When my supervisor pitched the PhD to me, it was all about analyzing "big data". I had BSc/MSc experience in wet-lab biology (mainly culturing cells), however I wanted to branch out into Bioinformatics since I am, and always have been, fairly good at programming in C, and data analysis in general.
I chose this particular PhD because the idea was we take a particular tissue from a mouse, run all kinds of different assays on the same pool of cells, and then create an analysis that would essentially get more information out of the data than any 1 assay alone could tell us, by integrating the data together in clever ways. That was the plan anyway.
What actually happened was that the protocol to get this tissue out of the mouse had yet to be developed, and without the tissue there would be no sequencing, and without sequencing there would be no data. So for the first year I had to roll up my sleeves (figuratively), and learn how to kill a mouse quickly and painlessly, to cut out and purify that 1 tissue I needed for sequencing. Again, in reality, this wasn't so simple. Although you don't/didn't need a licence in Germany/Europe to just kill a healthy mouse and take out some tissue (only to kill it in stressful ways, or if it's a mouse with a special phenotype), I feel you should still ideally be taught. Unfortunately, although other PhDs/Postdocs in my lab work with mice, I couldn't get anyone to teach me at the time, so the whole experience was pretty traumatic. I started off by filling up cages with CO2 (completely) and then putting the mice in, rather than what I now know you should do, which is to slowly increase the CO2. This will forever haunt me. I later learned to do cervical dislocation, which is better for everyone.
However, after I was able to sacrifice and extract the tissue I needed, I started getting asked to do more and more frankly grotesque experiments. Draining all the blood from a semi-conscious mouse. Implantation of electrodes. Cold room experiments. I can think of several more, but it's not really suitable for here. Of course this was all legal and above board - and important science that needed to be done - however I just cannot personally continue doing this sort of work. It all makes me feel slightly sick, and more importantly, I hate myself for doing it. What started off as probably 20-40 mice for the data I needed, is probably now at 500-600. Maybe more. I stopped counting.
But the reality I face now is that there are still 2 more years to my PhD to go, and I really don't/can't continue this for another 24 months. I have explained the situation to my PI, but he tells me quite bluntly - "this is what you are required to do as part of your PhD". On one occasion he said if I didn't do it, that's OK, but "you won't have enough data for your PhD defense."
That is total nonsense of course. I've already published and the data analysis - which I am now spending most of my time doing - has gone great. I'll be publishing some of the tools pretty soon too. The problem is that if I stop killing mice, my boss is going to really make things miserable for me for the next two years - and the end result of that might even be I'm asked to stop working on the PhD. I don't know exactly how or through what mechanism I would get kicked off the PhD, but my boss/PI is obviously a lot more senior than me and he's paying me every month (which he reminds me of, every month), and we both know if I don't kill the mice, some one else is going to have to.
What should I do?
EDIT: Out of respect for the German PhD system, I should point out that my supervisor isn't German - and I'm confident that another supervisor would have handled the issue very differently. Whilst I'm not confident it is an isolated case, I don't think in this scenario there was anything the Institute (or affiliated University) could have done better/differently.
Honestly, the take home message for me is that I wish I had asked this question sooner, had received all of the kind and encouraging words earlier, and then maybe I would have had the courage to do the right thing before it grew into something more difficult. Thank you all so much!
Answer
tonysdg asked in a comment
Can you talk to the department head? Or even better, a university ombudsperson (aka a neutral 3rd party who can discuss your options with you)?
and you replied
I don't know - I'm studying in Germany and I can't speak German.
While it might be a good idea to learn German, you most probably don't have to know German to contact your university's ombudsperson.
Universities tend to be very international environments, and English being the predominant language in middle and western European international research, the ombudsperson is likely to know English and maybe even some other foreign languages. If they don't (or if they don't know English well enough), they can probably get hold of a trustworthy interpreter/translator.
More importantly, I absolutely cannot do anything that results in my PhD coming to an end. If my supervisor gets in trouble, it hurts both of us.
Similar to medical practitioners, priests and attorneys an organization's official ombudspersons are usually required to grant confidentiality to all who come to them for seeking advice or for filing complaints. They might be trained in de-escalating hairy situations of power abuse by superiors in scenarios of dependency like yours. Usually, they will not take any action that you didn't agree to, unless they are required by law to do so (which isn't the case often) or when the situation requires escalation to stop severe harm (e.g., if others are in danger by someone's action).
The exact rules might differ from organization to organization, but it is neither rude nor is there any shame in asking the ombudsperson what rules apply to their role before even deciding whether to confide in them. So if you don't make public that you're going to see the ombudsperson, doing so should pose near-zero threat to you and your PhD project.
Having said that, I will definitely look into it
Please do. Even if your university does not have an official ombudsman or ombudswoman, there might be unofficially assigned persons of trust in the institutes fulfilling a similar role and playing by similar rules. (If there are, again, ask what the rules are before proceeding.)
Your university's website probably has more information on this. If it's a larger university (and by the type of research you do, it probably is) the website and that information is likely available in both, German and English.
You can also ask your head of department, head of institute, the university's headmaster or any other of your boss's bosses, who the ombudsperson responsible for you is. If you ask them, you can (and probably should) do so without mentioning that (and why) you want to see the ombudsperson.
I did a web search myself and found there is an official German organization called "Ombudsman für die Wissenschaft" (ombudsman for science), appointed by the renowned association DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft e.V.). The organization's website seems to be entirely in German, but they do have an English inquiry form for reporting conflicts and suspected violations of "good science" rules / suspected scientific misconduct.
They seem to be more focused on "good science" rules and scientific misconduct investigations than on conflicts, but according to their own examples in these presentation slides, they do consider "Inadäquate Doktorandenbetreuung" (inadequate / unsatisfactory support / supervision of PhD students) a violation of those "good science" rules, not just plagiarism, made up data, skewed results etc.
They also publish a "Liste der Ombudspersonen an deutschen Hochschulen und Forschungseinrichtungen" (list of ombudspersons at German universities and research facilities). I'm not sure how up-to-date that list is, but the people on it are probably still around. If they aren't active ombudspersons any more, they can probably tell you who's in charge of their chair nowadays.
Whether you confide in a local ombudsperson at your university or send an inquiry to the "Ombudsman für die Wissenschaft" organization is up to you. The DFS's white paper that lead to founding "Ombudsman für die Wissenschaft" is explicit about this:
Hochschul- oder Institutsangehörige werden ihre Probleme in der Regel bevorzugt einer örtlich erreichbaren Instanz mit Kenntnis der lokalen Verhältnisse vortragen wollen. Sie sollen dazu aber selbstverständlich nicht verpflichtet sein, wenn sie es vorziehen, sich unmittelbar an den [...] überregionalen „Ombudsman“ zu wenden.
(My translation: University and institute members will usually prefer to bring their issues forward to a locally available entity with knowledge about the local circumstances. Of course, they shall not be required to do so if they prefer to address the [...] supraregional ombudsman directly.)
No comments:
Post a Comment