[prashp]

This is just a regular PhD experience, but the author has made it sound like some special sort of skill only they and a few others know how to master.

Everyone has to turn failed experiments into a successful PhD because they have to finish and graduate by the time funding runs out.

[vikramkr]

That's not really true. They don't have to finish and graduate by the time funding runs out - nearly half of students simply fail to graduate (in the us).

It's also extra untrue because this author is describing running into a null result and turning that into a PHD when usually null results don't go anywhere, either to a thesis or a publication.

But it becomes true again in the context that the null result is nice framing for this article but isn't the framing in the intro/contents of the thesis. And also because:

"A turning point came when another graduate student suggested a dramatic change to my protocol. I was skeptical, but I thought it was worth a shot. It turned out they were correct: After trying yet another experiment, the results started to look better—and after a few more changes, I eventually got the protocol to work. "

doesn't sound like a failed experiment to me!

[analog31]

Oddly enough, my PhD was also saved by a fellow grad student suggesting a different experiment that used the same equipment. I was ready to drop out and apply to the engineering school.

[glitchc]

PhDs are more about perseverance than anything else, as highlighted in this story.

[vikramkr]

well, also luck. Plenty of people have a PI change which can be devastating especially on a visa, or wouldn't have gotten the recommendation for the other protocol to get it to work, and also for the current crop - giant global pandemic shutting down all the labs - did you pick a topic that's essential research/not lab based? And strategy. If you chose a field based on passion instead of practical considerations like grant availability - life might be more complex in infectious disease research than in oncology lol. And academia politics. Though for some obviously politics is a plus

[authorfly]

Can you explain how you would determine or know about grant availability?

Especially that "life might be more complex in infectious disease research than in oncology" - as an outsider this really caught my interest, I'd have imagined the two have similar levels of grants? Maybe more than a field like Psychology or Developmental Biology, about the same?

Does this mean more people are going into in disease research because A) it's more interesting to them? (vs Oncology)... or B) The grants from COVID mean it's a better field?

[gilswhy]

https://report.nih.gov/

You can see NCI (National Cancer Institute) leading the pack there, with NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) coming in second.

It surprises me how few people, even in my field(s) (which are overwhelmingly funded primarily by NIH), know of or use these tools. Particularly RePORTER and the advanced project search functions.

[vikramkr]

That's part of academic politics. Navigating grant funding is arguably one of the most important skills that a PHD program is supposed to teach given how important that is to the process of research.

Oncology has way way way more funding because there's a much bigger market for it - infectious diseases primarily affect poor people who aren't Americans so not much money in it. Even at the peak of covid I remember advisors warning phd applicants passionate about infectious diseases that the funding surge wasn't going to last and to be careful (which was right). Consider how moderna was originally founded as a vaccine company before almost completely shifting focus to oncology because that's where the money was. Obviously they swung back to vaccines when the pandemic showed up but now they're back focused on oncology.

Funding priorities are also set by the government - there's the cancer moonshot etc which means tons and tons of cancer funding. For universities new cancer treatments are quite valuable IP. And so on. Within a field it becomes very obvious where the funding and momentum is - what are the buzzwords everyone is putting in their grants and papers (nanotech? AI?), what types of publications are getting published int he big journals. Gene therapy came out of its winter after luxturna for example. Car-t was booming after the first approval there, entire departments were set up for it. Mrna stuff is super hot right now, but one of the researchers behind the core technology (that made her university like a billion dollars in royalties) was denied tenure and pushed out of academia when she originally developed the technology because it was considered not useful. First lab I worked in - the PI was fresh out of his postdoc and got hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding and his own lab and bought his own flow cytometer and everything (absolutely not the normal path lol) because he was a first author on a particularly good CRISPR paper. On one hand - trend chasing and bubbles have their obvious downsides. On the other hand - it does mean a lot of resources get funneled into new interesting areas when something cool pops up. But on the original hand - trend chasing and bubbles, welcome to humans on earth i guess. But yeah in terms of how you know about it - you'll know it's quite obvious who's getting money and tenure.

Infectious disease in particular is going to have a really hard time. No market for it, no industry demand. Investments there are already winding down in general: https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/johnson-and-johnson-sh....

[peppertree]

I don't think the author was trying to position herself as "special". It's a pretty universal experience to try something unkonwn and feeling like a failure. I think the author is trying to convey that it's ok to feel that way.

[JadeNB]

> This is just a regular PhD experience, but the author has made it sound like some special sort of skill only they and a few others know how to master.

Making a regular experience sound like a special sort of skill only you have is itself a special sort of skill that it's valuable to have if you want to apply for grants.

[authorfly]

How do you effectively apply to PhD grants, is it different to winning say Startup / Innovation grants?

[JadeNB]

> How do you effectively apply to PhD grants, is it different to winning say Startup / Innovation grants?

I'm afraid that I don't have the faintest idea, both because my grant activity hasn't been noticably effective (and I held no grants while pursuing my Ph.D.), and because I've never applied for a Startup / Innovation grant.

[nxobject]

I don’t think she’s saying “only _I_ can do this!!” - it just read to me like a “this is a what happened and what I learned from it”. Actually, I think I’ll send this article to my high school physics teacher - he was a good mentor, and he might enjoy giving it to his students.

[ericmcer]

Agree this seems like basic things you would figure out doing anything uncertain. The first blocked out quote of the article is:

“If an experiment doesn’t go as expected, it doesn’t necessarily mean you did something wrong.”

That’s why it's called an experiment… I don’t get why this is insightful.

I guess there is a lesson about carefully noting down failures, in the corporate world handing over a document detailing all the things you tried that failed is much better than just failing silently.

[zik]

In biochem results aren't "success" or "fail", they're more like "probably success" and "either fail or experimental error". And in research the vast majority of results are in the latter category so it can be hard to discriminate between failures of your hypothesis and failures in your experimental method.

[mihaaly]

Why a failed experiment needs to be turned into success?

The outcome of the research (experiment) could be both success and failure, right? That's why we study it, experiment with it, we do not know it yet, we want to see if it is as believed or not. The important is to grow the body of knowledge here - and knowing if something does not work the way we thought will is knowledge -, not to pretend being successful, right? For pretending there are countless other (much much better paying) occupations anyway.

[gus_massa]

It's too easy to get unsuccesful results. (Does listening to Macarena for 8 hours per day cure brain cancer in mice?)

So unsuccesful results are very difficult to publish and to be the base of a thesis. So you must find a twist or secondary result and make it the central part. (Does listening to Macarena for 8 hours per day cause brain damage in mice?)

[mihaaly]

That's true.

Also, I think I seen that Macarena article. : ) It suggested to extend the research to primates and Spice Girls and finding songs that cure the damage of Macarena.