academia Archives - Page 7 of 8

15/05/2013

Sentenced to death: how not to communicate science

I like to think the purpose of language (poetry excluded) is to convey information. Doing so in science is complicated somewhat by the vocabulary that every field accumulates. But, from my experience, most of this jargon takes the form of nouns and these are easy to explain when necessary. Take the word ‘phylogenetics’ as an example. On first inspection it’s a polysyllabic monster but as a noun it’s easy to define as “the systematic study of organism relationships based on evolutionary similarities and differences.” Simple. And over time this word slots into our vocabulary so we no longer need a definition every time.

The real problems in the language of science communication lurk elsewhere. Neuroscientists declare the self is an illusion but there is always going to be a subject doing science no matter how objective we want it to be. And it is that subject who should do the explaining of his or her work. The complete aversion of scientists to personal pronouns is a disaster for clarity and renders many papers unreadable. There are instances when the passive voice is more suitable but it’s not a case of ‘I showed’ for the humanities and ‘it was shown’ for science.

Lewis Spurgin lists myriad forms of bugbears in communicating science in one of his blog posts. Pretentious writing and clichés are both listed! As he says, so much light has been shed on matters in science that we’ve all gone blind. So rather than eschewing obfuscation and espousing elucidation try to keep it simple stupid (KISS). Despite Will Self’s eloquent defence of obscure words, in science communication, clarity should be our highest priority.

And finally we come to the “funny title: actual title” format (see this blog post). Spurgin reckons scientists prone to this are in need of a colonic irrigation. And with good cause, for having a colon in your title reduces the number of cites you receive.

Author

Adam Kane: kanead@tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

10/05/2013

Surviving experiments

Having just come through a particularly long and intense experiment (relatively unscathed) I thought I’d contribute some of the things I’ve learned and advice I’d give to other poor souls embarking on the exciting and terrifying world of empirical science.

1. Be organized!

I know this is a bit of a cliché but taking the time to work out exactly how much of everything you need, gather your chemicals, buying the labels etc.- it all pays off. Try, if you can, to run a number of pilots to iron out any blaring errors, work out difficult techniques and get familiar with how your system works. The absolute worst thing is to discover three days into an experiment that something isn’t working and you have to start all over again when you could have dealt with it weeks before.

2. Know your stats!

Another thing that I feel is really important and not always practiced or appreciated enough is to know what analysis you are intending to do with your results before you start. Understanding how you will analyse it makes a huge difference to the way and the efficiency with which you collect your data. Too many people don’t think about this in advance and the run into trouble once it comes to looking at their data. Knowing what you want from your data makes it a lot easier and straightforward to collect. It is also a lot more rewarding once you finish.

3. Accept you will have no life outside of work for the duration and share this fact

Realising this early is a big advantage. Warning friends and family in advance that you have time points that mean you can’t meet them in the pub, go for lunches or go away for the weekend saves frustration all round- they don’t think you are blowing them off and you don’t get that renewed sense of disappointment and questioning of “why am I doing this!?” every time you turn down an invitation for something more fun than looking down a microscope for 8 hours. It also saves boring them with your ‘hilarious’ “you’ll never guess what happened to me today? I held the pipette upside down!” stories that only you can appreciate right now, being the only thing to have happened to you all week.

4. Choose your listening and viewing carefully

Chances are you will be spending a lot of time alone and thus you will be turning to media for some company. I have a couple of pieces of advice about this. The first would be to not just rely on music. Singing along is fun for a while but the chances of a melancholic ballad coming on, or your dancing resulting in you knocking over bottles of liquid are quite high. Music all day every day for weeks also doesn’t do too much to pass the time. Chat shows or podcasts are great as you can let your brain engage they really make the time fly. I would also say to try and listen to a program that has the news on it so you remain somewhat in touch with the world. It is also a way of gaining perspective! A side note on TV as well, if you have late night time points, try to avoid too many murder mystery shows- leaves for an uncomfortable night alone in the dark lab in a creaking building!!

5. Make and effort to talk to people (and not just your equipment)

You can quickly cut yourself off from other people and goings on during your experiment and making an effort to go to coffee or pausing for a chat really can be the difference between going completely insane and being merely a little “frazzled”.

6. You’re probably a control freak- don’t panic if things don’t go exactly to plan

I imagine most people that have chosen to go down the empirical route have done so because underneath it all (or on surface!) you are somewhat of a control freak. You want to have power over your system, how it is designed and the kind of data you are going to generate. This is great but what it also means is that dealing with changes or mishaps can be hard. Most of the time these are things that can easily be adapted or fixed, so try not to cry when one thing goes slightly differently to how you had thought it would. Also, don’t count down the days. Take this from me, yes it is a comfort when you reach the last 2-3 days of the experiment but it isn’t much comfort waking up and saying “only 12 days left”. Definitely makes getting up harder!

7. Try to make it fun/pretty!

Experiments can be long, they can be tedious and they are exhausting. So why not do little things to make them just a little more fun and rewarding. Whether it is using one of your non-measuring moments to run and get your favourite coffee, buying sparkly labels and coloured beads to liven up your microcosms, or giving your equipment interesting names. These are all tiny changes that just might make coming into the lab that little bit brighter!

8. Embrace the insanity

If you are doing a long and time consuming experiment by yourself, you will go crazy. It is a simple truth. You reach a point where tedium meets stress meets exhaustion, and they seem to sum to delirium. However, embrace it, let yourself dance to that song when it comes on the radio while you’re pipetting, not chastise yourself too much for talking to the equipment (though see tip 4!) and remember that, in science, a little crazy is expected, even endearing. The mad scientist is already a thing, so you clearly aren’t going to ruin the rep.

9. Be prepared for the come down

This is kind of a strange one, but I think one of the more important ones. Your experiment will end (even if it doesn’t feel like it!). When it does, you need to remember that life is waiting for you again. I think it is a bit like finishing that first exam, it’s finally over and you’re delighted, but then there’s tomorrow to study for. Suddenly you need to make it up to friends, your emails, and your data. Try and prepare for this towards the end of your experiment: Glance at those unopened emails, file all those unread papers, sneak a brief peek at your diary beyond the page marked “end of experiment” circled a thousand times in red pen. This will make the day after the end of your experiment a little less of a shock!

10. Remember you are doing SCIENCE

The last thing and most important of all: Smile and remember, you’re doing that magical thing called science!! However tedious and time consuming, it’s amazing and exciting and you love it!!

Author

Deirdre McClean: mccleadm[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

08/05/201318/02/2019

Technically speaking…

Following the excellent Botany/Zoology postgraduate symposium in TCD a couple of weeks ago, we had a discussion in NERD club about giving scientific presentations – what makes a good one, what makes a bad one and which were the best in the symposium? Actually, we didn’t do the last bit, and scarily I could remember very few talks a week after the event (“do you remember so and so’s slide about x y and z?” NO!!). So, either I am becoming old and forgetful (likely), or I wonder whether it’s some form of desensitisation? Every conference is full of short talks I listen to and think “that was interesting” and then immediately forget. How can we give presentations that won’t be forgotten, or at least will be remembered for all the right reasons? Below are some of the points we discussed as a group – not an exhaustive list, but the random ramblings of a few academics, postdocs and postgrads.

What are the things to avoid – what makes a bad talk?

Speaker running over time (both their own fault for putting too much in, and the chair’s fault for not keeping time properly).
Too much text on slides – undergrads love it if there’s plenty for them to copy down as the lecturer is speaking (or to learn off by heart from the powerpoint slides just before the exam), but telling a story without the distraction of a load of text is much better for a scientific talk.
Too much content – need to stick to one (or two) key take-home messages, particularly if the talk is just one of many people will hear during the course of a conference.
Too many graphs – especially ones that are too small to see properly, or that are irrelevant – if a speaker needs to say “ignore all the graphs on the slide except the one in the top right” then they haven’t done their job of tailoring their talk to their audience and just presenting the one on the top right.
Jargon – even in a room full of eco-evo people, abbreviations and technical terms should be avoided (as should giving the name of a gene or biochemical pathway in the talk title – but we may be biased on this one!)
Not knowing what is coming up on the next slide – comes from a lack of practice
Colour-blind insensitive colour schemes – avoid red on green and other such indistinguishable schemes
Reading out the acknowledgements – this led to a discussion of whether the acknowledgements should come at the beginning or the end of a talk. The problem with having them at the end is the audience is left looking at a list of funders, collaborators and helpers, rather than the key take home message. The problem with having them at the beginning is the audience wants the speaker to get on and talk about something interesting. We ended up deciding that for short conference style presentations, having them at the end was best, but perhaps not covering a whole slide so that the key message/awesome graph can still be on the last slide to give the audience something to think about whilst clapping. But for seminars or longer talks, acknowledging that the work was a group effort at the beginning was a nice thing to do. And funding agencies could just be acknowledged with a logo on the title slide.
Bad chairing – ok, so that one’s not the speaker’s fault, but it is very annoying

And what makes a good talk?

A good story or narrative – a good talk tells the story in such a way that you are drawn in, the approach is logical (and seemingly obvious and you’re left thinking “why has no-one done this before?”) and the findings interesting and digestable
Targeting the scope and contents of the talk to the time slot – putting enough in, but not trying to include too much. Getting the balance right.
Leading the audience through the presentation so that they don’t get lost – clear ideas and questions as slide titles rather than introduction/methods/results/conclusions.
Being confident (but not cocky). Being enthusiastic. Being yourself, or doing a really good job at acting confident and enthusiastic.
Making eye contact or scanning the room – not picking on one person to talk to as this can be intimidating for that member of the audience. If actually making eye contact can be distracting, then looking at people’s foreheads or just over their heads, so it looks like you are making eye contact.
Spend time explaining graphs/figures – the audience gets lost if the graphs just flash up with no explanation – point out the trends or important parts, explain axes and colours if necessary (but don’t go on too long). Try not to just pull figures from papers/your thesis, redraw graphs to simplify them and make them clear so that they aid the audience in following your story, and don’t make things more complicated.
Know your audience and target your talk to them.
Humour – use with caution.
Have the ability to give your talk without any powerpoint slides/prezi – there may be a power-cut and you just have to carry on.
Practice your talk – practice the slide transitions so that you know what’s coming up next and how you’re going to link the slides.

There are heaps of resources out there which say more or less the same thing – I really like Jane Wilton et al.’s BES Bulletin article

And here’s Michael Alley’s “The craft of scientific presentations”

And here are some more (from a VERY brief google search)…

http://matt.might.net/articles/academic-presentation-tips/

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/agu/scientific_talk.html

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/Hany_Farid/Tutorials/Entries/2011/6/2_How_to_give_a_good_talk.html

http://oikosjournal.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/talk-and-stats-tips.pdf

Author

Jane Stout: stoutj@tcd.ie

Photo credit

http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/social-media-marketing/if-facebook-comments-are-gold-here%E2%80%99s-how-to-dig-for-more/attachment/audience-happy-2/

http://muratak.com/2011/11/24/5-ways-to-improve-your-pitches/

12/04/2013

Finding a PhD

Undergraduate and Masters students often come to me for advice about how to find a PhD position. I know quite a few students read this blog so I thought I’d share the advice here. Hopefully some of it is helpful! Note this is aimed at people in the UK and Irish system who often go straight from undergraduate to a PhD (or do a brief one year Masters course in between the two). But many points are relevant to the US system too.

1) First make sure you definitely want to do a PhD!

This is really important and I think it’s something that very few of us ever bother to do. The thesis whisperer has some amazing advice on this, and many other subjects related to PhDs, so I won’t repeat too much here. (See http://thesiswhisperer.com/2011/11/07/should-i-do-a-phd/)

Doing a PhD can be an amazing experience, but it can also be extremely frustrating. Often it’s amazing and frustrating at the same time! You will work long hours for several years with very few rewards and low pay. Then once you finish your PhD things get even trickier – there’s no job security until you reach the Lecturer/Assistant Professor level which generally won’t happen until you’re at least 30, and getting that lecturer’s job is extremely difficult as there are far more qualified PhD students than there are postdoc jobs and lecturer jobs. So to succeed you need to work really hard and also have good luck. It’s good to aim high, but it’s also worth having an alternative career plan in mind for if the whole academia thing falls through. So before you start the long road of potential academic misery, make sure you have a really clear reason WHY you want to do a PhD. If it’s because you love research and can’t imagine doing anything else then great! If it’s because you need one for your chosen career (within or outside academia), again great! But if it’s because you don’t really know what else to do after graduating, or because you want to be a student for a few more years, then I’d recommend researching other options.

2) Advertised PhDs.
These PhDs generally already have funding and a planned research project. You just need to apply. Applications are usually fairly simple, just a CV and cover letter plus a couple of references (usually two). For the cover letter, make sure you describe exactly how you meet the criteria in the job description. Check out our earlier blog posts for help with CV writing. For referees try to include academic referees. Your project supervisor would be a good person to ask, followed by the head of department or your tutor. If the position is in aquatic ecology and you did particularly well in your aquatic ecology module you could ask the lecturer who taught you. Make sure you ask people before you put them down as references.

PhDs are advertised in many places including:

Twitter (with #phd or #jobs)
www.findaphd.com
ECOLOG Archives
Evoldir
University websites

Twitter can be particularly useful for this, as lecturers often tweet about positions in their lab and retweet adverts from other lecturers.

3) Non-advertised PhDs.

Not all PhD positions are advertised. Sometimes this is just because the person taking on students already has someone in mind or a good pool of undergraduate students to choose from. More often though this is because although the lecturer is perfectly happy to have a new PhD student they don’t have any funding. In these circumstances you need to apply for your own funding.

There are a couple of options when it comes to funding. The simplest are “personal” awards or studentships. These are PhD scholarships given to individual students based on various criteria – usually the quality of the student and of the proposed project. The other option is that a supervisor may include PhD student funding on a larger grant they are applying for. In this case the responsibility for the application rests with the supervisor. For personal awards the responsibility rests with you.

To apply for your own funding you first need to find a possible supervisor. You should already have an idea of the kind of project you’d like to work on, so you can use the internet to search for supervisors who might fit your interests. Ask around your current lecturers to see if they know of anyone suitable. You can narrow the search by also thinking about the place you’d like to study at. Once you’ve identified a possible supervisor, send them a brief email with your qualifications (attach your CV), what you’d like to work on, why you’d like to work with them and ask if there would be any opportunities in their group. Also mention that you’d be happy to apply for funding (if you have a funding body in mind mention this too). Don’t do this as a bulk email; make sure it’s tailored to the person in question. Also make sure it’s brief; most people today read emails on mobile phones so long emails are annoying.

If they say yes then you can work with them to prepare a proposal. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t get replies or if you get lots of negative replies. It’s not personal, it’s just that people are busy and some already have as many PhD students as they can handle!

One quick tip on choosing a supervisor (again thesiswhisperer has lots of advice for this): don’t just focus on the senior people. It’s exciting to work with a famous scientist, but more often than not they are extremely busy and their groups are hard to get into. More junior people are often given money for a PhD student or two when they start a new job. They also tend to have more time.

4) Where to apply for funding.

The best thing to do is to talk to your potential supervisor about funding options. There are fewer and fewer options these days but each university usually has some kind of scheme, and scholarly societies often give out scholarships. What you are eligible for will depend on the project, your nationality and the country you wish to do your PhD in. For example, EU citizens can get funding from Marie Curie/European Commission if you do a PhD outside of your home country (and in the EU). Students of any nationality can apply for funding from the Irish Research Council to do a PhD in Ireland. Students of any nationality can also apply for a Trinity Postgraduate Scholarship or Ussher Scholarship from Trinity College Dublin if they wish to study at TCD.

5) DO NOT accept a PhD with little or no funding.

Some people are so keen to do a PhD they’ll accept one with little or no funding. This is a terrible idea (unless you’re independently wealthy!). You will need to pay fees (at TCD these are currently nearly €6000 a year) and need money to live on. Many people try to manage this with a part time job, but if you’re working you’re not doing your PhD, which should be a full time job in itself. And remember for every extra year doing your PhD you need to pay fees. This doesn’t even consider where the money for lab materials, conference travel or equipment is going to come from. So make sure you check the status of the funding before you say yes!

6) Qualifications needed for PhD positions.

If you only have an undergraduate degree then you need a 2.1 or 1^st class degree. Remember you’ll be competing with lots of people when you apply so this is just a guide. You can get a PhD with a 2.1 BUT if all the other applicants have 1^st class degrees you will struggle. I personally would prefer a student with a 1^st for their project and a 2.1 overall, to a student with a 2.1 for their project but a 1^st overall.

If you have a Masters then you may get a PhD with a grade lower than a 2.1 but only if you got a good grade on your Masters (preferably a Distinction). Again, your mark for the project component is the most important.

If your qualifications are unusual make sure you explain them. Also make sure you explain them if you are applying to a foreign university which may use a different system. Percentage marks often help here. If you know where you ranked in your class include this information too. If applying for positions in the UK, Irish students should highlight the fact that Irish degrees are 4 years long thus almost the equivalent of a degree and a Masters in in UK.

7) Should I do a Masters or work experience?

Masters courses can be great but they are also expensive and may be of limited benefit in some cases. If you don’t feel ready for a PhD, or are unsure you want to commit to a PhD, a Masters may be more sensible than jumping straight in to a PhD. Also if your grades in undergrad were not very impressive, doing a Masters and getting a Distinction or Merit can override these issues. However, if you’re certain you want a PhD and your project and overall grades were good at undergrad there’s no reason you shouldn’t apply for PhDs straight away. One solution might be to apply for Masters courses and then pull out if you get a PhD (check your contract so you don’t end up losing any money). Masters in Research (MRes) courses may be a particularly good idea as they involve several research projects so allow you to decide if you really like research or not. MSc courses also include taught elements, so these are good if you want to learn more about a specialised topic. These also end with a long research project.

If you want to get a field or conservation based PhD, then work experience may be a better option than doing a Masters. This may still be expensive as most of these positions are unpaid, but then you have the option of volunteering for some of the time and then working to support yourself. Work experience can be Research Assistant positions at universities, internships at conservation charities etc. The Institute of Zoology take interns every year, as do the IUCN. There are field projects on meerkats and baboons run out of Cambridge University that take volunteers each year. Also search ECOLOG and EvolDir (see links in 2 above) for other field assistant positions. Alternatively, if you have a potential supervisor in mind you could email them and offer your services. Or offer to help at a local university so you can live at home and save money. Research Assistant jobs are a great way to learn about PhDs and research from PhD students and researchers you interact with, however, you have to be prepared to work independently as people often don’t have much time to supervise interns.

That’s my advice! Feel free to add alternative advice if you have any. And good luck finding a PhD!

Author

Natalie Cooper

nhcooper123

ncooper[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

PhD comics

08/04/201308/04/2013

Top tips for science networking!

Science is a business like any other, and it’s hard to get things done if you don’t know anyone outside of your own department. Other scientists will review your papers and grants, invite you to give talks and hopefully employ you in the future. So the more people you know, the easier it gets. Conference season is just around the corner so I thought I’d continue my hints and tips series by talking about networking at conferences.

Step 1: Finding someone to network with…

Find someone you know and get them to introduce you to everyone they know. This person may be your supervisor, but postdocs and other PhD students can be just as helpful. Make sure you return the favour then everyone will know plenty of people! If you know several people, spend time with each of them meeting all their friends and maximizing the number of new people you meet.

It’s pretty rare to go to conference where you don’t know anyone beforehand. This is much harder than option 1 because you constantly have to make the effort to talk to new people which is pretty exhausting. In these situations try asking your supervisor beforehand if they can remotely introduce you to at least one person there. Then follow them around until you make new friends!

Go to conferences with easily achievable networking goals, for example choose one big name in your field and make sure you have a conversation with them, even if it’s short. However, don’t be that person who goes to conferences with a list of “important” people they want to meet and spends the whole time pestering the big names and ignoring everyone else. The people with the time and energy to start exciting new collaborations are usually students or postdocs, and these are also the people you’ll be meeting at conferences for the rest of your career. So make sure you network with them too!

At huge conferences like ESA it’s often hard to casually network because everyone has already scheduled meetings for every lunch break and evening before they arrive. If you really want to meet with someone drop them an email beforehand and see if you can arrange a quick meeting. Make sure you’re really specific about the meeting place, and don’t be too upset if they don’t show up, they were probably intercepted on the way!

Use social media! Twitter is a great way to arrange tweetups at conferences, and some societies also have Facebook pages where events are advertised. I haven’t tried this yet but I’m very excited about trying it at Evolution and ESEB this year.

Go to all the drinks receptions you can, but skip the conference dinner. This is just my opinion, but I’ve never done any good networking at a conference dinner. They can be fun, but usually they are at the end of the conference so everyone is hanging out with their friends and not really in the mood to talk about work. They are also expensive and the food is often awful. I usually go for dinner with some friends instead and we usually meet other people who aren’t at the conference dinner so we get to make new friends that way!

Step 2: OK so I’m chatting to a new person, what do I say?

I think you should always aim to have a person walk away from a conversation knowing the following pieces of information: your name, your institution and roughly what you work on. Aim to do the same with everyone you meet. If you meet someone particularly relevant to your research interests make a note of this before you forget.

Before going to a conference make sure you have a series of “elevator pitches” prepared. These should be the 1, 5 and 10 minute versions of what you’re currently interested in or working on. If you’re looking for jobs you should also prepare a quick outline of what you’d like to do in the future and the ideal place you’d like to work.

Be interested and interesting. Being interested just involves asking the other person about their work. Everyone likes to talk about their current pet project, and in general these are interesting so you don’t have to fake it! Ask questions where appropriate and be enthusiastic even if you couldn’t care less. If appropriate refer back to their talk/poster or recent papers. Being interesting is harder but again being enthusiastic helps. Talk about your work or the talks you’ve enjoyed at the conference or current areas in science that fascinate you. Hopefully after a somewhat artificial start to a conversation you’ll find yourself in a real and enjoyable chat.

Provided you get in a tiny bit of information about what you’re working on, you don’t have to talk about your work the whole time. Feel free to bemoan peer review, or the funding crisis or the bizarre nature of your structured PhD program. These are great conversational topics as everyone has an opinion and they affect all scientists. Also don’t worry about talking about normal topics – family, hobbies etc. Even the big names have lives outside of academia.

Step 3: Damage control (or OMG I can’t believe I just said that…)

One or two beers are your friends! Alcohol is a great way to reduce inhibitions and help you to chat to people you’d be too terrified to approach when sober. Three or more beers (depending on your alcohol tolerance) are not your friends. If your inhibitions are reduced to the point of dancing on the table people may not remember what you work on. Though they will remember your name…

To be fair, conferences often do involve a lot of drinking and it’s naïve to think you can avoid this entirely. People come to conferences to see old friends and enjoy themselves as well as for work so this should be respected. I think the rule of thumb for alcohol at conferences is to try and hang around with people at the same level of inebriation. Don’t be the drunk group in the quiet bar surrounded by sober people. Also remember that you need to get up the next day and go to lots of talks, so being hungover is not a good idea. Know your limits and never feel pressured into drinking if you don’t want to.

Don’t worry about making a fool of yourself. I’m the champion of this and somehow I still got a job. My classics (all while completely sober) include (1) being put in charge of cake at a meeting in London Zoo and promptly falling over and throwing all the cakes on the floor in front of the director; (2) missing my mouth while talking to a big name at Evolution and pouring coffee all down myself; (3) accidentally wearing a dress you could see my underwear through when meeting the Duke of Edinburgh; (4) complaining that an eminent scientist who published a lot of similar papers would probably publish their shopping list if they could – then realizing the person I was talking to was the scientist’s co-author; (5) insisting that ducks weren’t birds in front of an ornithologist (there’s a logical reasoning behind this but they didn’t stay to hear it); (6) trying to tap someone on the shoulder and accidentally stroking them instead etc. Most of these incidents are not remembered by anyone but my colleagues, and I don’t think they have influenced my career. So if you do say or do something ridiculous, don’t let it scare you away from talking to people in the future!

Those are my top tips; I hope some of them are helpful! I should point out that I don’t actually follow most of them, but I do try my best! Feel free to add more tips in the comments!

Author

Natalie Cooper

nhcooper123

ncooper[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

05/04/201305/04/2013

What makes a good undergraduate (or Masters) thesis?

Here’s something that few students realize, and even fewer believe: your lecturers and professors actually want you to do well! I gave this advice to the final year undergraduates in October, and now they’ve handed in I thought it might be valuable to share it more widely. Note that they are in no particular order and I’m not talking about specific projects.

1) Do not annoy the people marking your thesis.

Most of my advice comes back to this point! Remember that most people marking your thesis will be marking a lot in a very short time (although this varies among institutions and subjects). Therefore if you make this as easy for them as possible you’re more likely to get a good grade.

2) Read the marking scheme carefully.

For example, there’s no point in listing every single thing you did if there’s no effort mark. See point 3.

3) Be concise.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly, having to read a 10,000 words (or more) monster thesis is going to make your marker grumpy before they even open it, especially with 5-10 theses to mark each year. You won’t be marked down for that (though most places have penalties for going over the word count), but you may find the marker more likely to notice other problems (see point 1).

Secondly, and more importantly, a long thesis usually indicates a lack of understanding of the really interesting findings of your research. Almost anyone can collect data from the lab, field or the literature and then go away and analyse it in every way possible. However, it’s a real skill to pick out the key results and discard the extraneous information. All of the best theses I’ve seen have been short (though I’ve also seen some terrible short theses!). They have an introduction that concisely builds towards their aims/questions, clear predictions, methods and results describing succinctly what they did to answer their questions and whether their predictions were met, and then a careful discussion of how their results fit into the wider literature. Showing every single thing you did is NOT going to get you more marks (see point 2).

People have a horrible habit of writing too much in the introduction. Think very carefully about what the reader needs to know to understand your questions. If you’re working on tortoises in Ireland in field site X, does the reader need to know what a tortoise is? No. Do they need to know where Ireland is? Not really. Do they need to know where your study site (field X) is? Not really, unless you only want to apply your results to field X or if field X is really special or weird. They may need to know the species of tortoise or the climatic conditions at your site but that shouldn’t take more than a sentence.

4) Presentation is really important.

I sometimes joke that you can work out the class (1^st, 2.1, 2.2, 3) of a thesis just by looking at how it’s presented, particularly the reference section. However, there’s a lot a truth to this. If you take care on the presentation, it usually means other aspects will also be good. Part of this is a time management issue. I know it’s difficult but if you can complete your thesis a few weeks early you will have time to polish the presentation and probably to deal with other minor issues in the thesis. Note that many places give marks for presentation so even if you struggled with some aspects you can pick up a few extra marks just by fixing the typos and formatting your references correctly. Note that this is a great thing to do when your brain is too tired to do any more writing or analyses.

5) Take advantage of people who offer to read drafts.

Chatting about this at coffee the other day we estimated that students who got their supervisors to read a draft of their thesis before handing in got a mark that was around 5% higher than it would have been otherwise. 5% might not seem much in the grand scheme of things, but if you got 66%, 5% extra would get you a 1^st… Also take advantage of family and friends for their proof reading services. A great idea would be to do this early and often with your classmates, perhaps reading each other’s work section by section. Again this requires you to have good time management skills – if you want your supervisor to read something make sure you give them AT LEAST a week to read it and AT LEAST a week for you to deal with corrections.

6) Structure is really important.

When writing your thesis imagine you’re telling a story. You start with the background and general area of the study and slowly progress towards the specific questions you are going to address. You then explain your methods, continually referring back to how these methods will answer the questions you want to address. In your results, show how your analyses answered your questions. Finally in the discussion show how your results fit within the published literature and then talk more broadly about what they mean for the subject area. Your questions and aims need to be clear throughout so make sure they are linked together.

7) Be careful with subheadings.

I’m a big fan of subheadings but it’s very easy to overuse them and to use them so you don’t have to link sections together. Even with subheadings, there needs to be some kind of link or the sections become disjointed and your story gets lost. They are ideal for separating major themes in your thesis – for example I always advise my students to have subheadings in the methods section for DATA COLLECTION and ANALYSES.

8) Don’t worry if your final thesis doesn’t match your proposal.

Things change all the time during projects. Perhaps your experiments didn’t work so you had to change them, perhaps there wasn’t enough data for you to test your hypothesis, perhaps you couldn’t catch any of your chosen study animal. Of course these problems are frustrating but they shouldn’t affect your thesis (trust your supervisor, they will help you fix this!). However, when you come to write up make sure that your introduction matches the question you ended up asking, not the question you intended to ask. I know it’s painful to set aside all the work and reading you did for your proposal, but you won’t get credit for irrelevant information (see point 2).

9) Analyses in methods and results

Students often get confused in these sections. As a guideline, although you don’t need to understand the maths, you do need to understand WHY you are doing the analyses you are doing. Which of your questions are you testing? Why are you using a t test or an ANOVA? Why did you log your variables? In the results explain what the result means biologically – i.e. if you have a significant correlation between body size and shell size in your tortoises write this then give the statistics in brackets afterwards. Check with your supervisor about how to report statistics. Also check published papers! You should have read plenty by this point. Another pitfall to avoid is assuming that really small p values equal really important results. P values tend to get smaller when you have lots of data, so you can get a tiny p value but when you look at a scatter plot the points are all over the place. Instead look at r² values, a high r²value shows you how strong the correlation is between your variables (but again be careful as when you have very few data points r² are likely to be high).

10) So how do I get a 1^st class (A) mark?

Again see point 2 and check the marking scheme. However, most institutions will have broadly similar requirements. We want you to show us that you could be a professional scientist and that your thesis could be written up for publication with some extra work. This means we want to see the following: really clear links between your background information, aims, methods, results and discussion, critical evaluation of the methods you employed and the results you obtained (how could you do things differently?), excellent presentation throughout, clear understanding of how your project fits into the bigger picture and the wider literature, and evidence of novelty. Novelty is really hard to understand, but what we’re looking for is evidence that you engaged with the project and really began thinking like a scientist. This may be demonstrated by how you’ve linked your results with those of someone working in a different system or by excellent suggestions for how you’d further your project. We need evidence that you’ve gone above and beyond the advice of your supervisor and things you’ve learned in lectures and thought beyond the narrow confines of your project. It’s hard to explain what I mean, but when I see it I know instantly because I stop thinking of the project as the work of an undergraduate student and start thinking of it as the work of a future peer. Note that everything else must also be of a very high standard, so although you may show evidence of novelty in your discussion, if your presentation is a mess you will not get a 1^st.

Author

Natalie Cooper

nhcooper123

ncooper[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

http://911thesis.blogspot.ie/

15/03/201304/04/2013

Your days are numbered

Last weekend journalist Rod Liddle applauded the efforts of two scientists who wrote a primer for the lay public on physics. His applause stopped when it came to the content though. The problem for him was the quantity of maths the authors used to get their point across. Liddle wrote “By the time we got onto calculus and derivatives I had long since raided the wine rack and things stopped making sense altogether.” But calculus is an integral part of the Leaving Certificate maths curriculum in Ireland and A levels in the UK so why should an educated man find it so intractable? Well, for one, maths is often taught in the abstract.

Of course many of us struggle with the abstract world of maths so this isn’t restricted to Rod Liddle. And I realise that not everyone can be a master of all trades. The trouble is, maths is damn useful, and in science it’s indispensable. Look at how Eugene Wigner spoke of the ‘Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences.‘

In secondary school and throughout university I thought biology was almost a maths free science. How wrong I was. If you ignore the quantitative part of biology you miss a wealth of literature and hamper your understanding of the subject. Without statistics much of biology would be stamp collecting. So it’s worrying that a maths-phobia has infected biologists. Look at this study showing that as the number of equations in a biology paper increases the number of cites it gets goes down. There even seems to be a split in the biological community, the theoreticians on one side and the empiricists on the other.

Back in 1959 the chemist C.P. Snow gave a Rede Lecture in which he decried the split between the sciences and the humanities. He called this ‘The Two Cultures‘. I don’t think we’ve bridged that gap. But I’d hope that biologists can improve the way they communicate with one another. Every effort should be made to make a scientific paper as clear as possible.

This will have to come from both sides. Those quantitative minds will have to make it clearer what they’re talking about. I suggest using in-text drop down boxes to make every step explicit as the number of equations ratchets up. This shouldn’t be a problem as we move away from paper publications and use all of the tools the digital age affords us.

But there is an onus on the rest of us to up-skill. Fortunately this has never been easier. A large proportion of MOOCs are mathematically themed and sites like the Khan Academy are a fantastic resource. A real boon of these courses is they afford anonymity, so you can safely check out logarithm identities without embarrassment.

Author

Adam Kane: kanead[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

01/02/201328/03/2019

Academic CVs: Dos, don’ts and maybes

At a recent session of NERD club, our weekly research group meeting for the Networks in Ecology/Evolution Research Dynamic, we discussed academic CVs. Four academic staff members (including myself) showed their CVs to the group and discussed what was in them. This was interesting because we all had such varied opinions! I thought I’d write a short blog post to highlight some of our main agreements and disagreements. Continue reading “Academic CVs: Dos, don’ts and maybes”

31/01/2013

Let the games begin!

We the blog declare that a month of games will commence from tomorrow. The aim is to achieve the most hits for a blog post in a day. The prize will be worth that of a King’s Ransom and will be revealed in good time. Cry havoc, and let slip the blogs of war!

Scribe

Adam Kane: kanead[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

wikimedia commons

14/01/2013

Unlocking your potential with the British Ecological Society

At their Annual Meeting in December just gone, the British Ecological Society held a special event for PhD students and Post Docs entitled “Unlocking Your Potential – Keys to a Successful Career in Ecology”. The purpose of the meeting, as you might have guessed, was to provide early career ecologists with advice on how to go about attaining and maintaining a career in the diverse field of ecology. This was not a meeting on how to survive your PhD, although as you can imagine, there were some small tips. The meeting, craftily held in a bar, featured a fantastic panel of speakers from a variety of ecological backgrounds, at various stages of their careers. In attendance were Professor Steve Ellner from Cornell University, Professor Georgina Mace from University College London, Jenny Bright from the RSPB, Paul Craze, editor of Trends in Ecology and Evolution, and Franciska De Vries from Lancaster University.

Each member of the panel effectively summarised how they progressed from studying as an undergraduate to where they are today – in around seven minutes! Each spoke very fondly of their current positions and the paths they had chosen in order to get there. What was most interesting was the diversity of career paths taken after each completed their PhDs. While some walked straight into a Post-Doc, others took more time, struggling to find a Post-Doc available or that they were interested in. Another found great opportunities in filling various short-term university teaching roles and never found the need/want (I can’t say which) to go for a Post-Doc. And another, knowing exactly where they wanted to work, had to volunteer and persist until finally getting their foot in the door with a contract. The diversity of paths taken directly relate to the type of career each speaker aspired to, as well as their personal interests.

Below are the main points I took from all of this, which I think hold relevance for current PhD and Post-Doc students, as well as those further along in their careers. Although it’s not always easy, spend time thinking about where you would like to go next and what you would like to do (i.e. what really interests you). However, remember things won’t always go as planned. Sometimes, no matter how well prepared you are, i.e. with the correct skill sets, good connections and an impressive academic history, there are forces beyond your control, e.g. a dip in the economy, changes in funding practices etc. Of course, other times everything will go exactly as you had planned, if not better! The panel admitted that so much of this progression comes down to luck and the opportunities that present themselves.

In the Q&A that followed, one chap asked a great question – “How do I make my own luck?” The consensus from the panel: by recognising a good opportunity when it comes your way and grabbing it by the… Opportunities will eventually present themselves; you need the ability to differentiate between those that will take you even slightly further in your desired direction and those that won’t. One of the major rewards: being able to go to work and effectively just work on whatever it is that really interests you.

Author

Seán Kelly: kellys17[at]tcd.ie

@seankelly999

Photo credit

wikimedia commons