This weekend, I traveled to the ancestral home (to use one of my favorite FSP phrases) to attend the first nuptials of this year's blissful wedding season. The days are getting longer, the flowers are blooming, and love is in the air. I can barely contain my excitement.

Now is the time that a woman marries a man, and (almost) everyone assumes that she will take her husband's last name. This phenomenon is less common among Women of Science, although still prevalent. Something like 10% of American women do not change their names upon marriage.

So, the question is: What's in a name?

Truly, a name is an identifier. It is not unreasonable for a woman to want to identify herself with her husband. It is also not unreasonable for a woman to want to identify herself with herself, especially if she has some kind of professional status. Of course, there are many solutions to this problem, and the choice is very much personal:

Woman takes Husband's LastName.
Woman keeps Woman's LastName.
Woman hyphenates both LastNames.
Woman takes Husband's LastName legally and personally, but keeps Woman's LastName professionally.
Woman keeps Woman's LastName legally and professionally, but uses Husband's LastName personally.
Woman decides to become a celebrity and just goes by "Woman", eliminating the need for a last name.

Many members of the general population have a hard time accepting anything but option 1 (and maybe option 4). My biggest beef with the whole Name Business is that people assume that you must be an anti-societal man-hater to choose anything other than the 'acceptable' options. There are many non-feminist reasons why a woman might decide to take a non-traditional approach to her name post-marriage, including practicality, comfort, and perhaps a simple preference of which name she likes better.

Fortunately for this weekend's bride, she is choosing the assumed option 1, and everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. No issues or discomfort here! Just a simple Mr. and Mrs. Husband's Last Name. No explanations, no excuses, and no insecurity. Sometimes, conformity seems so easy.

My husband knows me well, and, as a matter of sport, takes advantage of the occasional opportunity to push my buttons.

I was commenting to him the other day that it has been refreshing to encounter such a large variety of blogs written by Female Scientists. I also told him that I found it a bit strange, that no matter how much I looked, I just couldn't seem to find quite as many blogs written by Male Scientists.

He looked at me with his most factual, I-know-everything face, and informed me: "That's because while all of your Female Friends are writing their blogs, the Men are actually doing Science."

Don't hate him. He didn't mean it.

To continue with a related topic: I would be inclined to conjecture that >95% of scientific individuals are sensitive to their publication record. Of those individuals, I would guess that >80% are insecure about their publication record. Why are so many gripped by manuscript-manufacturing anxiety?

Because we can’t all publish in Science. Or Nature. Or your favorite One-Word Wonder.

There is extreme prestige associated with the acceptance of a manuscript to a Big Journal. Your work will become the subject of press releases and commentaries, and a blurb about your fabulous efforts will probably wind up on the home page of your college or department. Your PI will become giddy (at least for a day or two), and random Important People will stop you in the hallway to congratulate you on your accomplishments. And perhaps most importantly, the Big Paper will go on your CV, where it can impress the pants off of people from now until the end of time.

This is all very nice. But, I think it’s important to keep in mind how the paper was tagged as Top Dog in the first place. Hopefully, some good work was involved. But at the end of the day, maybe 1 or 2 editors thought the paper met some minimum threshold of decency and interest, and then, 2 or 3 (or if you’re lucky, 4) reviewers gave the paper the thumbs up. These reviewers may or may not have been qualified to review the manuscript. And I’m sure we’re all aware of the extreme subjectivity of the peer review process. There is a certain amount of luck involved with getting any paper published in a Big Journal.

People who make a big show of their Big Papers leave a bad taste in my mouth. Given the sensitivities of the general scientific population to publishing-related issues, I think tact and modesty should be involved when discussing publications. Big Papers are relevant to people who want to hire you, and also are cause for celebration with your lab group, family, and friends.

It should not surprise the astute reader that certain individuals at Brilliant University want to boost their image by bragging about their Big Papers, even though bragging is typically unnecessary (not to mention counterproductive). Imagine how *impressed* I was when, 5 minutes into my very first meeting with a colleague, he declared “I have something that you want to see!” I was kind of excited, wondering what it was. Then, my colleague procured an issue of Big Journal and dropped it on my lap, declaring, “I’m on the cover of Big Journal!!!!” I offered congratulations and smiled sweetly, but I wasn't impressed in the least. Put off, maybe, but not impressed.

Academic tagged me with a meme the other day, and although I don’t really know what a meme is, I thought this would be a good segue into topic o’ the day. The rules are to create a 6-word ‘memoir’ (which I have interpreted as ‘statement’) and to post it along with a picture.

Big paper. It’s what’s for dinner.



Given that I live in the academic world, I have always been aware of the Holy Grails of publishing: Nature, Science, and maybe some other one-word wonders. I occasionally came across such papers in grad school, and I would read them, usually think they were pretty nice, and file them into the unorganized void in the back of my head.

Here at Brilliant U., it has been brought to my attention that I have not been paying proper homage to the Jesus of Journals all of these years. But salvation is mine to be had! I should cast out my trade journals! Throw anything with an impact factor less than 7 to the back of my closet! I should repent for my diverse journal-reading ways!

To put it succinctly, some of my coworkers are obsessed with the big journals of this world. They believe two things which I do not:

Anything published in a big journal is a god-send to Science.
Anything published anywhere else is not worth reading.

It is the blind loyalty with which I take issue. For two reasons:

Sometimes the revered journals publish crappy Science. For example, most of the articles published in PNAS are not subjected to (thorough) peer review because either the authors have a friend who is a member of the academy (Track 1) or one of the authors is a member of the academy (Track 3). Although most members are probably loathe to embarrass themselves by communicating garbage science to a prestigious journal organization, the fact of the matter is that plenty of crap gets through… enough to make me realize that coworker belief #1 is just not true.
It goes without saying that there is plenty of quality science going on at non-Nature level. Fundamental studies that make significant headway in the understanding of basic scientific issues often wind up in trade journals. Sometimes, it is precisely this *understanding* that leads to Really Cool Application on the cover of Nature Biotech. We often overlook this key point.

I try not to get too worked up about the paper-reading preferences of my strange colleagues, but the longer I am here, the more I have to laugh. These people are really missing out.

Ever since I was a child, I have lived in fear of being labeled as 'smart'. My pre-college years were spent attending relatively small schools with a relatively low number of advanced students. In grade school, I was teased mercilessly whenever I scored well on an exam, and my only high school boyfriend dumped me when I was announced as valedictorian (he admitted that it would "look bad" for him to associate himself with someone of such academic success). Subsequently, I always enjoyed attending Public Undergrad and Grad Universities, where I could satisfy myself by attending prestigious programs, but there was blissful anonymity in the university name.

Working at Brilliant University is another story. Ever since making the move to my new city and academic home, I am often asked about my occupation by new acquaintances/complete strangers/etc. Something along the lines of, "So what brings you to New City?" I then tell the questioner that I have recently started a position as a postdoctoral researcher at Brilliant University. If the person is not an academic (as most random people are not), s/he will almost always reply with some variation of, "Oh, my! You must be so smart!"

Given my life experiences, this comment makes me cringe every time. How to respond? I submit to the reader the following options:

"Oh, no I'm not!"
"Yes, I am very smart."
"Actually, I am f%!# brilliant. I will win a Nobel Prize by the time I am 30."
"Thank you."

Here are my corresponding opinions:

This is my instinctive answer. To plead, "Don't hate me, I'm just like you!" Unfortunately, this answer is false. And I am anything but a liar.
This answer is true, but I don't like it. I think it's rude to talk about being smart, especially around people who might not be as smart.
This is how my Most Arrogant Colleague at Brilliant University would respond. I would have to be drunk to even consider giving this patently asinine (and false) answer.
At first, this seems to be the most gracious reply. However, by accepting the compliment, I would feel that I am really answering with Option #2.

In reality, I have found all of these answers to be unsatisfactory. The only solution, I decided, would be to invoke Humor while also being completely truthful. Now, when someone says, "You must be so smart!", I simply smile and reply, "My husband tells me otherwise."