I have about one month of “maternity leave” left and it is seriously cracking me up.
Figure 1: Last night I noted to the family that trying to catch a picture of a baby smiling is like trying to catch a fart in a butterfly net. These little toothless grins are one of the best parts of my day.
I place “maternity leave” in scare quotes because my post-partum experience has been less “maternity leave” and more “maternity leave but might show up when you least expect it”. This week I agreed to come in on Thursday to perform a procedure for someone and a friend is going to stay with Tiny Diva. Friday I’ll show up for weekly meeting with Tiny Diva in tow. Tiny Diva has proven a hilarious addition to our weekly lab meeting as folks try to decide who gets to hold her during the meeting. I think the group finds her calming, as I seem to say fewer bad words when she’s there. This experience has made me very thankful that I chose a place that has been supportive of my reproduction.
But, more on that later. For now, I have a letter from one of you hilarious little muffins…
Dear Dr. Isis,
You are a goddess worthy of your title, and your blog is a goddess-send to all of us lowly muffins laboring away in academia without a decent pair of shoes (have you seen the wages they pay us peons?).
Here is my question: I met my significant other when I was a graduate student and he was a postdoc. He is now an assistant professor and I am weeks away from defending and about to start a postdoc of my own. We have some terribly clever ideas for blowing the collective minds of the [chosen field of science] world, and we are so excited to collaborate on a more formal level than just tossing ideas around at the dinner table. My question: are there ethically tricky things I haven’t considered related to our desire to apply for grants as co-PIs? I am pretty sure academic couples who collaborate exist, but I am not sure if special rules apply to them that wouldn’t be necessary to consider were we “just friends.” I can see that if one of us applied for a grant that included a tech or postdoc, hiring the other would be…odd. But if we apply as co-PIs and we’re upfront about how we will each contribute to the research, is there anything strange about the fact that we’re also (soon to be) husband and wife?
Thank you for considering my question – I’m just
–Trying to Do Awesome (and simultaneously ethical) Science
I should point out that there is, in fact, an ethicist somewhere in the blogosphere. Not that my lack of formal ethics training (other than those little online courses) is going to stop me from answering this question. But, I should also disclose that I have never coauthored a scientific document with a person whose penis I am formally acquainted with. Not that I don’t think this would be fun. I’ll also confess that I think it would be totally hot to look at my data and have sex at the same time.
Figure 2: I just have never found myself in such a position.
And now you know something else about me that you can never un-know. But, I digress.
If you apply for a grant or write a paper, do you have to disclose that you are coauthor with the person whose shoulders regularly host your feet? I’ve never seen an application with such a question. Financial disclosures? Yes. Intimate disclosures? No. And, as I have progressed in my career and have learned things about some of the relationships in my field, I am thankful for that. I don’t want to know anything more about who knows what about whose physiology.
I’ve known several married couples over my career that have collaborated – both reproductively and scientifically. When I was an undergraduate, I worked for a woman whose husband had the lab next door. She was brought to the university and he followed as a spousal hire. They each have their own research interests, but they occasionally collaborate too. They have different last names, but it’s generally known in that field that they are married.
I now have faculty-level friends/collaborators who are married, have the same last name, and routinely publish together. They go to meetings together. They also work in the same space, which sounds like the 7th circle of hell to me. Part of the reason I go to work is get away from my family. In this relationship, she was hired and he followed as a spousal hire. But, even though they share some space, their main research addresses different questions.
One of the most senior scientists in my field collaborates with his wife all the time and they share lab space within the same collaborative institute. They have the same faculty rank, although I think he is generally more well-known than she is.
I think that, in science, fields are small and people generally know who is married to who. I also think that, in an environment where we dedicate so much of our time to our careers, people are bound to fall in love, get married, have children, start to hate each other, get divorced. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
I don’t think that this is anything special that needs to be disclosed, with a few exceptions. If this reader were eventually hired as faculty, I doubt her husband would be asked to be on her tenure committee. My university is also generally unhappy about people hiring family members to work in a position subordinate to them – like a man hiring his wife as his postdoc. If this reader were asked to review her husband’s grant or one of his manuscripts, she should state that she has a conflict of interest and decline.
I’d also caution this reader to be cautious about forming too many collaborations with him early on. To use her postdoc time to form her own independent ideas and then build an independent research direction. In each of the cases where I have seen spousal collaborations be successful – meaning that the female partner has been successful and is respected in her own right – each partner has had their own independent research program where they have developed tools and hypotheses that are not replicated in their partner’s lab. The collaborations have blended their expertise instead of replicating it. I think that’s important.
There’s also a fine line between the right number of hilarious collaborations and too many. The risk is that if this couple forms too many close collaborations too quickly, this reader will start to be seen as subordinate to her husband. It’s cute to have collaborations until you realize that your partner is receiving the invitations to give talks, etc for the work you’re doing together.
Thoughts readers?
I’d also caution this reader to be cautious about forming too many collaborations with him early on.
My same field partner thinks we should wait until we have tenure to start any possible collaborations. I’m fine with that, it’s best we both have our own separate research identities. I do know one couple that shared everything pre-tenure. Space, grad students, papers. It it were one or two papers, that would be one thing, but I think that it’s most of their papers. Kind of odd. They have tenure now so perhaps it didn’t matter.
hmm I worked for husband wife MD research science people and everyone knew they were together, and since their fortunes seemed to fluctuate, first he was “hot” then she was, it all seemed to work out fine, BUT they were at the same RANK. I’ve also seen some seriously disastrous sh!t go in in both bio dept and med school when sleeping-together-collaborators stop sleeping together AND they are of disparate ranks. Guess who is getting screwed then? So to me, I think I’d keep my postdoc, just MY postdoc, until established, JIC shit goes down in a bad sort of way. No need to trash work life along with private life right?
HR departments have nepotism policies. Your correspondent needs to check those carefully.
Although “everybody knows” about the established couples, this cannot be true for these folks as the get started. You are too flippant about this. One does not want grant reviewers feeling they are being snowed or scammed. Is there any Google trail? Is the first search going to land on your Facebook page?
Particularly for the more-junior partner it will be critical to establish independence. It may sometimes be the case that addressing the relationship is necessary…
I agree with everyone above, best to establish your own science and your own program first before starting collaborations. I also think they have to realize that when postdocing, you are working in another PI’s laboratory, one which is paying you to help advance their program and hopefully helping you develop your own scientific program. If I had a postdoc who was collaborating and writing grants with an outside person, whether they were sleeping together or not, I would have some real concerns about their focus in my lab.
My PhD mentor was married to my PhD co-mentor (they are still married, i am just no longer a grad student). They write grants together, get grants together, and write tonnes of papers together. They are both very successful in their own right, but are a powerhouse together. They even share lab meetings. The only thing that sucked was actually being mentored by them, cos if they’d had a fight, you were like the child of a bitter divorce! So i say go for the collaboration, but make sure you have your own wonderful stuff going on also. You don’t ever want to rely on them for funding and success! And be kind to your future grad students!
“I now have faculty-level friends/collaborators who are married, have the same last name, and routinely publish together. They go to meetings together. They also work in the same space, which sounds like the 7th circle of hell to me”
My husband and I were grad students together and now work together in research (grant funded industry R&D lab), collaborating on some projects and working separately on others. (For what it’s worth, we rarely fight seriously about work despite spending so much time together. It’s personal issues that really get personal.)
I took his name in part because that makes our relationship obvious to everyone without my ever having to bring up the subject, including on grant applications etc. Also, his last name is nicer sounding than mine, and changing my name means that people who know me now can’t find all the stupid stuff I posted to the internet in high school and college under my then real name.
I suppose the people who are recommending that you separate yourselves professionally are right, if you’re both somewhat ambitious and your goal is to maximize your individual professional success. I myself, however, desire nothing more than gainful long term employment doing something that doesn’t bore me out of my skull, so I’ll offer a little bit of advice from that perspective. Working with someone you love and whose thinking you understand well can be deeply rewarding in ways that working by yourself isn’t. Your victories are shared victories and your failures are shared failures. It’s like playing a team sport instead of an individual one. Obviously I have a vested interest in saying this, but I say, do it. Marry, apply for grants together, write all your papers together (I confess, we’re co-authors on most of mine) be up front about it all, and screw anyone who has a problem with it. If your career is really the most important thing to you, marriage is a bad idea no matter what, since trying to live near your loved one will almost certainly restrict your job opportunities severely, and reproducing really hurts the amount of overtime you can put in. But if you see something idyllic in the image of toiling side by side with the one you love, then I see no problem with working toward that, as long as you know that it may cost you something in personal glory. It worked for the Curies.
“I’ll also confess that I think it would be totally hot to look at my data and have sex at the same time.”
You’d think so, but…
(Actually at my house we have a “no discussing work after 8PM” rule — otherwise it can sometimes feel like we never leave work at all.)
Wow Mary,
Thank you very much for your comment, your approach and for being so candid about it all. I totally agree that your option in life is beautiful and must be very rewarding. Because it is about love!.
I did a lot of research and published with my former best friend of many years. I say former since he refused to speak to me when I became seriously ill. Words cannot express what a terrible shock it was and just how devastating it was at the time. We were contracted to complete a book chapter at this time; all communications had to go through the editor since my “friend” refused to even correspond by email with me. I don’t own a copy of the book and have never read the final version- the chapter reminds me of that terrible time in my life. I’m sure the writing is absolute shit. I am deeply embarrassed for the editor of the book that he was put into such an uncomfortable position. It also created a very unpleasant situation at work since my colleagues were shocked and angry at my “friend’s” choice. When I returned to work after my illness, I immediately took a job at another institution and completely changed research directions. Although it’s more likely that I’ll be struck by death rays from Mars than have a similar experience, I will never, ever work with a close friend again. Think very carefully before working with a romantic partner or a close friend- you have to go to work every day so when things go wrong, it’s unbearable.
Carl and Gerty Cori won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine together in 1947 and they were married.
@ Barb … and don’t forget Marie and Pierre Curie.
@ Been There … it is hard not to collaborate with friends, because sometimes one becomes close friends AFTER one has been working with the other person. I am retired, but two of my very closest friends now are people I used to work closely with. Yes, it is hard when the relationship sours; but no harder than working with people you don’t actually like or respect.
@ everyone …..I agree with most of what is written above – everything is wonderful unless there is some type of breakup or emotional problems. If you can ‘respect’ the professionalism of the other person anyway, then I guess it is easier. But most of my professional ‘breakups’ have been because of ‘professional’ disagreements or losing of respect (nothing to do with personal relationships – I’m with Isis there – I have never even dated anyone i worked with in science, even when I was a student).
HOWEVER, on the other hand I think it would be a MISTAKE NOT to follow through with a wonderful collaboration just because of what other people might think, or what might happen (or not happen) sometime in the future – after all, sometimes ideas come from discussions with soul-mates, and who is a better soul-mate….
I once employed my son on a short-term contract to put some stuff online – he was having a ‘gap year’ trying some other ideas, and he was the only person I knew who had both the science and IT knowledge that I needed, and I had a small amount of money to put my course online. I declared everything, and the HoD was fine about it as long as someone else signed off on his pay claims (because it was a temporary appointment, there were timesheets to be filled in every two weeks)
I also employed a couple as TAs – they eventually got married – and they were always very professional about their respective jobs. They were both students, but in different labs. They subsequently became two of my best friends. I don’t think the students ever knew they were a couple/married, even when they were teaching in the same large lab.
(It actually turned out very well one time – they helped me to stamp out a plagiarism racket because they were grading their lab reports while sitting together at their dining table, from different lab groups held on different days of the week – and discovered some reports that were word-for-word identical. That would not have come to light if the two different TAs from those groups did not communicate with each other at that level of intimacy).
Off topic, sorry, but that baby looks mischievous as hell. Good luck, Isis.
@ barb … again…AND Irene and Frederic Joliot-Curie. Another joint hubby and wife Nobel.
d.
My advice is to separate yourself as much as possible from the romantic co-author entanglement until you are established — that is, if you want a career of your own. I might be overly cynical here, but I get the sense that women might have more to battle on the independence front — ie, first you have to show independence from your mentors, so why would you also want to fight for independence from your partner/spouse? Until women are on equal footing with men, we run the risk of always being seen as helpmate to our partners. I have seen multiple cases where a woman was viewed as ‘the organizer and/or glorified staff’ for some totally *brilliant* dude rather than a scientist in her own right.
I want to add a second comment to this thread because my first comment was all about me, and really that’s a crime in a thread with that picture of Tiny Diva at the top. Clearly she should be the center of attention here. Just look at her flirting with the camera there. Way to live up to your name, Tiny Diva. Watch out for the paparazzi. I mean… She’s a few weeks old and she’s already got legions of fans on the internet.
I struggle with this issue too. I am a postdoc in the same lab as my postdoc husband but we work on different areas entirely and I try to keep our work as separate as possible from home. He’s not bothered but I am. The reasons for this are that he is a few years senior to me (in age and experience) and in a far “sexier” field than I am and I HATE feeling like I am behind him all the time. I am trying to establish myself as a separate entity so as to keep both my professional and home life fairly sane.
Most people (including our PIs) tell me not to worry about it but I do. We have published together (with different names) and I forsee that we will always work in the same institution. I don’t want to ever be my husband’s postdoc and know several wives who are – it’s not a good arrangement for anybody. So I am trying to cultivate this together-but-apart strategy – seems to be working ok so far but still early days! Good luck with the grants in any case – it ain’t easy either way!
@ your correspondent: my chief collaborator happens to be the person I’m married to (25 and 23 yrs respectively); we have several major grants together (I think 3:2 her over over me); we do not share a name – and I do not think granting agencies need to know anything personal, given it is science we are talking about, and who you are sleeping with does not matter.
Did Ed Rybicki just comment on this thread? Life is comedy….
This thread is by & large about the successes (with one searingly honest failure). After years in academia, I suspect this is not a good reflection of the true ratios. At tenure time, what is perceived as collaboration in men, is perceived as lack of independence in women. And to be honest, no department wants to be corespondent or property to be divided in a divorce case (and yes, thats happened more often than one supposes).
I’m glad that I’m Just Trying has found love and science. But, the dangers are huge, esp if the male partner is older/more senior. Scientific independence is one of the most important evaluation criteria as we move up the food chain of command. One’s self respect and sense of accomplishment is even more important.
maybe kids are sensitive to coluor and style, but we don’t give them enough credit to express themselves sometimes. My son (aged about 3) used to choose his library books by coluor, to the amusement of the librarians. He would say things like I had a pink one last week, I need a yellow one this week . And he was very specific that green was a Daddy coluor and red was a Mummy (Mommy) coluor, and if we saw (say) a green truck, he would say there is the Daddy truck, where is the Mummy truck? . He would also comment on peoples’ red or green clothing in these terms, usually in the totally embarrassing loud voice that 3-yr-olds use in public places. This was most amusing to me, as I rarely wore red and his father absolutely hates green.d.