Before you decide to work with him try to contact his former PhD students at Heriot-Watt University.
Wonhwa Cho, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
Dr. Wonhwa Cho is a man who is tasked with mentoring the next generation of scientists and has failed abysmally at this. He uses grad students as cheap labor. If you have trouble he will let you languish until you quit and claim survival of the fittest as a justification for his failure. 3/4 of grad students who join his lab leave without the Ph. D. He provides no consistent path/requirements to graduation and some are kept for 7+ years. He delays the graduation of his best students to suck more research out of them.
In short He is ill-suited for the position he is in and should instead be in science writing where he can no longer harm the aspiring careers of young scientists. As a mentor this man is an utter failure.
American kids are running away from science, not because of science, but because of the scientists. But addressing this issue would entail hiring faculty with both real social skills and a strong ethical backbone.
Take a cool machine - I don't know, a Corvette, or an F-22 Raptor fighter jet. It's very easy to gravitate towards these machines, want to touch them, find out how they work and what makes them unique, and to want to drive them or fly them - until you discover that a team of socially inept assholes are managing these machines, constantly taking cheap pot shots at each other, and telling you to do the dishes for them for 10 years before you're allowed to touch them.
Then you go "bye-bye".
And the point is this: like a corvette or an F-22 raptor jet - or anything that excites you, really - science is attractive to on its own merits. But when you put a team of weird, petty assholes between you and science you go "well, I guess I'll do something else instead"
I guess I'll go do something else instead.
The scary version is not that these horror stories are the exceptions, but the rule. There are too many of these "Mentor FAILs" for them to be outliers. It is probably just the way they want it. There is no way for mentoring ability to bubble up to the surface incentives that the PIs are judged on. Is there any hope that grant money will start to follow proper mentoring rather than exploitation? I doubt it. If anything it will get worse.
This is not a unique case but rather a common scenario. The problem in academic research especially biomedical research is that as long as a professor can get funding, nobody cares about the life and future of his/her graduate students and postdocs. If you are an HHMI investigator, you do not have to care about graduate students or postdocs' complaints, because no other authority, I mean other PIs, the dean, will care, simply because you bring in a million greenbacks a year. Funding agencies, NIH or HHMI, only care about your short-term productivity, measured by publications, during the funded years. As the result, there is a selection for the trait of socially inept, ill-managing, pushy workaholics, who do not have talent at all.
In our institute, photos of all the past and present faculty members are on a wall. It is really interesting to note that PIs who retired more than 20 years ago look so much more decent and good looking than current PIs. I don't hold anything against not so good looking people, but this is just too obvious. Is it a coincidence?
Some good thoughts. Unfortunately, you're right. So long as a PI brings in some funding, neither the department or school, or even his colleagues, will care how inept the PI is at managing students.
You end up with socially challenged individuals who drive their students off the wall. These socially challenged PIs can't retain students, not because their students are dispassionate about science or research, but because they fail to understand they're human, with other interests outside academia, and concerned about their prospects post-graduation.
After all, once the show is over, someone will have to pick the trash up.
...And, if you're left in a jobless void all by yourself, then all your hard work, great as it was, led you nowhere. That's a cruel spot to be in.
Yet another story.
I used to be a PhD student at some university in UK under supervision of some professor. After the defense in 2010 I worked for one year as a postdoc at another university in different country. In June 2011 I decided to leave academia and could share information on my PhD experience. My PhD project was a successful one. At the very end I have got the thesis prize of the university and had some other achievements. PI started to present my results at prestigious international conferences very soon after the beginning. After two years of PhD I started to realize that for some reason PI is not very keen to let me publish although he was always talking about publishing in prestigious journals. I finished my PhD project in time with good results but with no proper publications and no attempts to publish to any journal. I only had few preprints. Lack of papers and even submissions made it difficult to search for a job and significantly limited number of available options and made it impossible to get my dream job. About one and a half year after the defense I still have no papers and PI wanted to delay publications close to the end of my postdoctoral appointment. There are no objective reasons for such a delay and I think that my success with PhD project had been artificially undermined. Moreover, PI published regularly during the period of my PhD project with his other PhD student from different university at his home country. My scientific career is over now. I have returned to what I was doing before PhD.
Hey man, the answer to your problems, I think, could be found somewhere here http://rezaghadiri.net/publishing-strategically/
Sick business.
Hi
I have made a video on fraud and corruption in graduate research work. Would there be any possibility of posting this URL to your site since there is high traffic from viewers interested in similar topics. This video clip (after editing) will be going to about 10, 000 Professors and industrial Scientists from US,Canada,UK and India next month around this time.
Sid Senadheera.
TITLE : Scientific fraud and violating academic freedom at Ryerson university
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/7250289/scientific_fraud_and_violating_academic_freedom_at_ryerson_univ/
But don't you understand that insults get you nowhere? That the second you start bombarding someone with names, like "hypocrite", is the second you lost your audience? People who might otherwise have paid attention to you, won't even bother watching your video.
Like me.
Look - if you have a case, the case will speak for itself. When you resort to cheap insults, the assumption is that (i) you have a weak case or no case at all, and (ii) you are motivated by bickering and petty fights between and your department - which bring into question not just the department, but you.
You probably have a very compelling story. But the sad part is that by presenting it the way you did, you compel an impartial viewer to be sympathetic not with you, but with your department.
Maybe I'm wrong here. I didn't complete a Ph.D., but I still believe in being factual and impartial. An impartial reader should leave with the feeling that you were right.
Again, people - let's not confuse genuine problems in academia with petty bickering. The two are separate.
Fuck it - here's why academia doesn't work for me:
1. I spent the last seven years obsessed with becoming a scientist.
2. I sank into massive debt for it.
3. I slaved myself for my research as a grad student
4. My father was diagnosed with terminal stage cancer.
And then it hits me that none of it ever mattered. I haven't seen my father in 15 years, and all this time I've convinced myself that if only I succeed as a researcher, my life will be meaningful. And it won't. Because meaning isn't one of the reaction products in your test tubes.
And it's hard not to feel cheated. We have an educational system that requires entire generations to over-leverage themselves financially - to take on a massive debt; that then uses them up as cheap labor; which treats them as though they weren't worthy of real respect (but that's just my personal experience); and then coughs them out with a degree that is nothing but a risk - maybe it will be employable, and maybe it won't, and you won't know which until you finish.
So I sit here, in massive debt, unemployed, without the resources to spend some time reconnecting with my father. And also freaking out that this guy that at one point meant so much to me is going for good - and for real.
And where in academia did they make room for the midlife crisis that comes when this happens? What dean or university president accounted for the vulnerabilities of their students?
Most of us get a chance to graduate and become employed before facing major life crises. But what happens when they hit before you have any wings? You just flounder, and where are the resources to cope with it?
Am I supposed to get by on the good wishes of my department, when what I need is a check to pay for the many airline tickets I'll need? While the university president collects a corporate style compensation package that nears $1,000,000?
THAT is my bone with academia. That in the middle of promises, it forgot we're real people with real needs. I appreciate good wishes, but unless they pay for the airline ticket, they don't begin to cut it.
And it's disappointing.
Modern academia makes me sick. The most repelling part of it is academicians themselves. A bunch of hypocrites.
Society should take some actions if its youths are getting educated in such a hostile environment by such dishonest people.
I think it could be useful for those who are about to start doing PhD or a postdoc to have a set of criteria against which to check their future PIs. Some of my thoughts are below. Let us discuss and expand it.
(1) If you have any other options available do not mess with contemporary academia.
If you decided to give academia a try then reconsider (1) few times. If this does not help proceed to (2).
(2) Check if your PI is blacklisted somewhere (http://rezaghadiri.net/reviews/, http://www.myevilprofessor.com/, http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/, other web resources).
(3) Check if your PI has a group website. If he does not it might be that he has something to hide.
(4) Contact as many his current and former group members as possible.
(5) Check publication record and find collaborators. It makes sense to contact them too. Check how regular he publishes, if some PhD students or postdocs leave the group without publications.
...
Excellent. As a side note, 2-5 and 1 by extension all rely on previous students, as does the entire them of this web page. We are the guinea pigs! At least we can get more out of our animal protocol.
Should say "theme of this web page"
On basis of my academic experience I would define the term "Academic sabotage". I have seen how my supervisor performed for one PhD student and for several other PhD students. These were very different things, so...
Academic sabotage (version 1)
Deliberate (or due to some reasons not related to actual academic work) non-fulfillment of duties or negligent performance of duties by a primary investigator resulting in academic career hardships for supervised PhD students or postdocs.
Academic sabotage (version 2)
Deliberate (or due to some reasons not related to actual academic work) neglect of career needs of PhD students or postdocs or significant delay in fulfillment of these needs by a primary investigator resulting in career hardships for supervised PhD students or postdocs.
Academic sabotage (version 3, combined)
Deliberate (or due to some reasons not related to actual academic work) neglect of career needs of PhD students or postdocs or significant delay in fulfillment of these needs or non-fulfillment of duties or negligent performance of duties by a primary investigator resulting in career hardships for supervised PhD students or postdocs.
I was thinking how excellent academia is as a hierarchical system, as an organization. In real life world, in some commercial firm, let us say. The boss (manager) is the one who is responsible for the results of a department or organization as a whole. The one who does the job (say worker or employee) is more or less safe. He does not take the risk of loosing his job or salary. On the other hand, in academia, the boss (primary investigator, professor) is NOT responsible for the results and does NOT take any risks. All responsibility and risks are taken by PhD students or postdocs. They lose everything, the time, the job, the future career in academia, the money they could earn while working for a company, they become less attractive for other employers but in case of success all credits are taking by your professor. Is not it awesome! You are a boss with no responsibility, no risks, you decide if you want to be related to what your people have done (success is yours but failure is their). What a system!
Yes, it is awesome...for them. One problem is the lack of transparency. If it was a matter of clicking a link to determine how many entering students it takes for your potential advisor to produce a paper things might change.
I have got an impression that my prof moved form a national lab to Univ just to have an easy finish of his career. His prestige helped him to get funding and he hired the first three PhD students at the new place. He was always busy with his own problems, traveling, resolving personal issues, so on, did not care too much about us. Very often he ignored paper drafts, he delayed feedback for my written thesis for as long as half a year, actually for even more. As a result the first out of three PhD students had to give up, the second one stayed in a foreign country for an extra year without funding, living on savings, the third one left science one year after graduation with no publications. After discovering this web site and alike it does not surprise me that the Univ does not notice what is going on. The system is sick. It is like slavery. Now the prof has two more students. He does not hire postdocs, he uses PhD students to do work normally done by postdocs. I was exposed to it through the course of my project. I do not think that the prof did the same things before. Transparency is a good thing it must be in place but there should be some mechanism which stops people like this prof. Past prestige does not give a right to ruin lives and careers of others.
Omg. I can finally vent somewhere. I'm a graduate student at a research university in new jersey. Some days I enjoy graduate school, others day i dread showing up. My PI is great when he is around, but he has a postdoc/research staffer helping him manage the lab when he is not around. She is never here for longer than 4 hours, nor does she work more than 3-4 days a week. She wants to become a professor, but she doesn't work nearly as hard as one should to become one. This includes hiring 5 undergrads on uninspirational ideas that leave them wanting. Its hard for me to see them struggle in the lab , so I feel like I have no choice but to help them. She treats me like an undergrad and leaves no ranking protocol in the lab. It makes the whole experience annoying. I think that its not my job to manage the lab, but I am still the graduate student. Any advice? As a graduate student is it better to just not care, and worry about my own work so I can get the hell out of here?
Sure, your own work first. They won't even say thanks for your effort to manage the lab. You will have to show your research results at the end.
complain. to. your. PI.
If your "PI is great when he is around", tell him what the hell is going on. Put on a flamesuit until the postdoc is rotated out of the lab without a good letter of recommendation. If you catch hell for it from your PI, then maybe your PI wasn't so great after all. Think of it as a 'test' for your PI. Take agency for yourself.
There is usually no such thing as a 'ranking protocol' in any lab, but if even if there were, like in the military, you would be expected to complain one rung up the chain of command.
hello
I am a PhD student, quite a lot suffering from an nonprofessional PI in science, and it was really nice to hear what you did to spread the word, just to avoid others to suffer. may I ask you for a favor? can you make this website a platform to write comments about all PIs,, in natural sciences, chemistry, physics, computer sciences and so on? could you make an online form (multiple choice) available for us, to cross, including key questions, publications, stress in the lab, honesty, professionalism, competition in the lab, sharing projects, speaking behind students back, a good or bad lab for Phd or post doc.... and an extra box for stories and memories, please do this, and you will have my blessings, and others, for the rest of our lives,
thank you.........
A year after I talked about the idea, this website appeared: myevilprofessor.com. They even tried to advertise it here. I think it's garbage, but it's similar to what you are describing, lots of multiple choice. Which seems like what many people want, so there you go.
For the life of me, if you say an unknown person gave some other person a 4 out 5 stars on personality, 5 out 5 on management style or, I love this, 5 out of 5 on "Has s/he fired anyone?", that gives me precisely jack shit of useful information. I'm sure you'll know what you mean when you fill out a form like that, but that will be about as far as the understanding is going to go. So do use the "comments" field, and you can post your review here as well. It will show up in search engines, and people will find it and read it. Cheers.
it might be easy for you to say comments, which is certainly very helpful, but being the first Phd in the lab, my prof will know exactly who said these, and he has already threatened others in the lab to give them bad recommendations and kill their future lives, the thing is that: I still need his support for the future career because I am still planning to stay in science. so having multiple choice seems a good idea or a safer option for me. eventually I will write comments for him, but maybe after my business with him is over. thanks for the website I will definitely check it out.
Right, I understand. That's basically why I decided no to build such a platform. I don't see a way to make the reviews / ratings both effective and safe. It is sad that the academic system breeds, selects and accommodates egomaniacal douches that you have to go through in order to have anything to do with science.