Show us on the doll where the Muse touched you

As anyone who has ever had a term paper due on the rising sun can attest, writing don't come easy. You got to pay your dues if you want to sing the blues. To this day, I can remember staring at the blank first page of my doctoral dissertation every day for a month. And that was just a summary. (By the time I defended, I had already published the chapters of my dissertation as journal articles. My advisor told me to put a staple through a stack of reprints, add a summary, and turn it in to the grad school. Which, oddly enough, I couldn't do because the journal publisher now owned the copyright to the chapters. But I digress.) The breakthrough came only after nicking a line from Kandel, which is usually the best solution to this sort of problem.

Writer's block. Bête noire of the would-be author. Yet, one is also on occasion gripped with the logorrhea, a word sharing its root with a more visceral kind of spewage. An insatiable urge to write, for better or worse, an affliction no less painful than its noneffluent cousin. If you mouse around in the right margin you can find a 10,000 word primer on variational calculus, among other curiosities, which I mostly wrote in one sitting. Why? Who knows. Some people like to hear themselves talk; others like to read themselves write.

A Field Guide to the Lords of Science

As if nerd school wasn't hard enough already, we can't even agree what everyone's name is.

It all started back in the day. The King began granting lordships to persons who he believed had contributed an important and lasting contribution to the Crown. One's lordship came with, presumably, a manor, including moat, stables, serfs, villeins, cottars, bordars, freeholders, copyholders, and a full compliment of picturesque peasant girls with ripped bodices (Constable painting optional).

The famous-type person being famous for actually having accomplished something and not for simply booting with a bunch of Rutger's coeds on MTV, the Lord would inevitably wind up in the textbooks.

Here's where the trouble starts.

Ode to the Scientific Method

The biggest discovery that came out of the lab I did my graduate work in happened by accident. It's rather esoteric so I won't trouble you with the details, save to say we published it in Nature (which is academicspeak for suck it, nerds).

The result didn't exactly translate into fame and fortune, although it did get me a sit-down with Francis Crick before he died. I'm quite sure he thought I was an idiot, but at least his English manners repressed him from saying so.

The point being, Science is no stranger to serendipity. A list of famous accidental discoveries, which I created using my extensive knowledge of science history and not at all by cutting and pasting something I found on Wall Street Insider Weekly, includes: X-rays, microwave ovens, the pacemaker, quinine, radioactivity, penicillin, viagra, insulin, dynamite, saccharin, anesthesia, and the nine best ramen spots in NYC. (Aside: It's rather amusing to read technical blurbs written by business majors. Their summaries come perilously close to resorting to terminology like "nulecules.")

There's lots of stuff we can add to this list that would mean nothing to the average punter but were blind luck nonetheless (e.g., the thingy I opened with). The larger point is all this seems at odds with the popular notion of research. Wherefore the scientific method? you may be asking, the crumbling of your beloved worldview causing improper usage of Shakespearian lingo. Were you to waltz into our laboratory after somehow slipping past the armed guards (medical schools are invariably located in a bad part of town) would you not find us at the bench carefully checking off a printed list of standard milestones in hushed tones as we titrate or microscopulate or do whatever the heck it is we do with our fat government cash?

Perhaps you believe nerds receive a Scientific Method tattoo at the conclusion of our smartification process, or have it embroidered on a throw pillow or burned into our forearms like Kung Fu when he left the monastery in Kung Fu.

Well, if you believe any of that, I'm afraid I have some bad news.

LabKitty's Guide to SFN -- Part II : The Conferencing

Like nerd salmon returning to their ancestral home waters, mercifully sans the spawning, tens of thousands of neuroscientists converge, 737s coming out of the sky like John Fogerty on a midnight ride to Memphis, but more likely DC or San Diego. The Society for Neuroscience (SFN) annual conference can easily overwhelm the first-time attendee, a breathtaking GRE score not necessarily translating into a useful skill set where the bright lights and the big city meet. Like marriage or the buffet table, the second go-round usually proves an improved experience for all involved. Fortunately, LabKitty has distilled the conference experience into a collection of sage observations for those looking to get a leg-up on the learning curve. Think of LabKitty as the Princeton Review of SFN, sans the hefty price of admission.

In Part I of LabKitty's Guide to SFN, we traveled from Alma Mater to conference city, battling dragons and trolls along the way. Purchasing. The TSA. Ground transportation. Hotel dicks. We also learned some tricks for good poster design. I prep you for the show. What to expect, what to see. Where to go, who you know. And, of course, your own personal 15 minutes of fame (or four hours of humiliation, depending on the crowd): your poster presentation.

The hall is now rented, the orchestra engaged.

It's time to see if you can dance.<

LabKitty's Guide to SFN -- Part I : Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

The Society for Neuroscience annual conference (SFN) is a rite of passage for neurowonks everywhere. Thousands of us converge on some lucky city for a week to mingle and learn. It's junior high science fair all over again, except not quite so many potato batteries.

Like falling in love, the SFN experience is something that remains inexplicable until you experience it yourself. Fortunately, that hasn't dissuaded LabKitty from explaining stuff before. Join me now for an insider's look at SFN, focusing on helpful tips for graduate students and others attending the conference for the first time. Sure, the Society sends you a booklet and handy email reminders, and your advisor may have one or two things to say, but LabKitty dishes the dirt. What to expect, what to see, what to avoid. Missed flights. Conference food court poisoning. Fistfights with hobos in the parking lot. Provocatively-dressed women offering to demonstrate "a little patch clamping" for $200 back at the hotel.

Learn from LabKitty's mistakes.

Learn.

Tips for a Good Conference Poster

November brings with it the big annual neuroscience conference, and that can mean only one thing: poster time! Yet, whether it's SFN in the fall, ARVO in the spring, or just a university mini-symposium or high-school science fair, it's always poster time somewhere. Occasionally you'll have the option to show your work as a slide presentation, but the poster remains the primary conference workhorse. A poster gives you more opportunity for one-on-one interaction with the crowd. The give and take of scientific exchange. A chance for face time with others working in your field. And a poster gives you something to bring home and hang up outside your office, which helps people understand what the heck you've been doing with all the grant money the government's been giving you.

That being said, a poster barn is not exactly the ideal venue for information exchange. It's noisy. It's crowded. The attendees have issues. There's much to see in little time and, especially at the big conferences, posters can easily begin to blur together. Your audience brings a range of backgrounds, from doe-eyed newbies struggling with the material to jaded Nobel laureates who have seen it all. Many visitors might have jet lag, or a splitting headache, or a gut full of conference dogs.

Hence, good poster design is vital. My advisor use to tell us stand behind your data, not in front of it! Still, what you're standing behind needs intelligent organization. That doesn't happen by accident, and if you do it right people won't know you did it at all. There's more to it than simply taking what you did in your last paper and bigifying it.

Ken Ham sleeps with the jawless fishes

LabKitty spent most of high school keeping a low profile, taking a page from Red Green on self-defense (Quando omni flunkus moritati). Being singled out with the other smart kids in grades K-6 for the gifted program did nothing if not ensure the wrath of the student body once teenage hormones kicked in. Yes, yes, it all sounds so very cliche: little nerd kid gets picked on. But on the mean streets of Circle Pines, the reality was not quite so Rockwellian. I recall one nerdling who got beat in the face so bad he went to the hospital.

Perhaps this explains that odd nerd archetype: the martial arts fanatic. I have lost count of the number of tech people I have met in my travels who lead a double life outside the lab honing themselves into a remorseless killing machine. There are few things more unnerving than pulling an all-nighter in the clean room all-the-while knowing the guy in the pink bunny suit one vacuum chamber over could at any moment blow a head gasket and demonstrate the five-finger exploding putamen technique. A smaller subset than the spindly asthmatic nerd archetype or the portly diabetic nerd archetype, but still. Joseph Campbell should consider looking into this.

Some famous scientists who died young, and what have you accomplished by the way?

When you're young, your potential is infinite. You might do anything, really. You might be Einstein. You might be DiMaggio. Then you get to an age where what you might be gives way to what you have been. You weren't Einstein. You weren't anything. That's a bad moment. -- C. Berris

Any academic who tells you they never thought about winning the Nobel prize (or a Fields Medal) is pulling your tail. You're not supposed to admit it, of course. It's déclassé. Still, misquote a prize requirement or an announcement date at any faculty gaggle and watch how quickly you are corrected on minutiae of the selection committee by-laws. People don't memorize those things for fun.

Yes, prizes are nice. The recognition of your peers. The money. The top-notch Swedish hookers (so I'm told). But underneath it all is the drive to create something enduring. Something world changing. And live long enough to get it noticed, laureate group photos still looking like a daguerreotype of the first Solvay conference. If your impression of science is eureka on Monday, patent office on Wednesday, and pick up your prize on Friday, I'm afraid you are in for a shock. Most people go to the grave before they go to Stockholm.

A Citizen's Guide to University Research Funding

The subject of research funding comes up in the news from time to time and usually not in a good way. We're spending too much on this. We should spend less on that. A racy study got funded that's upsetting some folks. Some other study got funded that's not really racy but it's also upsetting some folks. Scientists are participating in a global conspiracy to fudge results to keep the money spigot flowing (I wish).

Yet, for all of this bark bark, I'd bet the average citizen has no idea what's involved in getting the government to pony up grant money. Is it just a phone call? A secret handshake? How do eggheads get their paws on your hard-earned tax dollars?

Well LabKitty is here to help. Today, I break the academic's omertá to give you a glimpse inside the grant application sausage factory. Risking life and limb to bring this sordid tale to light, I am, although not really because, let's face it, most university faculty have little garter-snake arms that'll snap right off at the elbows. It's not like they're going to come after me. Still, I like to think of myself as the Erin Brockovich of research funding, albeit not quite so bosomy.

So if you ever wondered how the wheels of progress get greased, ever wanted a gander at the sweaty guys below decks shoveling coal and money into the great boilers of research, ever wanted to wander backstage at FundingPalooza, ever wondered how science turns adorable barnyard animals into tasty treats, then this one's for you.

Read on, citizen, and become better-informed.

Tips for Giving a Good Talk

While there are many things LabKitty sucks at (Lebesgue integration, volleyball, marriage), people tell me I give kick-ass talks. My thesis advisor deserves most of the credit here, taking the time to debrief my performance after many a departmental seminar, gently praising the high points and patiently correcting my rookie mistakes and general horribleness. He eventually crafted me into the polished toastmaster you see standing before you today. Sort of like what Colonel Parker did for Elvis.

There is indeed more to giving a good talk than just knowing your stuff. And while there is no substitute for having a trusted Svengali to assist you on your path to embetterment, there are also simple things you can do that will make you and your talk better right out of the gate. Twelve things, to be exact, which I am willing to share with you in Internet form at no charge.

LabKitty will tell you these things because LabKitty loves you (actually, LabKitty will tell you these things because more people giving good talks = less time LabKitty spends in talks pining for the sweet release of death).

Five things I wish someone had told me when I started college

Ah, freshman year. A time when our little pink cortexes stir from slumber and awake to a world of possibility and wonder. When the black mist of high school begins to lift, revealing crippling emotional scarring and poor study habits entrenched in our cerebral gyri like the German army at Stalingrad. Only our Waterloo would not be the harsh Russian winter, but rather the cold indifference of the higher education machine.

LabKitty twisted in the this sudden wind of freedom and new responsibilities, a tillerless tall ship in a tumultuous tempest. Left without the sage advice and stern backhand of my guidance councilor, I made more bad choices than Pee-wee Herman in a Florida movie house. I wasted more time groping in the dark than Hugh Hefner during a solar eclipse.&

f I only knew then what I know now.