Using zebrafish to study human disease and disorders. Mom to a daughter with Angelman Syndrome. Rare disease advocate. Opinions my own. Retweet only = interest
Sep 6, 2019 • 30 tweets • 6 min read
It's the start of graduate school in the sciences for many of you. So it's also the season of unsolicited advice for first year students! Here's mine. Warning, it isn't always warm and fuzzy. /1
You are a student, yes, but from this point on you are also a professional. Your behavior will reflect back on you positively or negatively, and it is in your control. Ok, that sounds harsh, so what do I actually mean? /2
Jul 18, 2019 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
When I first started my job, a professor once said to me, "How many hours are you working each week." My response was, "I'm not playing that game with you." I get that PIs need to see you are in the lab and working, in order to get a sense that you are committed. /1
But the idea of comparing your hours at work in some attempt to determine if you are "good" or not is ridiculous. No one gets promoted for working long hours. They get promoted for getting results. /2
May 9, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
#zebrafish tweeps - at the PI meeting this year, we had a very heated discussion about using F0 "crispants" as data in publications. Some felt these would be as bad as MO and less easy to control (off-target issues, multiple insertions/deletions, etc). /1
Others felt they were ok for seeing if you were on the right track with something, but that you would need to make the stable line regardless. Either the support for F0 crispant data was silent and drowned out by the negatives. Or there wasn't any support. /2
Jan 26, 2019 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
It's not impossible. Is it harder than if you didn't have kids? Probably. But then we also having aging parents, our own health issues, bumps in the road, divorces, marriages, laundry to do, meals to cook etc. /1
You can't divorce being a person with a life from being a scientist. And saying that adding kids to the mix is the one thing that makes or breaks you isn't rational IMVHO. Institutions that don't help or accomodate can break you. /2
Feb 23, 2018 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Some thoughts on reviewing submitted manuscripts. I am one of those reviewers Twitter complains about. I take longer than 10 days, routinely. I try to get to these as quickly as I can. Why does it take me so long? There are a lot of reasons. /1
When I review a paper in my field, it can take me 2-3 hours if it's a topic I know well. I read every word. I check the methods. As much as I despise supplemental data, I read every word. I look at all the figures and legends carefully. I make notes of little things to fix. /2
