Knowing When to Collaborate….and Knowing When to Run Away
getsyeducated.substack.com
As a graduate student, I once went out to lunch with a new post-doc in our department who had similar research interests to mine. We were having a nice chat about personal and professional topics, and at one point I said, “we should think about writing something together.” This clearly made them uncomfortable, and they said something to the effect of, “let’s wait and see if something relevant comes up.” I was a bit confused at the time, because I thought this is what academics did. I thought that “we should collaborate” is academic-ese for “we should be friends.” After some time, I realized how mistaken I was, and how wise they were to be cautious about entering into an unspecified collaboration with someone they barely knew. Over the years, I have now learned this lesson many times over. The purpose of this post is to share some of those lessons on why we should all be cautious about scientific collaboration.
Knowing When to Collaborate….and Knowing When to Run Away
Knowing When to Collaborate….and Knowing When…
Knowing When to Collaborate….and Knowing When to Run Away
As a graduate student, I once went out to lunch with a new post-doc in our department who had similar research interests to mine. We were having a nice chat about personal and professional topics, and at one point I said, “we should think about writing something together.” This clearly made them uncomfortable, and they said something to the effect of, “let’s wait and see if something relevant comes up.” I was a bit confused at the time, because I thought this is what academics did. I thought that “we should collaborate” is academic-ese for “we should be friends.” After some time, I realized how mistaken I was, and how wise they were to be cautious about entering into an unspecified collaboration with someone they barely knew. Over the years, I have now learned this lesson many times over. The purpose of this post is to share some of those lessons on why we should all be cautious about scientific collaboration.