A new life beyond academia
I recently swapped a career in biochemistry for one in the conservation of Nature, In this ‘After the Paper’ blog I summarise some of the background to my journey from the nanometre scale to the macro scale and some current goals and ambitions.
Recent Comments
The worst review I was on the receiving end was back in 1999: a major point of our story about activation in a signalling protein was linked to a conformational change in a widely conserved residue. The reviewer killed our paper with a comment about how this discussion was misleading as the role of this amino acid in signalling has "not held up over time" and then cited an abstract to poster at a meeting that none of us had attended and for which the text of the abstract was not available on-line. I just checked pubmed and the authors of said poster have still not published their paper presumably because it's their story and not ours that did not hold up over time.
Oops, my mistake, I meant I doubt the authors of the meeting abstract reviewed our manuscript!
The worst review I was on the receiving end was back in 1999: a major point of our story about activation in a signalling protein was linked to a conformational change in a widely conserved residue. The reviewer killed our paper with a comment about how this discussion was misleading as the role of this amino acid in signalling has "not held up over time" and then cited an abstract to poster at a meeting that none of us had attended and for which the text of the abstract was not available on-line. I just checked pubmed and the authors of said poster have still not published their paper presumably because it's their story and not ours that did not hold up over time.
Hi Ruth, yes we did, but in a much lower ranked journal than the 'magazine' we had targeted. Though this particular paper became quite well cited I wonder if I was at the same stage of my career now as I was then, would I still have been competitive for Fellowships? The CVs I see these days from ambitious folk looking to take that next career step upwards are far stronger than mine was, 20 years ago.
As a coda I should also add that I doubt the authors of the meeting abstract referred to above did not review our manuscript.
The worst review I was on the receiving end was back in 1999: a major point of our story about activation in a signalling protein was linked to a conformational change in a widely conserved residue. The reviewer killed our paper with a comment about how this discussion was misleading as the role of this amino acid in signalling has "not held up over time" and then cited an abstract to poster at a meeting that none of us had attended and for which the text of the abstract was not available on-line. I just checked pubmed and the authors of said poster have still not published their paper presumably because it's their story and not ours that did not hold up over time.