MOWM 5: Your Poor, Poor Man

The other day I saw "The Five-Year Engagement". I thought it was really funny and I enjoyed it.
But, a few days later, I actually caught myself thinking about some aspects of the movie (not something I usually do with comedies) and I realized that the movie was full of annoying stereotypes. Sure, you'll say, stereotypes are what makes movies funny! True, but not when they hit close to home.

*SPOILER ALERT*
If you haven't seen the movie and plan to, stop reading now.

Tom and Violet live in San Francisco and get engaged at the beginning of the movie. Tom is a chef at a fancy San Francisco restaurant, while Violet seems to be a PhD in psychology, awaiting an offer of unspecified type from UC Berkeley. Instead, she gets an offer from the University of Michigan to go do a postdoc; they move and it all but destroys their relationship.

Let's put aside the fact that research in Violet's group is presented as a total joke; in the light of that, it makes it hard to believe Violet when she says she's worked so hard to get to the top of her field and that she would not want to quit now, that academia is her life... In my opinion,  all academic life is, almost invariably, depicted very inaccurately in movies. But, that is a topic for another post, or perhaps a series, and is not what I want to talk about...

First, very stereotypically, going to Michigan is portrayed as the ultimate in LAAAAAAAME. I am really sick of seeing how life is worth living only in New York, LA, or San Francisco; move anywhere else and you might as well blow your brains out, 'cause your life is totally over. First, Tom can't find a job except at a sandwich shop ('cause there are a total of 5 restaurants in Ann Arbor and there are presumably no other restaurants in the Detroit metro area. People are allowed to enjoy food only in coastal cities.) There is a scene where the whole crew at a restaurant gathers to laugh at Tom for having had a job in San Francisco and having left it to move "here".

The people Tom and Violet meet are fat, bearded, ugly, and terribly dressed. One of Tom's new friends is a male spouse of a University of Michigan faculty member; the guy complains about being a stay-at-home dad, talks about being emasculated by his position (within 10 seconds of meeting Tom at a party), and takes up knitting of the most hideous, misshapen sweaters known to humankind (apparently, that's what people wear in Michigan. 'Cause it's that lame.) 


But what got me the most is how downtrodden Tom became about leaving his fancy restaurant job in SF, moving to the seemingly ueber-lame Ann Arbor. He grows unkempt facial hair, starts hunting deer with his hideous-sweater-sporting buddies and makes all-deer meals, looks like he doesn't shower, and is generally just a pathetic mess. All this because his job at a sandwich shop (which by the way several people in the movie say they love) is such an unbearable step down from the fancy restaurant he worked at before. And let's not forget all the snow, which we also know makes life unworthy of living. 


This is what completely disgusts me: it's totally OK to ask women to leave their careers and dreams to follow their partners, and nobody bats an eyelash. Violet's sister lectures Violet how she, the sister, who by the way got knocked up accidentally by a total doofus, is now happy and fulfilled being a stay-at-home mom to the doofus's two kids and has given up her aspirations to be a kinesiologist, and that's totally the way to go.  But when a man follows a woman's career, then he invariably must turn into a useless, pathetic, smelly ballast. Forget about supporting your female partner, or showering and shaving for that matter. Passive-aggressive petulance FTW! 


* end of spoiler*

This movie reminded me of an encounter at a conference that I had gone to a little while before I graduated with a PhD. A senior professor from another university asked what I planned on doing when I graduate, I said I wanted to be a professor, and he told me I should not do that, that I should let my husband find work, and I should stay home and take care of the kids. If looks could kill, that man would have been struck by lightning and pulverized on the spot. I don't know what I said, it was to the effect that I didn't do a PhD do be a housewife, but I was very visibly pissed, so much that he hastily excused himself and left. 

In the coming years, I encountered several people who basically told me "Your poor husband!" when I informed them I was taking a faculty position and that my husband would be joining me (his staff job placement was part of my offer). Sure, my poor, poor husband; it totally sucks to have a job in your field waiting for you at the place where your spouse also has one. 


I think my husband is probably the person with the highest job satisfaction that I know. He looooves his job. He does a combination of lab work and teaching, the job is not a high-stress one, and he can quit at 5 pm, come home, and not think about it till the next work day. I cannot imagine he could find another job that he would love quite as much. Implying that we would both be happier if he had to be the sole bread-winner, working in a very fast-paced industry, while I were at home with the kids, is completely ludicrous; such an arrangement would have destroyed us both.


News flash: not every man wants to be a corporate drone, and not every woman wants to be a stay-at-home mom. There are many men who are perfectly happy as stay-at-home parents or in jobs that are less high-powered than those of their female partners. Implying that men are incapable of being supportive of their spouse's careers or the family in general without turning into a quivering, whiny pile of guilt-inducing crap is nothing but misandric patriarchal bullshit.

A Smurfy Birthday and Other Cheery News

Smurf the Smurfily Baby is one today! Happy birthday, Smurf!

We sent some cupcakes for the kids at his daycare and some cake for the teachers, and had a bit of cake at home. He was quite amused by the whole family singing "Happy birthday".

Smurf started walking about a month ago,often plopping on his diaper-padded butt at first, but practice makes perfect and he now walks quite competently. He also enjoys us mimicking his "tricks" -- he has a repertoire of clapping hands, shaking his head, wrinkling his nose, and blowing kisses -- and he squeals with delight when we repeat what he does. He understands simple sentences, like "No!", "Sit down." (in the tub), "Don't put that in the mouth!", "Come to mommy," and several others. He loves balls, and his first word is "baw". He also calls daddy "Dada" (says "Mama" but I don't think it actually refers to mommy, at least not yet.)

  

                           

Overall, Smurf is beyond awesome. Everyone in the family completely adores him. 

In other cheery news:

Smurf's Mom's birthday was a couple of days ago. She turned 3x13. It was a nice, active day. Middle Boy had an early afternoon playdate, Oldest Boy had a sleepover birthday party at a friend's house in the evening. Since Smurf's Mom doesn't really desire anything that can be bought for her (except maybe her own punching bag -- literally -- but she only thought of that today), she wanted to start what she hopes to be a family tradition: the family went to have family portraits taken (we've never done this before) and followed by an early dinner and ice cream between the two boys' activities. After dropping off Oldest Boy at his party, Middle Boy collapsed exhausted at 7, baby Smurf went to bed at 8. Suddenly, it was 8:30 and Smurf's parents had oodles of time alone! They saw "Shame" (highly recommended, and not only because Michael Fassbender walks around naked) and generally had some quality couples time. What more can a girl wish for on her birthday?

The last cheery bit of news is that I just found out today that a fairly large single-investigator grant of mine is being recommended for funding! It's a bit of a big-idea project of mine, and I have been trying to get it funded for a while, targeting two different agencies. While it it did receive good reviews in the past, it didn't get funded on account of not enough programmatic importance, just below the cutoff, etc. I revised after every rejection and I think this time I really did it right. Plus the stars aligned, I suppose. I was so happy (I literally screamed "Woo-hoo!" and jumped around when I received the email) but mostly I felt so relieved... I can now get another postdoc and another student for another 3 years and we can get this big idea working! So "Yey!" And "Phew..." Maybe I don't totally suck. Academia can be a very demoralizing game, with an unrelenting stream of rejections and very few affirmations. But persistence does pay off, usually. Besides, if you want an academic STEM job at an R1 university, then you really have no other choice but to keep going at it.  And then, when you finally do get the funding, it's so fuckin' exciting!!! Every time. 


To happy birthdays and new funding!

Declining Courtesy Authorships

In the last few months, I have taken myself off of some collaborative papers where I felt I had not contributed much. The person from my group who actually did the work was my postdoc, but he is pretty independent and didn't really need my input to do what he did as part of these collaborations. Therefore, I think he should be a coauthor but I shouldn't, so I asked to be removed. I think one lead senior author may have been a bit upset by my request to be removed, because he only removes himself from papers that he doesn't want to be associated with (e.g. doesn't believe the science). I do that too (luckily only had to do it a couple of times in the past), but this was not the case of questionable science -- I simply do not think I contributed in a substantial enough way, so I don't want to be a coauthor just because someone puts me automatically on everything that my postdoc contributes to.


We are here to yet again discuss the evergreen issue of authorship assignment. I don't want to discuss the cases where a person is clearly one of the key personnel, without whom the paper would not have happened -- they made absolutely critical contributions to the design, execution, analysis of data, or writing up of the paper. I am talking about the middle-of-the-author-list people, who were not key players but whose contribution may (or may not) have exceeded a byline in the acknowledgement. 


So I have been thinking about what my own minimum is for being comfortable with my own coauthorship. I think it is being involved in at least some (preferably most) collaborative meetings and discussions about the project (i.e I have made some intellectual contribution to the project's design or analysis), combined with a significant effort on the manuscript writing and editing. Alternatively, instead of collaborative meetings I could do a lot of work with my own group member on the theoretical side of the project, combined with a serious effort on writing and editing of the paper. 


I don't know; maybe it's my overall state of being progressively more exhausted, more jaded with my job and doing science in a very fast-paced, competitive field... The idea of being an author on a paper where I haven't really pulled my weight seems to become more and more distasteful to me as I grow older. I have realized that the ballooning discomfort with the concept of courtesy authorships has little to do with the prescribed authorship assignment code (although we should all be aware, and teach our students, what ethical behavior in our field is); rather, it comes from my own internal code of ethics and even so more from my own sense of professional pride. 


However, a few senior colleagues tell me that I am shooting myself in the foot by declining courtesy coauthorships (more papers --> more citations and more recognition etc.), that I need to relax and accept the courtesy authorships or, better yet, that I should in fact proactively seek them out. Gaaaah. I really really don't want to do this. It feels pathetic, like I can't do anything substantial on my own, so I have to leech onto other people's work. 


What are your own coauthorship-comfort criteria? How much do you minimally do for papers on which you are a coauthor? When (if ever) do you remove yourself from the author list? When (if ever) do you insist that someone put you on the paper as an author? Have you ever fought to have someone else taken off/put on and for what reason? (I have fought to get my postdoc on the author list a couple of times.) Lastly, do you think all these courtesy authorships are really important to one's career, that not having them hurts your record in the long run?

What's in a Name?

As regular readers likely know, my husband and I are immigrants, as well as parents to three adorable US citizens. We have been green card holders (i.e. permanent US residents) for over 5 years now, and this year we are filing our citizenship paperwork. Ideally, we will become citizens in time to vote in the upcoming presidential election. Also, I have some overseas travel next year and I would like, for the first time ever, not to have to assemble 7 lbs of paperwork in order to get a visa, which I need if I want to go pretty much anywhere with my current passport.

I kept my maiden name when I got married. I love my maiden name, it's somewhat long and weird by American standards, and it takes me forever to spell it over the phone (it appears that I do that a lot). But it's mine and I love it. I never really wanted to take my husband's name; I don't dislike his name or anything like that, I just like my maiden name better because it's mine, it's part of my identity, and I cannot imagine dropping it in any scenario. And it's got a "Z" in it, which means I get to say "Z as in zebra" whenever I spell it to someone. I still get a kick out of it. Every time. But, I have always been open to hyphenating, although the prospect of spelling two weird-sounding last names back-to-back  over the phone, all the time, sounds pretty exhausting.

When I got married, anything other than keeping the maiden name would have also been a paperwork disaster, as it would have taken me forever to first get the marriage recognized in my home country (we got married in the US), in order to be able to change my name there, then get a federal ID there, with which I could apply for a passport, which I could then use to re-apply for everything pertinent to my then student status in the US (change of name on I-20 form, new student visa, school records...) This would have been a very costly and painful process, especially since much of it would have had to be done done remotely, likely forcing my parents to deal with the spectacularly inefficient administration in my home country on my behalf. So I have had my maiden name the entire time I have been married (almost 13 years). I am fairly established in my career right now, under my maiden name. All the documents I have are in my maiden name, including the usual suspects such as the social security number, driver's license, payroll, mortgage, title on the car, health insurance paperwork for the entire family, IRS records, as well as the not-so-usual suspects such as federal granting agencies (e.g. NSF).

Now that I am applying for citizenship, I have the option of changing my name, so I have been contemplating whether or not to go through with hyphenation. I know my husband would be happy if I took his name or if I hyphenated, but he knows better than to press the issue. He has been a patient listener to many of my "women oppressed by patriarchy" monologues and knows about all the things I find unfair or oppressive. The real reason why I am even thinking about hyphenation is that it pains me that I don't have anything in  my name that ties me to my children. My husband and my sons have the same last name, and I have a different one. It has come up on several occasions when I flew by air with one of my sons -- my son  was asked explicitly by TSA or airline agents who I was to him, because the last names were different. My husband reports never to have been asked the same question.

Now you can ask why we didn't do something else with the boys' last name, like hyphenate theirs instead of me hyphenating mine. I personally think that it's not fair to burden little boys with not one, but two weirdly-sounding, weirdly-spelled  names. I have no burning desire to preserve our ethnic heritage; I am not sure that I am even equipped or entitled to preserve it anyway, as I was born in a large metropolitan city, I have had a pretty urban upbringing and  urban tastes, and don't feel the connection to most of my country's "country" or "heritage" anyway, which probably explains to a great extent why I don't care to socialize with most of my compatriots that I happened to meet in the US. I also want my children to be as seamlessly integrated into this society as possible and to not feel like outcasts. I don't want my children to constantly have to answer questions about where they or their parents are from, and these questions do come about more often with two weird names ("Your parents must be immigrants!") as opposed to just one ("Someone somewhere in your genealogy was an immigrant, just like everyone else's.") I may be wrong on this one, but this is my perception. [If you are an immigrant and your choices for your family and experiences are different from mine, please know that I don't judge your choices. Mostly, I am too preoccupied stressing and obsessing over my own to think about anyone else's.] But the most important reason behind my sons having my husband's last name is that I think it would have broken my husband's heart if they didn't.

So, I now have a chance to hyphenate my name and share a part of my last name with my children. What I don't know is what this change would mean in the rest of my life. Would I have to update my last name on all of the paperwork I am associated with, or just a select few, like the social security number, driver's licence, and passport? Can I still keep going under my maiden name in most situations, especially those pertinent to my career and possession of property? Have any of my readers managed to pull off a minimally invasive last-name-transplant surgery? Or am I just another would-be-but-ultimately-failing feminist who is instead a hopeless victim of the patriarchy for even considering hyphenating my name?

Tales of Author A$$holishness

I review a lot of manuscripts. I think it's an important service to the scientific community, and I feel that I don't have the right to expect prompt and thoughtful reviews unless I am willing to provide them myself.

When I am the author, I spend a lot of time thinking about the responses received and do my best to address each comment and incorporate appropriate changes in the manuscript as much as possible. Very rarely, a comment is truly baseless or the referee is in error, but I still make sure I address said comment politely. Overwhelmingly, referee reports are useful and interesting, and result in a better manuscript, one which will be better appreciated by the scientific community.

In my experience as a referee, I find that most authors seem to be like me: they carefully address each item raised by the referee, if they disagree they do so very politely, and generally try really hard to incorporate changes and appreciate constructive feedback.

But...

There are always jerk authors who think their work and presentation are beyond reproach, who act dismissively  towards a thoughtful and well-meaning referee report, or even insult the referee. I have an "Author Hall of Shame" with the names of authors who have been exceptionally  a$$holish when responding to one of my referee reports. No, actually I don't, I am too lazy to do that, but I would lie if I said I did not remember the names of some of the worst offenders, in order to ensure that I never ever review anything of theirs again.

The unchallenged champion  a$$hole authors were those on a paper I reviewed a few years back. It was a technically solid, very long manuscript submitted to a society journal. I said that I liked the technical part and that the results were interesting, but that the presentation needed work. My comments were to shorten and tighten up the abstract, to distill some of the key points of the paper (it was all over the place, and it was really not clear what the novelty was until you really carefully went through the very long paper), and I requested that a broader introduction be made, emphasizing that this work may connect to such and such areas (stupid me, actually wanting to help them make the paper accessible to a broader audience).

The response I received was this flaming 6-page diatribe in which they argued how it was trivially obvious that points 1-5 were the novel aspects of the work (none of what they claimed to be novel was obvious, only 2 or 3 out of 5 became obvious to me after a careful reading of the initial manuscript, and they didn't rewrite the paper to make anything clearer or more obvious), that one of the papers I suggested for them to cite had a huge abstract so there was no need for them to shorten theirs (again, idiot me for trying to suggest an improvement in information retrieval and readability), and overall the authors spent a tremendous amount of time basically trying to argue that I was full of $hit, that the paper was absolutely perfect, and that none of the comments had any merit.

I wrote back that I had never in my life received such a disrespectful response and that the authors should have spent the immense amount of time invested in the response letter on improving their manuscript instead. I was pissed for a week after that.

The paper then went back to another referee, who basically reviewed the correspondence and told the authors that they had gone too far with their response letter to me, and that none of what the authors insist on being novel was obvious at all from in the abstract, introduction, conclusion, and to anyone who did not read the paper in detail. After this arbitrator's response, the authors made the requested changes and the paper was published. (I saw all the correspondence after the paper had been accepted and I felt vindicated after the other referee had basically seconded my concerns.)

Fun fact: This paper was, coincidentally, authored by two women. I can only imagine what the editor thought ("Catfight!" "PMS!") reading the correspondence between two female authors and a female referee. I don't know if the corresponding author got the memo that us lady scientists are supposed to be even better behaved than male scientists, because we always run the risk of being labeled emotional/hormonal/crazy...

Today I received another a$$holish response to one of my reports (not sure still if it's "Author Hall of Shame" material), so I am fuming on the intertubes instead of working on a manuscript of my own. I basically recommended publication after minor revisions, but noticed that the authors cited themselves disproportionately much and it skewed the view of the field. I asked that they add more references (did not ask for any specific ones) that put their work in the broader context of the field and connect their work  to some of other closely related fields that are very active.

I get a response that they are puzzled by my assertion that there are too many of their own references, and that the connections to the other areas are interesting but that the subject is too broad to reference (so presumably they didn't want to bother looking any up). Yes, referencing  a double-digit number of your own papers (although technically clustered under a few references, each reference containing multiple papers) is totally not too many among  a total of  twenty-ish references (the other ones being mostly single-paper references, and largely written by  people you list in the acknowledgments). Yeah. A youngster picking up your paper will totally get a balanced view of the field.

When  a nice  referee asks that you add some references to more broadly represent the state of the art in the introduction, just fuckin' do it! I did not make anyone perform new and expensive experiments, or even run new simulations, just spend an afternoon on the Web of Science. DO IT! It's for your own paper's good. More often than not, that way you will discover some interesting papers you probably should have discovered previously anyway. Knowing the literature and where the state-of-the-art is in your subfield and closely related ones are important. Ignore them at your own peril.


I have to say one thing: among the authors who are jerks when resubmitting, Europeans make an overwhelming majority (I go by who the corresponding author is, or who signed the response letter, if applicable). In particular, there is a specific country in Europe that seems to breed surprisingly bellicose corresponding authors. Not sure why that is.

WTF people. I invest my time and energy to review manuscripts, and do it for free. If you are dismissive or disrespectful, next time I will simply not review your paper. And if our paths cross at a conference, I will go out of my way to not talk to you because I have it black-on-white that you are an ass.

I welcome you to share your own stories from the reviewer trenches.

MOWM 4: On Working Long Hours

Cloud had an excellent post on work hours and productivity from the standpoint of a manager. The essence of the post is that everyone has a work limit beyond which they are no longer productive or -- even worse -- they become counterproductive, as errors accumulate. Cloud argues that long hours are unnecessary and that with careful planning and partitioning large projects into smaller pieces one should seldom have to work long hours to meet a deadline.

The comments are also very interesting, as usual, and I encourage you to check them out. One comment in particular mentioned how they, an academic in a theoretical field, simply don't work when uninspired; instead they wait for inspiration to hit, at which point they work very long hours and get a lot of work  done... I, however, like to think, as the saying goes, that inspiration comes from doing, not the other way around.

The post and the comment reminded me of a recent conversation I had had with a graduate student of mine. He interviewed for a postdoc with a good group a few months ago, and secured the position. Of course, his future boss wants him to start as soon as possible. The student and I agreed long ago on what he needed to do before he graduates. Before graduation, he needs to finish a major part of his project, we need to write and submit a paper from his project which will include this major technical part, he needs to write up quality documentation for his code, as well as obviously write his dissertation (the dissertation should not take very long, once all the relevant papers are written up). The goal was to have him tentatively finish everything by the end of summer.

Now, the student has been stuck on a technical issue for a while now, and is not making much progress on either calculations or paper writing. I told him to go work on code documentation or those parts of his dissertation that don't require this particular set of data. Since he needs to graduate sooner rather than later, this would be a good use of his time and should alsohelp with the technical challenge by freeing his mind and letting it gnaw on the problem in the background. However, the student basically refused, saying that he could do all that later (cobbling code documentation at the last minute will not produce a quality document, that I know for sure) and that he couldn't work like me (?!); instead, he said that he preferred to work on one thing at a time, immersing himself completely, until he is completely done.

Can't work like me? Yeah, because I looove being interrupted all the time by the various things I have to do, and I could not possibly prefer to work on one thing at a time, immersing myself completely, until I am completely done.

Working on one thing at a time, for as long as you need to or feel like it, IS A LUXURY. It means there is no one else who depends on you; no one to pick up from school, make dinner for, or wipe their butts; no one who is on your team at work and needs your part of the project to get their own assignments done. I cannot tell you how many times it happened that I am in the middle of something exciting at work, and all of a sudden it's 5 o'clock, time to pick up the kids and go home to make dinner. My preference to stay immersed in  my work is completely irrelevant.

There is something intoxicating about working long hours on something challenging. I have been known to really enjoy pulling all-nighters, they make me feel strangely alive. It's probably the adrenaline. But, after an extended period of such work, I invariably crash. I can no longer routinely put in long hours or pull all-nighters followed by comatose periods, because it's not fair to my husband, who then has to take care of the kids, and it is not fair to my kids. Recently I had a really busy period because of the conference I was organizing. This period included several weeks of working very very long hours, a week where I did not see my kids at all even though I was in town, followed by a week to recuperate. I don't have the right to put this much strain on my family on a regular basis.

Lastly, there is sleep. I have had students who work regular hours and those who work and sleep erratic hours, in bursts. The most productive people have been those with regular work days -- come in the morning, work hard, go home in the evening and relax. People with erratic sleep and work habits ended up not being as productive overall as they could have been, because they'd get sick more often than average  and were consistently pushing themselves beyond the optimal efficiency limit. In my own personal and professional lives, there are many balls to juggle. I need to be in fighting shape for my family, for my students and coworkers, which means I need to be healthy and rested, both of which require enough sleep. Not that I am getting as much sleep as I need as regularly as possible, but I'm getting better at it. Sleeping enough makes all the difference to my energy levels and my mood.

Adapting your modus operandi to accommodate all the different people who depend on you for different things is not a personality trait (I particularly resent it when people imply it's somehow a women's trait). It is about recognizing that your life is no longer all about you and what you want, about accepting your  responsibilities. It's called being a grownup.

Personnel Turnover and Research Momentum

One of my most talented students is about to graduate this summer. He has done some quite difficult work and will have, if all goes as planned, his three first-author papers and a couple of second-author ones. So, even from the bean-counting standpoint, he's done a respectable job  (albeit not as earth-shattering as I think his talent would potentially allow... But I have written before about him not listening to me, so I won't repeat myself here.)

He joined my group 4.5 years ago. In our field, 4-5 years for a PhD is expected, with anything over 6 years being uncommon. I generally talk early and often with each student about what needs to be done for them to graduate, and their eventual graduation date usually reflects a balance between when they would like to defend and when I think they have done enough. I am not one to hold on to students indefinitely, and as long as they have published at least three papers from the dissertation, I will not object to them defending. So far I haven't had to bend the three paper rule, but I imagine I probably might have sometime in the future. (Although I don't imagine ever being comfortable with a student having zero publications from a dissertation.)

Anyway, what I have been thinking about is how the relatively short duration of the PhD means that one student never does get to fully explore a rich, interesting research topic. Think about it: for the first 2 years in graduate school (give or take a semester, I suppose the load depends on the university and the major), students are mostly focused on coursework and make progress in research largely during the summer. Progress is initially slow, but then in years 3 and 4 it becomes more rapid. By the time the student is fully mature and capable of appreciating the bigger picture as well as the technical nuances, it is time for them to graduate. From a purely research standpoint, this is really a shame, as they abandon their project when they finally have the expertise to tackle the most interesting and difficult open questions. If the student were to stay for another year or two, they could really cash in on their expertise and produce some quality, high-impact publications. But, this is where the students invariably can't wait to get out.

There is always the option of staying as a postdoc for a year or two after graduation, but this is not the best thing for most people. In my experience, people may stay for a short postdoc (~ 6 months) to wrap things up, and this stint doesn't adversely affect one's CV. But I have to say that I haven't seen many people who stay at the same institution past a few months, and the few cases I have seen have only done so because they have two-body issues (waiting for a spouse to graduate, spouse has a good job and won't leave area, etc.) Most people still expect to see a postdoc from an institution different from one's PhD alma mater.

I was a student not that long ago, and I understand how it feels to want to graduate and just get out of there. You are sick of your project(s) and just want to do something else. Live somewhere else. Make a little or a lot more money. Also, being able to say that one graduated in 4-5 years as opposed to 6-7 is certainly a worthy consideration, perhaps one that surpasses a few extra publications of the CV/resume for most people, especially those with nonacademic aspirations. There is no doubt that there are many good reasons for people to want to get out as fast as they can and take up a position (a postdoc, a job) elsewhere, so I have no intention of holding back people who have done enough for a PhD.

What I am interested in here is what happens to the research project they leave behind. I am not talking about projects that fail -- rather, I am talking about a successful research project that has perhaps after a 3-year grant now opened new and exciting vistas for your group to explore. We are teachers, we train people en route to advanced degrees, and have obligations to them, but we also have obligations to the federal agencies and the public to advance the science and technology through research. Often, I feel these two facets of a professor's job are actually in collision with one another...

Most of us already run pretty lean operations -- it would be nice if I could fund three students to work on the same subset of problems at any given point in time, with their seniority staggered, but it's very hard to have so much redundancy in funding, at least for a theorist like me, working in an applied physical science field. In my group, everyone has their own main project, as well as a couple of satellite ones. There may be some shared expertise, e.g. a postdoc may offer some expertise to a graduate student and be a second author on the student's papers, but each group member knows on which projects they are the lead and on which ones they have a secondary role. (I have never had squabbles over authorship order.)

In my field, it is not the norm to have multiple postdocs; you may have one postdoc, maybe two. Only the very large experimental groups have permanent research staff; I don't, and most of the colleagues in my department and closely related ones don't. Students are the generally the owners of their own projects. When a student graduates, usually there is a new student continuing the work, but such a student is a novice and needs a fair bit of time to ramp up. Even if you hire a postdoc to continue the work, that person will need ramp-up time, maybe not as much as a young student, but still... From a purely research point of view, the loss of momentum that accompanies these transitions is the norm rather than an exception.

The situation becomes pretty difficult when there is a special type of expertise needed and the person who has it leaves. It can take a very long time to find someone with the needed aptitude, train them, and have them take over. I am not sure how often this happens in experimental sciences, but I certainly have projects that a number of students could do, and then there are those that only select students with a certain kind of talent can do. Ensuring continuation on the latter kind of project can be a real challenge.

What are your experiences in terms of maximizing momentum in a specific research direction in the light of invariable student graduations or other personnel turnover? How much staffing redundancy is common on a project in your field? How much do funding issues affect continuity in your group? Do you feel like there are sufficient options for renewal funding beyond the standard 3-year grants (don't know what NIH R01 duration is, but NSF and DOE and many DoD grants are 3 years)? How much redundancy is fair to students and postdocs  (i.e. each one having own project as opposed to there being uncomfortably great overlap, where your group members are competing among themselves)  provided that funding is not an issue?