Research Tear-jerkers

So here is an interesting issue that came up at my committee. Remember the committee that assigns research funds? Usually, researchers submit a CV with their grant proposals. A suggestion has been advanced that we follow the NIH model and change the CV format to include an autobiographical narrative where people will detail the things that have prevented them from doing research in the past or created gaps in their record of publication. These things might include family care responsibilities, illness, psychological problems, etc.

As you can imagine, I was vehemently opposed to the idea.

“This will devolve into a competition of excuses,” I said at the committee meeting. “Everybody has hardship, everybody battles some personal issue or another. But ultimately, you either make a name for yourself in your discipline or you don’t. A grant application process shouldn’t be about who can come up with a more convincing sob story. And it shouldn’t penalize people who prefer not to bring their stories of personal woe into the professional arena.”

What I forgot to mention is that we hate it when our students regale us with tales of their pain and suffering to explain why they can’t hand in homework. Why should we hold ourselves to a lower standard?

I just imagined myself poring through these stories of extreme hardship as part of my research committee duties and trying to determine whom I’m most sorry for, and the prospect had no appeal.

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36 responses to “Research Tear-jerkers”

J. Otto Pohl

December 9, 2014

Where should I submit my tale of woe to receive money? Also does the fact I am just by nature lazy count as a legitimate excuse for my poor output to date? Granted I haven’t been very productive, but again that is mostly due to my own lack of initiative more than anything else. But, maybe this approach would work better for me.

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Z

December 10, 2014

I would love to say blatant obstructionism, harrassment, and discrimination from the university, coupled with poor leadership in unit, makes for great inefficiency; I could say this on behalf of myself and a couple of others and be right, but nobody would want to hear it. More seriously, I doubt the NIH actually asks for this. One of the issues in science is that you need a lab and if you lose funding or funding is cut or something, your experiment can get shut down. Or if the university changes direction or something — I know people who got moved when budget cuts shut down their units, to other departments and somewhat modified conditions / etc., and their work had to change shape and direction somewhat.

I think they (the NIH) just want to know what the facts are — not as justification but just for the record.

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1. Clarissa
  
  December 10, 2014
  
  “I think they (the NIH) just want to know what the facts are — not as justification but just for the record.”
  
  – It bothers me that I should be obligated to provide a record of my personal life in a professional context. And mind you, this is NOT optional.
  
  By the way, I didn’t include a discussion of my long medical leave in my tenure portfolio in spite of the numerous suggestions I do so. Because I’d rather take any penalty anybody wants to assign me than have my personal life being a topic of discussion at the tenure committee.
  
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  1. Z
    
    December 10, 2014
    
    My point is, I don’t think it is actually personal life they ask for at NIH. Your colleagues may think it is, but I doubt it.
    
    Try this: Q: why did you not teach in semester X? A: I was on sabbatical. Or: I taught a double load in semester Y.
    
    A bureaucratic accounting.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      December 10, 2014
      
      Caretaking responsibilities, illnesses and personal issues are a direct quote from the form I was shown. This narrative goes on the first page of the CV while the list of publications is relegated to the last page. The way the new CV looks is that the entire first page is a narrative.
      
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      1. Z
        
        December 10, 2014
        
        I think you should contact NIH.
        
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2. Z
  
  December 10, 2014
  
  P.S. Saying you were on medical leave is another. What happened that semester? You were on medical leave. That is the answer. Your colleagues’ insistence on further information is probably illegal and certainly violates confidentiality.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    December 10, 2014
    
    I didn’t mention the medical leave at all. Because I did once in the past and that produced an endless discussion of whether it was a medical or a maternity leave. Witnessing another such discussion is intolerable. I’d just rather people think I didn’t show up to work because I was snoozing on the couch. Ultimately, the result for the workplace and for my CV was the same.
    
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Jonathan Mayhew

December 9, 2014

Yes. I could point out many reasons why I haven’t published more. Years of depression, commuting, divorce. Yet since I have published more than anyone else in my department that would just be a “humble brag.” On the other hand, if those things had prevented me from publishing, then maybe some colleague who had equal travails and HAD published would have the stronger case than I do. It also puts people who haven’t had major personal setbacks at a disadvantage. “Sure, you’ve published, but it’s easy for you!” You’d almost have to invent some bogus complaint just to keep things even.

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Clarissa

December 9, 2014

People have already used my personal tragedy to justify their incapacity to fulfill their job duties. And the most offensive thing is that it worked. Everybody was massively sorry for this person and her enormous trauma. 🙂

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1. Jonathan Mayhew
  
  December 9, 2014
  
  !?!! You should make her pay you for that. You could have a rent-a-tragedy store.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    December 9, 2014
    
    Rent-a-tragedy is hilarious. 🙂
    
    Yes, apparently, some people were so traumatized that they couldn’t work. Strangely, these people didn’t include me. I was very upset when I found out about these claims but not to the point where I stopped working. 🙂
    
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Clarissa

December 9, 2014

And the phrase, “Of course, it’s easy for YOU to publish” is one that keeps coming up. I never ask what makes me so special in this regard but maybe I should start.

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Evelina Anville

December 9, 2014

This is an NIH policy? (Is that the National Insitute of Health I assume?) So when people apply for NIH grants (which I assume are high competitive), the applicants invited to talk about their personal traumas? Really? That is so crazy! I applied for an NEH grant once and never was invited to share my personal traumas. I would have hated doing that!

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Z

December 10, 2014

I *think* it is just to indicate leave, or something like that. In some sciences you publish a lot lot lot of short things, very often, so that a gap would show more and might merit an explanation. Like: NO I did not lose my grant or anything like that, I was just on maternity leave.

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1. Clarissa
  
  December 10, 2014
  
  “Like: NO I did not lose my grant or anything like that, I was just on maternity leave.”
  
  – And then we are supposed to go, “Ooh, maternity leave! That’s a respectable excuse. And that other person was simply lazing on the couch, that’s not a respectable excuse. The question is: if the results for both of them are the same, why should we be in the business of judging the respectability of these people’s excuses?
  
  We already spent the entire meeting yesterday first discussing one person’s child (“She has only got one child and can’t do research because of that? I have 3 children and still do research!” “Yes, but she is a single mother!” “Yes, but I’m battling A CHRONIC DISEASE!”) and then another person’s husband.
  
  And I’d rather not be placed in the position of sorting out their illnesses, children, husbands, elderly parents, and needy siblings. I’m not qualified to gauge whether 2 babies equal 1 sick mother with no insurance.
  
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  1. Z
    
    December 10, 2014
    
    Yes, but I don’t think that is what the original NIH explanation is for. I’d find out directly how those are in fact filled out.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      December 10, 2014
      
      I don’t know anything about NIH. I’m discussing a proposal to introduce this system at my university.
      
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2. Z
  
  December 10, 2014
  
  They want to imitate NIH, then they should find out what is the form is for. It is not legal to sit around and judge different reasons for being on leave, for example. That is one reason for confidentiality.
  
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3. Z
  
  December 10, 2014
  
  I repeat: there are a lot of different practical and bureaucratic factors in science that slow things down or speed them up and might merit explanation, especially if it is about what happened to prior grant money. Without getting personal or self pitying.
  
  Re yoor clleagues trying to decide whether it was medical or maternity leave, that is totally out of line. It is whatever it got classified as ultimately by HR and is not their business
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    December 10, 2014
    
    “Re yoor clleagues trying to decide whether it was medical or maternity leave, that is totally out of line. It is whatever it got classified as ultimately by HR and is not their business”
    
    – Exactly. I had everything figured out and taken care of with the HR and the college administration, nobody there has any concerns. Why should this even be a topic of discussion?
    
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¡No Pasarán! (@nopasa)

December 9, 2014

Sounds like Victimhood Poker to me! http://dicklist.blogspot.com/2006/07/tdl-gaming-world-series-of-victimhood.html

“One fateful day in 1996, a group of intoxicated freshman at the State University of New York- Oneonta broke into that college’s admissions office looking for rolling papers and Doritos. Instead, they found the deck of victimization cards. Unsure what they were or what to do with them, the drunk freshmen stole the cards and took them back to their dorm. As legend has it, later that night over a carton of Marlboro light cigarettes and a case of warm Miller Genuine Draft, the freshman engaged in the first ever game of Victimhood Poker.”

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anon

December 9, 2014

Yeah, detailing that all is a bit much. I think you should be able to mark, with little emotion, something like “professional leave of absence from dates X to Y” if you actually took professional leave and your Uni. can back you up on that… But anything more than that is just overkill – no one wants or needs to know more. I think that’s generally the approach taken on NIH applications too (motivated by how much other important information needs the space), but I could be mistaken.

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Clarissa

December 9, 2014

This is an actual narrative you are supposed to be writing. We are now arguing whether to make it obligatory or not. Because apparently we have nothing else to do with our lives.

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valter07

December 9, 2014

This thing exists on Canadian NSERC applications since I can remember. Never seen anyone abusing it…

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musteryou

December 9, 2014

It would be nice if people COULD recognise hardship, but one’s personal resume is not the place for it. Otherwise we create an overly sensitive workplace that just exacerabates the sense of hardship. Ideally one’s wounds should be strapped and bound as they occur and then there should be a MediVac and the wounds are dealt with. Silly little academics have no place dealing with wounds or even to judge their severity. They need to accept their silliness and grow up.

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Clarissa

December 9, 2014

The thing is, those who really experience hardship are hardened by it and don’t feel the need to smudge their dramas all over the desk at the office. If you can’t write a research grant application without telling me how hard your life is, this tells me it isn’t that hard.

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1. musteryou
  
  December 9, 2014
  
  It’s just the introduction of the social protocol of announcing one’s mitigating circumstances that I object to. Who are those who would stand in judgement and gain power by evaluating my mitigating circumstances? I’ve had a lot of my own pleas for help dismissed as needless drama — and indeed I was rather undiscriminating about who I turned to, since it was for me like picking up stones and turning them over to see if there was something I needed underneath them. Very undiscriminating. But also desperate. And I’d tried all number of solutions on my own. In the end, I just had to withdraw from society and try to heal myself. That was the only thing that worked. Actually if I had had liberals slithering all over me — which they would not have done as they pegged me as an alien — that would have been even worse. They don’t know how to strap wounds properly. It’s like they’ve gone to the school of extreme ineptitude and bungling. Someone ought to put them out of their misery.
  
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aglaonika

December 9, 2014

Pity party -> Counterselection. This is an axiom.

The whiners are never those who had real traumas or life-altering problems. Seriously traumatized people just shut the fuck up and rather clean toilets than let everyone else to munch on their misery.

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December 10, 2014

This is for internal funding, though. It sounds to me as though they want to rate the proposal and not the vita, so that the money does not all go to the same people all the time. So they could just not ask for a vita, if this is their goal.

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Clarissa

December 10, 2014

These are big projects. It isn’t like people can apply every year. In my experience, it has always been different applicants.

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1. Z
  
  December 10, 2014
  
  Even so. You aren’t a large school, people will know each other by name. They can make all sorts of decisions like decide they want to fund x number of people at each rank, if they are worried about being swayed by the fattest vita over other criteria.
  
  There is another point to be made, though: different teaching loads in same department or college. Her they assign load by field–if they are understaffed, you teach more, or teach more out of field. I would in fact want to allow our guy on the 4/4 to note that he is on a 4/4 and not one of the lower loads.
  
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  1. Clarissa
    
    December 10, 2014
    
    We are not allowed to discuss the knowledge we have about people outside of their proposals. Which I think is a great approach. I hoped we would keep discussing just the proposals because that system worked. But this semester, all of a sudden, we started getting these narratives of personal pain and suffering. I don’t know what suddenly happened this year to change everything.
    
    In any case, I’m done with this committee. And the IBHE tells us that we steal time from students when we do research, so I’m guessing research is dead anyway.
    
    I’m not in a vastly positive mood today.
    
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2. Z
  
  December 10, 2014
  
  My legalistic mind is interested, though. What NIH form is it? We use the biosketch for proposals for state agencis but there is no space on it for personal information or any kind of narrative. It does have you put things ia certain order, but it is basically just a condensed vita.
  
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Jones

December 10, 2014

1968-present: Investigative Committee on Whether to Save Earth from Destruction by the Vogons (University of Maximegalon; financial support from Zaphod Beeblebrox Lost Biro Foundation)

That should take care of all of the gaps in my CV. 🙂

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Anonymous

December 23, 2014

Sorry to reply so late but I just had to mention this.

Here’s the original paper: The Camel Has Two Humps (Dehnadi & Bornat) http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper1.pdf.

It has a hypothesis, experiments, conclusions, etc. So far so good.

Then the author(s) decided to retract the paper. They eventually realized the evidence wasn’t enough to support their claims. Again, I’ve got absolutely nothing against that.

But here’s the retraction paper: Camel and Humps: A Retraction (Bornat) http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/staffpages/r_bornat/papers/camel_hump_retraction.pdf

Have a look at the second section, “How it happened”: “It’s in part a mental health story”… “In autumn 2005 I became clinically depressed”…

I’d normally have just thought, is this really necessary? Can’t the author(s) just discuss the scientific/methodological issues and leave their personal problems out of it? But then I remembered your blog post. So there you go. I just couldn’t not mention it.

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