Look, it’s not just us!

According to two articles in last week’s Nature (here and here), India is also suffering from a glut of fresh biotechnology graduates. Like in one other country, many students have entered a field hyped up by the media only to find a scarcity of suitable positions when they graduate.

Some of the reasons sound depressingly familiar (emphasis mine):

Krishna Ella, managing director of vaccine-maker Bharat Biotech in Hyderabad, says that his company receives 300–500 applications for every new job opening, but the vast majority of candidates don’t fit the bill. “It’s not just a degree that is important,” Ella says. “The most important things are practical skills and the ability to think critically as a scientist.”

Setting up a training program (given sufficient funds) to teach students how to operate equipment or to run test protocols is relatively straightforward; after all, many of these tasks boil down to simple recipes: Push button A, add chemical B, wait for C to turn blue, etc.

Training someone to think critically as a scientist is a much more difficult task. It’s certainly not something that can be distilled into a few semesters of coursework or even practical work. Rather, scientists are cultivated by the environment they grow up, learn and live in.

Science - it’s not just an occupation, it’s a lifestyle.

Name some buildings, win a prize!

Well, the Fusionopolis publicity blitz has started, with a contest to pick names for each of the ten buildings in the upcoming mega-scientific-lifestyle-business-artsy-hub!

Contest details can be found here.

For sanity’s sake, I’m hoping the names don’t end up being Einstein, Newton, Cyber-this, Cyber-that, or something similarly clichéd.  How about something truly creative and reflective of what goes on inside each building?  You know, like, Frustration, Bureaucracy, Noise, Irreproducible…

Academic excellence, academic fraud

We got lost looking for a school once. It was somewhere up in the north, far from my usual stomping grounds down west, and we’d been driving in circles around the industrial estates. Eventually we came to this fenced-up place which we’d have thought was a prison, if not for the many banners proclaiming things like “97.3% distinctions in 2005″, “People De Eloper 2003″, “1st runner up march band 2007″, and what-have-you.

A decade or two ago, the only times we’d have banners on the school fences were during Sports Day and National Day. Today, it seems like practically every school - elite, neighbourhood, boys, girls - has a whole series of these things lining the boundaries of the school grounds.

Incidentally, I wonder how much does it cost to make these banners year after year? You’d have thought they’ll be spending the money in other ways; oh, I don’t know, helping their needy students buy textbooks and lunch, perhaps?

But back to the point. Having banners announcing pass rates and distinction rates means that someone, somewhere behind that school fence has to be responsible for achieving said rate in the first place. Someone whose performance as a teacher boils down to a bunch of numbers called key performance indicators. And the insidious thing about KPIs is that once they’re achieved, the bar will be raised even higher.

All of which add up to a competitive, high pressure and high stress situation - a fertile breeding ground for dishonesty and misconduct.

Perhaps that’s the motivation for altering student scripts in a national examination. It’s bush league compared to what happens elsewhere, but hey, fraud is fraud.

Whatever happened to schools being a place for learning and education?

Impostor Phenomenon - Are you just faking it?

Anyone’s who worked in women’s science and engineering outreach programs for a while will eventually come across impostor syndrome - a persistent belief that one’s successes are solely due to luck or good circumstances rather than talent and/or hard work. Often, such feelings are accompanied by the fear of being ‘discovered and unmasked’ as a fraud.

Sounds familiar? Then go and read mrswhatsit’s well-written three-part series (I, II, III) on impostor syndrome and what it implies.

Impostor syndrome, also called impostor phenomenon, hits both men and women [1], although women are more likely to acknowledge their feelings of fraudulence. Clance and Imes [2] noted that among women, impostor syndrome sufferers typically fall into two groups:

1) the woman grows up in a family situation where another sibling has already been regarded as the “smart” one, so any achievements by her are already preconceived to be not as good, compared to the achievements of the smart sibling

2) the woman is regarded as naturally smart by her family, and the impression that she does not have to study hard to get good grades is drilled into her at an early age. Hence, if she has to study or put effort into something, it must be because she’s dumb

In both cases, self doubt grows, and is continually reinforced through societal expectations and stereotyping (”Math class is tough!“).

Here in Singapore, I wonder if there’s not another cultural factor as well - that of Asian modesty. Either consciously or subconsciously, Asians grow up learning to brush off and reject compliments with some stock phrases - “It’s just luck”, “It’s no big deal,” etc. Say it often enough, and one will end up believing it. Blam - imposter phenomenon.

Impostor phenomenon isn’t just a harmless neurosis - the fear of failure and hence being uncovered as a fraud discourages one from moving out of their comfort zone and seizing opportunities which would otherwise lead to greater advancement and fulfilment of one’s potentials.

It certainly happens in our labs with depressing frequency - we’d see attachment students with a talent for research work, and yet when they’re encouraged to do a PhD, they’ll lament about “not being smart enough”.

Certainly something we’re going to have to deal with if we’re aiming to get more kids, particularly girls, into science careers!

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[1]“The Imposter Phenomenon: An Internal Barrier To Empowerment and Achievement”, Pauline Rose Clance & Maureen Ann O’Toole (online pdf) [2] “The Imposter Phenomenon in High Achieving Women: Dynamics and Therapeutic Intervention”, Pauline Rose Clance & Suzanne Imes, Psychotherapy Theory, Research and Practice, Volume 15, #3, Fall 1978 (online pdf)