Who is Reza Ghadiri? Dr. M. Reza Ghadiri is a professor in the Chemistry Department at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI, or simply "Scripps") in California, United States. He was my Ph.D. supervisor for >5 years, 2003-2009.
What is RezaGhadiri.Net? It is the online home of a web project I started in January 2010. It is named after Reza Ghadiri, but make no mistake: Dr. Ghadiri himself has no part in it. Unusual? Not really. Just think of all the colleges, medical centers, parks and avenues named after George Washington.
My Story in a Nutshell. I studied to be a scientist and worked in academic research labs for a long time. Long enough to take a good look at how the scientific community operates. To know the good, the bad and the, well, ugly details that are not normally advertised. In April 2009, 5+ years into the Ph.D. program at Scripps, I quit graduate school and discontinued my scientific career. I am very glad I quit, even though I am still glad I had that experience. And now I have things to say – about postgraduate education in science and academic science in general.
Feel more than free to participate:
- spread the word: post a link to RezaGhadiri.Net where you think it will generate interest (your blog, twitter, facebook, forums etc.)
- discuss – registration, real name or email are not required to comment
This is an experiment. Is it time to talk about a change in how people organize themselves to do science? Or are things fine the way they are? Who cares? Do YOU?
Figure 1. Number of daily visits to the Reza Ghadiri • Net website in the past 4 weeks.
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. 
immaturity at its finest. feel free to publish your papers on this site so all can see!
I just realized, you're that cynicism police character. God, you're dumb...
Well done, sir. You hid your contact info from the whois registry. Dude we should talk. I was wondering what happened when I no longer saw you around.
Sweet. I usually suck at email, but I will be dropping you a line. What, you mean, there was no Scripps-wide reception held in commemoration of my presence? Bastards...
Oh the Ghadiri lab...2006-2007; Andrei, nice to meet you, but I think that I probably only saw you 10 times in that period
Hey Scott, it is nice to (virtually) see you again too. I remember you well.
If that's the case, what kind of hours did you work for the 5+ years you were in this group? I have to admit that I am a bit surprised at your 50-60 hour week. Isn't that a bit low?
I love the "if that's the case" part, considering I could come in once a week for 1 hour and still be seen by any lab member more than 10 times in a period of a year. As to your reference to this post, 50-60 hours a week is a conservative number, one I've heard of spoken as a minimum by professors and deans. To be sure, the sky is the limit. If I were a betting man though, I'd say you are in organic chemistry. That's where the hours are a really big thing — with people bringing folding beds to the lab, working shifts around the clock and so on. As for myself, at times I worked more than 50-60 hours, but more often less, especially towards the end. All in all, I'd say that most months I failed the good student test on account of hours in the lab.
i failed the good student test too. Here's my thought: you get lots of negative reinforcement in the science lab.
Your boss forces you to pull long hours early on because it's the expectation. Then your experiments go titsup, creating a negative association with hard work. It's really demoralizing. From a strictly managerial point of view, a far more effective way to run a lab would be to give students the expectation that they spend LESS time at the beginning (a brave PI would give the expectation of 30-35 hours at the start), give concrete, no-bullshit project to work on for 80% of the time to build technique and comfortableness in the lab, and then as grad school progresses, ramp that to 50-60-80 hours as the student takes on a riskier project (ideally started at the very beginning), and works on writing up, etc.
That way there's a little bit of security, because you're going to get a paper out, have a publication record, also you'll have done good science. Then you get a shot at doing something nuts and failing, and if you fail, no biggie. It was a risk.
In the end, though, i've also discontinued my stint in academia (finishing my postdoc in august). Hopefully will be starting my own biotech. I intend to implement my managerial ideas, which are, inspired by dating a neuroscience grad student, who totally doesn't get it herself, ironically.
A huge problem is this: Who becomes a scientist? What were they doing in high school? Not the captain of the football team. Or the kid who was directing plays. Or the kid who enlisted in the military and was in charge of a squad coming under enemy fire. I'm not saying that those people are necessarily going to be good people, or even good managers. But at least they got the chance to experience being in charge of other people. So basically just about the only way they are going to be a good manager is if they had it naturally. Or if they were the captain of the chess team (tooting my own horn here).
the scientific structure, I think, self-selects for shitty managers. Think of every PI at scripps and think of what they were probably like in high school, and all these shitty managerial practices make sense.
on the other hand, our entering class was full of kids who were probably not the stereotype. I would say there's hope... But NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THEM wound up in academia.
True. Back when John and Erin left, it made me think: "Uh-oh, looks like the people who aren't squares are starting to drop out one by one..."
But even consider that our entry class had a lot of kids who you would not have expected would have become scientists. Like, captain-of-the-hockey-team types, if you get my drift. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they are all in industry now.
Good points. Think of the economists too, and all the research that goes into corporate management, organizational structure and what not. But they're not touching any of this ivory tower shit with a ten-foot pole. And who the hell is going to then?
Way to go wrt the biotech. That's what I'm talking about.
There's a surprising amount of "outsider science" and "outsider engineering" going on.
http://prometheusfusionperfection.com/
Sure some of this stuff sounds like a crazy person, but keep in mind that microsoft and apple were garage operations at one point. So was aptera.
http://www.aptera.com/
(although aptera is likely to fail b/c of stupid corporate shenanigans. Nonetheless they DID make an amazing product).
Keep going son. There are many who wanted to do this, but never been done.
Yes, the PDFs of the papers will make this project very much more entertaining. I am sure Ghadiri himself won't be amused, either :)
Sorry, but no, because:
1) I'm not interested in breaking any copyright/intellectual property laws;
2) this isn't really about me or some unpublished papers anyway.
Besides, there's nothing all that entertaining about those manuscripts. Not complete garbage, but no cure for cancer either. Look up Ghadiri lab publications on Inhibitor-DNA-Enzyme constructs if you like. That was the kind of stuff I worked on.
Copyright laws? Really? Shows how much you know about academia son.
Really? How much do you know about copyright law, father? Lol. I like to keep shit I could potentially get sued for to a reasonable minimum.
If you are worried about getting sued I would be more concerned about the salacious gossip being posted on your blog about other academics. You really think your old PI will sue you if you post drafts of a paper to the 50 odd people who read this thing? Delusional.
In the US (except for the first district), truth (that's including things presented as opinions) is an absolute defense against libel. So far as I can tell, everything that Andrei has posted is truthful matter.
Oh, fuck off with the retarded off-topic already. Who cares, you can't find any papers to read or something? Stop fishing for flaws in me to help your ad hominem attacks. I post those manuscripts, and there's going to be a battalion of dipshits like you offering their criticism on the wording of my figure captions. How very relevant that will be. You wanna criticize me? Address my arguments on the topics I put up for discussion. If you can't do that, just shut the fuck up. Simple as that.
If you have a couple of papers written, then you should have enough results to at least write up as a masters. Why didnt you do that?
Because it wasn't worth his time... and he already said that.
I can say it again, but do use the right post from now on.
Anyhow, I had those two, plus a couple other small projects I've done alongside the big and unfinished one. I passed my candidacy exam/committee meetings, I was said to be "on track" (for a PhD) at the last one, summer of 2008. After I left, I was offered to write up a Master's by a dean, Jamie Williamson, who contacted me. I didn't, because I didn't want to (time, effort, pain in the ass) and didn't need to (nobody to show the diploma to except for family and friends). Also, I already had/have an MSc. Not that I've ever needed to show it to anyone either.
Naming this blog after your former advisor.... just seems like a bad idea to me. The reason it's probably done is that you don't like him all that much I suppose, but I could be surprised on that score. I can feel something bad happening because of this though. Just a feeling.
What are you doing now? Is your job science-related or completely different? If your job is not science related, can you tell us more about how you sell yourself in the job market?
Not science-related per se, but definitely brain-, creativity- and problem-solving-related. This is what I liked science for in the first place, and all that training is still invaluable to me now. I have never been a fan of the job market, so I'm running my own show. It's exciting to be free and have the world for a playground.
Collectively all of us in the Ghadiri group would like to see these papers that you submitted to JRD. Maybe that'll persuade Dr. Ghadiri to publish your work if it is good. But certainly many of us can act as reviewers and give you feedback as to it is at all publishable in a journal other than JRD!
Well, I'm here with Jesus and Santa Claus, and collectively we would like to tell you that lying is bad. Mkay? Maybe that’ll persuade you to try and stop being a dumbfuck, if that is at all possible. But I can (certainly) give you directions as to where to go and what to do with yourself if you don't.
You make valid points about the flawed structure of academic science today. Indeed, PhDs and postdocs are exploited and should be compensated better and given job opportunities sooner. However, your contention that a PhD diploma is useless outside of academia is wrong. Several consulting companies including McKinsey, BCG value the PhD degree and pay phd holders more than undergrads. Patent law firms often require PhDs from chemistry and biology tech specialists. Science editors often have PhDs. For good research jobs in industry a PhD is required. These are only some of many examples. While your effort to showcase the problems in academic science is very worthwhile, it would be best if you don't try and negate the value of a PhD or the intelligence and hard work that it requires to get one.
Are you trolling me? First of all, I didn't even say "outside of academia", I said "outside of science". I used italics too. Just like I tried to emphasize the word "diploma" to, hopefully, differentiate folded paper (Greek meaning of the word) from intelligence, skills, expertise, etc.. Also, I said it in a comment under a post which actually touched upon the topic of alternative careers for scientists. The post featured a link to a presentation which made a case for "scientists and engineers being fit to succeed on all kinds of career paths", to quote myself. If you bothered reading through that three-post series, you would at least notice that it was the one piece of reading material/advice that I didn't bash. Could it be because I agree with it?
As for undergrads vs. PhDs, what do those companies pay college graduates who had the brains and the aptitude to complete a PhD program, but instead have put 7 years into working at those companies? Or, perhaps, got a Master's and worked for 5 years. Who is valued more? Regardless of the answer, that would be a more meaningful comparison to make.
Another employer who values PhDs in maths and physics is Goldman Sachs (thought I should mention this since you brought up the company in a blog post).
And you thought I didn't know this because..? If I were to guess, I'd say there are more physicists in investment banking than in physics.
Hi,
My intention wasn't to troll. I just looked at your post and it is a good post (on alternative careers). I agree with a lot of what you say - I just felt that calling a PhD degree useless was a bit extreme and it can be valuable to people for various reasons including personal satisfaction. Luckily, some companies realize the value of the PhD. Its unfortunate that academia/science doesn't, especially because they would benefit most from happy PhDs/young scientists. Making society at large aware of this massive problem/ridiculous state of affairs is critical. Websites like yours are a good start!
Fair enough, a bit extreme and hyperbolic it was. I know a guy who says that a PhD degree is like knighthood. Regardless of what I think, simply being a PhD obviously makes him feel better about himself. But at the same time, the young scientists' willingness to accept pieces of paper other than cash in exchange for years of hard and highly qualified labor is pretty much what makes them cheap and unappreciated, despite their value.
Knights are also useless! Especially in civilization, after you invent the machine gun, that armor just gets torn to shreds.
Blasphemy!
I'm glad you are talking about these things. Keep it up!
Holy cow. Well done on the "there is something wrong with chemistry" blog comment w/trackbacks. Your visits just went through the roof. Get this - the link to the erick carreira post was sent to me by a non-chemistry friend from my undergraduate.
i received the same Erick Carriera 'To Guido' letter today from a non-chemistry friend. I thought it was written to me by my former advisor. So true and so funny. If you can do chemistry, you do not need a PhD and organic synthesis is not a piece of paper. There are many people in chemistry graduate schools who are not good chemists creating an unsafe work environment as advisors sit in their offices or at home 'cheerleading' - i like that one. Compare that to the supervised apprentice plumbers working directly with licensed master plumbers to learn the ropes, which brings me to my father's favorite joke - A phD Chemist has a plumber come over to install a sink and a toilet. After, the plumber hands the PhD Chemist the bill.
PhD Chemist says: "$80 an hour! Im a PhD chemist and i dont even make $80/hr!"
The plumber replies: "When i had my PhD in chemistry, I wasn't making $80/hr either".
If grad school doesnt work out and you like playing with toxic shit, become a plumber.
Derek Lowe, who has a PhD in organic chemistry from Duke, now makes $15 million a year thanks to the negotiations of his agent, Scott Boras, because he did not pursue an academic career and became a Major League Baseball starter pitcher known for his sinker.
Your site is so great! I had a really agonizing time with an abusive supervisor and I reached the same conclusions you have expressed about publishing, etc. My PhD has gone much smoother and I am considering postdocs - including in Reza's lab, so it's great to hear this! I think universities should keep track and divulge how long it takes for students to get degrees in the labs and what is the completion rate - that would force departments to ensure profs are not manipulating the students.
Thanks, glad to be of help, and good luck with the postdoc search. Tell Reza I said 'hi' if you see him. ))
As for universities, you're right, they should. But I don't think they would want to.
The biggest shame is that there aren't more people like you, exposing labs like this. I know it is so common. If there were 10 or 20 more brave souls like you, profs would have incentive to not let people's lives idle away.
I've had the same kind of thought. (Except for the part of me being brave, as I'm in a situation where I've got nothing to lose by talking.) But yeah, if there were a few gutsy people to get the ball rolling, I think it could really do some good.
This is a great site. Have you thought about building a scientific boss rating system that lets graduate students and postdocs to comment and rate their bosses? Or are there such sites already? Another suggestion: You may be able to team up with Ph.D. comics (http://www.phdcomics.com/) to get more attention.
I think Michael Moore might be interested in the miserable living condition of graduate students and postdocs. Of course the audience would be too small if he only film this. But putting this into the background of the corrupted research system would attract tax payers who want to know where their money went. And maybe it will attract even more attention if the topic is about the current situation of work place abuse. This would be on the same track as his recent documentary "Capitalism: A love story". Just a thought.
Hahaha, are you kidding me. Expose largely blue-state intelligentsia for hyprocrisy? With a low interest value and therefore very little potential for $$? This is not what Michael Moore's MO.
Ha ha...
taxpayers want cheaper research so it is in their best interest to have researchers as lowly compensated as possible.
of course, maybe there is an argument that other highly intelligent groups should have lower compensation such as those in high finance. on average, i would argue that they contribute less to the common good than an average, medium-impact scientist.
thank you for sharing your story... from what i have seen so far, academia is kind of a losers(pi) version of "the law of the jungle". came back to academia for a phd and i greatly regret the decision.
He said everything you told me when I interviewed there.....looking at this website in retrospect makes me SO glad I didn't go to scripps.
as much as I disliked it there, my experience there was good because I got to be around some of the smartest kids in the world. From a comparative standpoint, it's not necessarily so bad there. There are crappy PIs everywhere, not just at scripps. There are decent PIs at scripps, maybe just less (say, 20% instead of 40%), so you just have to do more legwork to find them. You get a lot of freedom at scripps to do what you want, and their benefits and compensation are comparatively good.
Contrast this to a mill like MIT (which offered me 30% less pay), or Berkeley (where in bio, your future may be determined by which few PIs you get to rotate in at the start), or mid-range schools where your classmates may be idiots and employment prospectives are iffy, or places with a billion undergrads - so you burn your first few years doing class-scut-work for the professor/get turned out by not passing quals (protip: if you think that research institutes care about "teaching experience" you're dead wrong)... It's not such a raw deal.
The problem is that very few people in general, in academia, are warned about what to look for.
disclaimer: I was able to deal with the severe personality problems of my PI. It was difficult, emotionally, and, it probably tanked any chance of a "traditional career path" but I don't care, I like marching to a different beat anyway.