Last night Mr. and Dr. Isis went to dinner with one of Dr. Isis's absolute favorite people at MRU and her husband. She's a loyal reader of the blog and advocated very passionately that I not compromise my writing style just because some folks at MRU read the blog. So, um, "Word up, sister." This blog's for you.
Figure 1: Dr. Isis and her MRU science BFF. Dr. Isis is the totally hot one. But her science BFF is pretty hot too.
During the course of the meal Dr. Isis's science friend shared with her that she considers the real life Dr. Isis to be a role model. It doesn't bother the totally hot science blogger Dr. Isis to be called a role model in the blogsphere, but real life Isis has been feeling a bit squeemy about being a real life science role model lately. You see, I think real life Isis might be battling a case of Imposter Syndrome.
In the last several months I have laid out some very ambitious research goals. We have established a new disease model in the lab, have outlined a series of experiments designed to answer an array of questions, and I have been invited to speak in another department about our research interests next week. The data are beginning to come in. Tonight as I looked at the first bit of it, I found myself saying, "If this all doesn't work, there are going to be a lot of people who were excited for nothing."
Now, before some of you lose your junk in my comments section, I appreciate that this is not the way science is done. The questions are the questions and the data are the data, but that doesn't stop me from having the occasional dream in the middle of the night where I am faced by my colleagues pointing out all the flaws in the logic that brought me to ask the questions to begin with.
On Thursday night I had a dream that I received a call from the MRU where I received my PhD telling me that one of the faculty on my committee had failed to sign off on my thesis. They told me that he had since passed away and that I needed to come back and re-defend my thesis because my PhD was not valid without the last signature. I re-prepared my defense slides which contained a number of Greek characters. As I began to give my talk I discovered that all of the Greek characters had been replaced by this character:
In the last several months I have laid out some very ambitious research goals. We have established a new disease model in the lab, have outlined a series of experiments designed to answer an array of questions, and I have been invited to speak in another department about our research interests next week. The data are beginning to come in. Tonight as I looked at the first bit of it, I found myself saying, "If this all doesn't work, there are going to be a lot of people who were excited for nothing."
Now, before some of you lose your junk in my comments section, I appreciate that this is not the way science is done. The questions are the questions and the data are the data, but that doesn't stop me from having the occasional dream in the middle of the night where I am faced by my colleagues pointing out all the flaws in the logic that brought me to ask the questions to begin with.
On Thursday night I had a dream that I received a call from the MRU where I received my PhD telling me that one of the faculty on my committee had failed to sign off on my thesis. They told me that he had since passed away and that I needed to come back and re-defend my thesis because my PhD was not valid without the last signature. I re-prepared my defense slides which contained a number of Greek characters. As I began to give my talk I discovered that all of the Greek characters had been replaced by this character:
Figure 2: A character from Dr. Isis's repeat thesis defense in lieu of more traditional characters like "alpha" and "delta."
I know. I know. And I'll get over it. Maybe. After my ambitious data shows up on the cover of Science. Maybe.
Education & Careers
Comments
I have no doubt that you are as wonderful a role model IRL as you are in the blogosphere. I wish the second guessing would go away with experience, but I also know (for me at least), the second guessing lets me see where I can grow. The trick is getting the right balance of "self-reflection".
Posted by: ScientistMother | February 1, 2009 2:08 AM
I agree with ScientistMother.
Posted by: Juniper Shoemaker | February 1, 2009 5:05 AM
A dream about redefending one's thesis. Hmm, I've had a dream where I was giving birth to 96-well plates. I'm not sure which would be more painful.
Posted by: Candid Engineer | February 1, 2009 8:53 AM
Ooooh. Impostor syndrome. Fight it. That's like doubt to a Mentat. Let it get a hold and next thing you'll know is that you've been working in a factory for seventeen years, and it will suddenly occur to you to wonder why you didn't re-apply to your first choice of grad schools (which wasn't accepting ANY grad students the year you graduated from college) after you washed out of your soulless second choice after one semester.
Posted by: Harold | February 1, 2009 8:56 AM
Isis - the fact that you, as an established science goddess, still have bouts of Imposter Syndrome and are willing to tell us about it makes you an even better role model.
I for one am frequently confronting my Imposter Syndrome on many levels...in my own work and then wondering if I'll ever grow out of it and be a big girl scientist with all the confidence of Dr. Isis.
It's good to know that you can be a big girl scientist with all the confidence of Dr. Isis and still have occasional bouts of Imposter Syndrome and it doesn't make you a fraud. You're the real deal Dr. Isis -- keep on shuttin' it down. And thanks for all your role modeling. It's good for our collective lab flunky souls.
Best of luck to you on all your hot science and new disease models -- sending good juju.
PS - I am totally substituting figure 2 for all my greek characters in my defense. Awesome!
Posted by: ambivalent academic | February 1, 2009 12:19 PM
...
" 'If this all doesn't work, there are going to be a lot of people who were excited for nothing.' "
I wonder if Thomas Edison ever felt like that as day after day after day he tried yet another possibility for the filament on that dang science-y thing he called a 'light bulb'.
...tom...
' who sometimes feels 'impostor syndrome' as a father . . .. '
.
.
Posted by: ...tom... | February 1, 2009 1:01 PM
Isis, while having doubts about your ambitious research, your model and the questions you ask is natural and actually healthy. However, never doubt your data, especially when you have repeatedly produced them. Many times, new models produce new, unexpected data that provoke many questions, especially in regard to existing dogmas and lines of thinking. Challege those you trust by posing your questions to them; do not be discouraged if the answers do not always agree with yours. Most scientists tend to think inside the box.
When I worked on a new disease model 20 years ago, I asked many questions of myself and also posed them to friends and colleagues. The majority of these colleagues could not bring themselves to think outside the box. Nevertheless, I trusted my data, I submitted a paper to Science and eneded up with a publication and a cover picture there.
Good luck with your Science paper and the cover picture. It is not a dream!
Posted by: S. Rivlin | February 1, 2009 1:06 PM
Oh I know about those types of dreams! Only I get them about my books. What I find helps with fears like those is to remind myself that my ego isn't the point. It's the work that is. It can take a lot of repeating.
Posted by: Lilian Nattel | February 1, 2009 1:12 PM
...
Sorry, another thought.
After my ambitious data shows up on the cover of Science. Maybe.
The sad part is that we will never get to share the joy and pride of that moment with you. As to acknowledge it would effectively de-cloak you.
. . . ...:frowniesmiliemoment:...
...tom...
.
Posted by: ...tom... | February 1, 2009 1:18 PM
It's a little worrisome to hear that second-guessing oneself doesn't seem to go away - but it makes me feel better that others feel the same.
Posted by: Mrs.CH | February 1, 2009 1:31 PM
1) I feel an urge to include that character at least once in every presentation I give from now on.
2) A couple of times while doing homework for 300- and 400-level physics courses, I actually exhausted all the good variables in the Roman and Greek alphabets, and used a smiley face. The graders always treated it as a valid symbol.
Posted by: Roi des Foux | February 1, 2009 2:24 PM
That is an awesome, and also awesomely HORRIFYING, dream!
I have felt like an impostor my whole life. It kind of makes me giggle whenever people ask me to give a talk.
The one time I have felt like NOT-an-impostor was when my biostats class in grad school had to give a data analysis presentation to the plant physiology class, which I was also taking, and which was taught by my major professor-- so I knew he was going to try to nail me with some questions. I didn't know much, but buddy I KNEW MATH, and I knew why biostats were done the way we did them! I fielded his zingers so gracefully, so beautifully, that I felt as though Science Pixies were carrying me up to Science-Heaven on Science Clouds made of Science Cotton Candy. I could taste the sparkly, magical Science Sugar as I gave my answers! That's right, I was so far into the Science ZONE it made me SYNESTHETIC!!!
My current career, I have come to realize, is filled with people who consider themselves impostors, so I'm a lot more laid back these days. ;D Plus, I can still taste the Science Sugar, and it's very inspirational.
Posted by: The Perky Skeptic | February 1, 2009 2:27 PM
Gosh, impostor syndrome follows me everywhere. Now that I am in corporate America, it manifested itself recently when I looked at a job advertisement. I found myself thinking that I could never get a job in the pay range advertised - surely they would want someone better, smarter. Then I realized that I already had a job in that pay range.
Posted by: sea creature | February 1, 2009 4:51 PM
I am a robot playing a human. Or is that the other way around? I forget...shall we dance?
Posted by: Toaster | February 1, 2009 5:40 PM
Dearest Dr. Isis, we're all faking it, or at least all of us who ever venture outside our comfort (boredom) zones. You're doing it just right, though. Fake it proudly and admit to it often enough to provide comfort to all the other fakers.
Posted by: Stephanie Z | February 1, 2009 8:44 PM
Dearest Isis, I think that Imposter Syndrome can be cured by raising NO levels, and it is important to cure it before it gets too bad. Raising NO levels can make it go away and restore a normal and accurate assessment of one's abilities; increasing stress levels (which does the opposite, lowers NO levels) can lead to feelings of grandiosity (which I now call Grandiosity Syndrome). Thinking about how Imposter Syndrome is related to NO has been quite informative to me and has opened up a whole new level of understanding for me. All stress ultimately activates the final common pathway of low NO. Many of the effects of stress are triggered by that low NO, I think especially stress effects that affect cognition (because NO is the fundamental meta-programming neurotransmitter as shown by fMRI BOLD).
I see more cases of Imposter Syndrome as one of the expected consequence of more "competition" in science. This "competition" will bring out the "competitive" skills our ancestors honed to perfection in the jungle; skills that have nothing to do with science. In times past, the surest way to out compete a successful rival was to kill him or her. Being "a success" required walking that very fine line between being good enough to be a success, but not so good that your opponents sabotage and/or kill you. This is where the feelings of Imposter Syndrome kick in, to reduce one's profile and to keep you from being (in the words of the Japanese proverb) "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down". The most vulnerable get affected more. In times past women were more vulnerable, so they have more and more complex strategies for coping with being vulnerable. I think that is why Imposter Syndrome affects women more. Grandiosity Syndrome affects men more.
Sufficient competition to make people desperate will cause them to do desperate things. That is bad for science and worse for the people made to be desperate. Imposter Syndrome makes people extremely conservative in what they try to do, too conservative such that they don't push the limits of what they can do. Imposter Syndrome makes them make errors of omission, they don't try things that will ultimately be successful.
On to the NO physiology part. (this is now hypothesis) Just as depression is the necessary aversive state between "normal" and the euphoria of the near death metabolic state (and is brought about by low NO), so is Imposter Syndrome the necessary aversive state between "normal" and the delusions of grandiosity that one needs when one is in a near death "crisis" and one needs to attempt the near impossible (even if failure is virtually certain).
When you need to walk a tight rope across a canyon because a bear is chasing you, you need to have the delusion that you can do it. That is the delusion of grandiosity, the delusion of extreme stress brought upon by low NO. A delusion that you can walk across a tight rope if a bear is chasing you is a very important delusion to have. It is a delusion that will save your life the 0.01% of the time that you actually do make it across the canyon. But that is better than the 100% chance of being eaten by the bear. The bear is not in a near death state, so the bear won't be foolish enough to risk trying to cross the tight rope.
People suffering from Grandiosity Syndrome make errors of commission, they are reckless, take useless risks and fail by crashing and burning. This is the type of failure that the financial crisis produced. This is how Bush ran his presidency. This is what causes scientific fraud. It is the delusion of success, which some people go along with because they benefit. Nothing succeeds like success, and when you are on a roll, you can seemingly do no wrong. These feelings can be delusions brought on by the excitement of what is going on.
Imposter Syndrome is brought upon by stress, particularly stress related to work, or especially being bullied about work or about something that one has to do. I see it as similar to and a variant of Stockholm Syndrome. In Stockholm Syndrome the self-worth of individuals is lowered, such that they tolerate abuse and attach to a perpetrator who harms you (as many women attach to the men who batter them). Imposter Syndrome artificially lowers the perceived ability of those who are affected by it, such that they follow "leaders" with less skill than themselves. This is how people can follow leaders who have become delusional. The "leaders" have become grandiose and the followers are unable to realize it.
Neither the low NO state of Imposter Syndrome or the still lower NO state of Grandiosity Syndrome makes for good rational thought or good science.
Posted by: daedalus2u | February 2, 2009 9:08 AM
Dearest Isis, you are not at all the only one. My up and coming rock star advisor is actually going to a SEMINAR on imposter syndrome. I get it all the time.
And I also dream a LOT about work and the lab. The worst part is dreaming of the mice, the MICE!!!! AUGH!!!
Posted by: scicurious | February 2, 2009 9:56 AM
PkSci: I wanna taste the Science Sugar! I wanna I wanna I wanna! PS Isis you're bad, you know you're bad - so dont sweat it you do good science - head down bum up and do some more good science!
Posted by: Eppendork | February 2, 2009 1:43 PM