I don't know how some people are granted PhDs in biomedical research and they can't do anything to save their lives. How can you come from a molecular biology/ cell culture lab with a PhD and you can't:
1. plate cells/ do cell culture
2. make media
3. do PCRs
4.western blots
5.read a recipe and make simple reagents
7. isolate DNA/RNA
8. transformations, cloning etc
How can you have a PhD and not know how to do any of these fundamental things? but give an interview/ presentation showing results that relied on these said skills.
Answer: Have some one else do them for you but not tell anyone or give them credit.
I am increasingly annoyed (as a grad student) from my encounters with postdocs who can't do JACK SHIT to save their lives, but yet your ass gets paid more than me.
Maybe it's just my lab that takes in these fakers but we have postdocs who can't do any of the above and many other things that I know how to do even techs know how to do.
Today's incident:
There is a postdoc who came from a lab that works on a protein that I am the only one in my lab that works on it (Protein M). Most of her papers are in vitro cell culture based with westerns etc. some on this protein but from a completely different approach. She's confessed on many occasion that they had a tech and a grad student in her old lab that did everything for them.
I worked on this protein M for a while and discovered something novel but it was a side project and as such got put on the back burner. When she got here she wanted to work on it not knowing that in my lab, I am the go to person. So she asked me if there was anything I was planning to do, I told her we have a manuscript we are working on but needed one or two more experiments to tie it together. So we discussed it and she agreed to look at the expression of Protein M in a series of cancer lines via simple Westerns and the interaction of Protein M with it's regulator Protein X via IP. And then knock down Protein X and probe for Protein M.
Is this difficult???
The reason I can't take this on is because I have three months left and other shit to do. She has been growing these cells forever, how hard is it to thaw, plate, trypsinize, re-plate, treat, collect, lyse. She's like the cells don't look good, I'm about to loose my patience with her.
Oh My God, now on to the westerns. She didn't know how to measure the protein and I showed her fine, it took her a while to calculate the concentration that we needed, then I was like everything is ready for you to go ahead and start.
She started to complain that she took for granted all the things the other people in her lab did for her, now that she has to do them herself. She complained that all the buffers in her lab were bought and why we make our own and she's not comfortable using home made reagents. I told her that in our lab western reagents are the same as the ones you buy, we just make own and because it's cheaper. She started to tear up I kid you not, I saw she was about to cry so I told her that if he's not comfortable doing it our way I have no problem doing it. No,no, no I'll do it, mind you the samples have been sitting out for a couple hours now, then she disappears for 2 hours, so I took back the samples and told her I'll do it. Then she like you can do this, do that. Bitch I don't need you to tell me how to do anything, unlike you I can do almost everything because having no techs in this lab, meant I had to do everything for myself.
I am so disappointed,so pissed because I don't have time to do this right now, so bewildered at people who essentially are faking it till they make it. I was straight forward with her before she started this, I told her you won't get credit for anything unless you do the work and I mean bench work. Anybody can discuss anything, I can go outside and find a crackhead and discuss science with him, but that doesn't mean he'll have his name on a paper.
A note to postdocs and students who are about to be postdocs, STOP FAKING IT, people will see right through you. If you don't know how to do something ask, if you 'published' something and you don't know how to do it, figure out a way to learn it.
STOP FAKING SCIENCE AND YOUR CVs
