Is your PI a dick or a loser?_Guest post

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Reza Ghadiri, The Scripps Research Institute, Science — and all that jazz

Is your PI a dick or a loser?

May 4, 2010 19,085 views

Imagine yourself as a PI (principal investigator), head of a laboratory, professor in an academic institution somewhere. (That is, if you aren't already.) As a PI, you have to worry about many things. Let's take a closer look at one of them. Namely, how do you make those PhD students and postdocs work their asses off for you?

If you care about climbing the ladder of academic success, it is what you want. If you don't yet have tenure, it is what you desperately need. Most professors have no time (or desire) to do any lab work themselves. It all comes down to students and postdocs. And how hard they work depends on how well their PIs motivate them.

Bonuses, pay raises, promotions and stock options are commonly used for motivational purposes in the business world. But we are not in the world of business here. This is Sparta! Academia. Fortunately, a PI can employ other methods of workforce motivation. Unfortunately, most of them aren't pretty.

Sweatshops aside, only in their wildest dreams can corporate bosses have such power over their employees as research professors have over their PhD students and postdocs. There are no labor unions to worry about, no strikes, no contracts, no concept of overtime. It's up to the PI to make the rules. And with their diplomas and careers on the line, it's up to the students and postdocs to suck it up and cooperate.

PIs who are not aggressive at riding the backs of their group members are at a serious disadvantage against the PIs who are. Speaking crudely but bluntly, it's a choice of being either a dick or a loser. For those professors who choose to be ambitious, two basic options, or archetypes, are available for adoption:

1. The Slave Driver

The Slave Driver approach is to demand, control and get. It's a relatively straightforward, reliable strategy of "my way or the highway". A slave driver PI might:

• enforce a strict schedule of (long) working hours in the lab;
• phone in or drop by the lab on Saturday nights to make note of who is slacking off;
• personally check everybody's laboratory notebooks on a regular basis;
• praise group members who manage to work 36 hours straight, without sleep, all the while handling toxic or explosive chemicals;
• threaten, yell, and generally have a "bad side" people are terrified of getting on, etc.

2. The Manipulator

Relies on a more subtle and artful approach. Manipulators excel at inspiring other people to do what they want them to. A manipulator PI can:

• convince (in effect, brainwash) a person to believe that literally nothing in the world is more important than to "work hard and get good results";
• gain trust by acting like a pal, or a father/mother figure, rather than like a boss;
• have you believe he/she both a) has got your best interests at heart, and b) knows what's best for you;
• look for a person's individual "buttons" and push them to achieve desired effects on behavior;
• masquerade genuine concern for research progress as caring about the people involved;
• play on human egos, hopes, fears, etc.

And, of course, there are varying degrees and lengths different professors will go to in acting out either or both of the above general strategies at different stages of their careers. The moral of the story is: PIs who act like dicks (or, pardonnez-moi, like bitches) should not be judged too harshly. After all, they are simply trying to be good at their jobs.