Next chapter in "As the Bunsen Burns"
We had a departmental yesterday in which various faculty members present ideas for NIH grants. First up was Road Runner. Everything was very well thought out, technology is in place, preliminary results coming. It's an excellent (and very clever) project. Now for the fun part: remember the meeting a few weeks ago in which The Boss touted Wile E. Coyote as an expert in MacGyver's area of expertise? Well, MacGyver is a co-investigator for Road Runner's project, and it's in WEC's alleged area of expertise. During the course of the discussion, The Boss asked WEC for his opinion on Road Runner's project. The idiot actually questioned the validity of their work for a ridiculously stupid (and incorrect) reason. He then tried to tell MacGyver how he should be doing his part of the proposed project. MacGyver politely explained why he was wrong. (As an aside, MacGyver looked up WEC's publications in this area and learned that, to no one's surprise, there are some serious flaws in his work.) Scary take-home: The Boss is basing his opinion of our projects on what WEC thinks. It's seriously scary when you hear the question, "Well, (Wile E. Coyote) performed the experiment THIS way. Why aren't you doing it the same way that he did?" (The correct answer is, "BECAUSE HE DID IT WRONG!!!") MacGyver showed considerable restraint in how he answered this particular question. He never came out and said that WEC did it wrong, but it was strongly implied. Sadly, I suspect that no one else in the room, including The Boss, had any idea that WEC was opening his mouth and garbage was coming out.
Next up: Wile E. Coyote. Rather than doing a chalk talk, as Road Runner had done, he had prepared slides. His slides were so full of text that they were difficult to read. Then, to top it off, another colleague had to show him how to switch to slide show view. If his proposed project was not the worst one I've ever seen presented at one of these meetings, it was seriously in the running for it. His main hypothesis connected 2 observations that are completely unrelated. Two of his specific aims were completely unrelated to each other, let alone his main hypothesis. It's like he was using the fact that grass is green to prove that the sky is blue, and one of his ways of proving this point was to demonstrate that manure stinks. It was painful. Two or three different faculty members tried to ask early on how his points were connected. Each time, WEC told them to wait because the answer was on an upcoming slide. The answers never came. As Road Runner said when we left the meeting, "That's 45 minutes of my life that I will never get back."
Most people say that is it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.
-- Albert Einstein