Friday, November 15, 2013

Is Bioinformatician (we) free-rider?

A lesson to learn for all bioinformatician.

Dear ***,

You probably know I desperately want to write up a tool paper last year (***), at that moment my biggest fear was not B** in fact, but was the expectation that I would be placed middle-of-no-where in the authorship in their Biology paper. I guessed right.

Not sure if it is normal, but just got very frustrated in this lab. Yesterday **** summoned me to his office, told me that my position was shifted backward (from 2nd to 4th).

The situation is like that. We developed ***, we used it to discover those ******* event, all validated. Among them, the Biology lab already did some work on one of the ****** (long before we developed ***). They used that as an example to do more in depth work and submitted the ****** ****. I did the submission phase works. My position was 2nd. The 1st is a former student who devoted his PhD life on it.

The paper came back with revision. Lots of biology questions. I did my part and proposed the Bioinformatics response. I thought it was alright. Yesterday **** told me he had discussed with ******** in the *****-***** meeting, and made a decision to shift me backward, because their lab members worked hard on revision phase and did many experiments. I had no choice and said it is fair.

Maybe it is fair. I do not argue that the wet-lab team deserve important positions because they worked hard. I just couldn't believe (1) we did well and there was little Bioinformatics related question, (2) then it is my fault to contribute little in this revision phase. I also spent my last 1.5 year on this. If I didn't propose/argue with them to publish *** independently. Then what do I get now for working on this in this post-doc life?

For wet-lab members, they all have their projects. And mine is to work to help them get things out. Am I a technician?

When they worked hard on wet-lab experiment, do we just sit down and take a nap?

In ****'s office, I did not argue at all. I accepted it because it is entirely not up to me, and it was a decision they have already made. ****just re-directed the message / informed me. **** re-iterated we are not pet bioinformatician, but I think we are just *free-rider* in biology's people eye. 

**** said to me such decision is to prevent the wet-lab people think we are free-rider, get it their lab and get important position in the paper. And this decision will make them relieve. So basically it means I am the one to be sacrificed for fear of morale hazard in wet-lab team. And by doing so, I can work them the wet-lab team more closely. I have no objection, but again, I know I have lots of morale to spare.

Regards,
******

1 comment:

bioinformatician said...

I am a bioinformatician too but unfortunately this is how life goes for a bioinformatician in a biological/medical/wet-lab lab! It is the same situation for a post-doc statistician in a mechanics lab, for a post-doc computer scientist in a chemistry lab, and so on.
If a post-doc wants to have the possibility for prime/leading scientific role than most likely the best choice is to choose the same "scientific profile" lab, that is a bioinformatician in a bioinformatics lab, a biologist in a biological/wet-lab lab, and so on.

A wet-lab always will be run by a biologist (or medical doctor) and it is expected that in this kind of environment the most valuable things are "biological ones" and everything else are just "tools".



Does anyone know a wet-lab being run by a bioinformatician?