My collaborator sent me an email saying that he would like the paper submitted this week because his competitor submitted the paper on a similar title. Originally I was working on my postdoc’s paper which was invited to be submitted to the journal of which the chief editor is visiting our institute next Monday. I was hoping to give him a presentable manuscript when he comes though I am not submitting this paper to his journal. Now I have to stop working on this one.

I am wondering whether my collaborator regretted asking me to join the work. I declined his invitation for a few times but he insisted. I joined this work when they wrote the first draft. I don’t know whether he invited me because he appreciates my style to approach science or he wanted to submit the paper to the journal which my former boss is the editor-in-chief. However, I don’t think the paper can get in through the relationship. I still need to impress my former boss who is very hard to be pleased. Furthermore, I don’t want to ruin my reputation either. After I joined this work, I realized the time and energy I spent will delay my own lab work. Fortunately, I enjoy figuring the science out in the paper. And the student’s diligence and open-to-suggestion attitude touch me so I like to work with him.

I felt guilty that I didn’t spend more time on this work. Nevertheless, I did improve their work in all conscience by improving the readability, clarity, elucidating the science, eradicating the inconsistency and so on. That is probably why they can put up with me. It’s good that I am pushed to work harder now. I owe it.

It may be mission impossible to submit the paper this week but I will work on this paper at full throttle from now on.

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2/13
I found something aggravating me. In the paper, there are some theoretical models I don’t fully understand since it is not my field. Originally I want to take the easy road not to question about it and to get around it. However, in order to write a good paper, I know I have to face the hardship and bite the bullet. I called up the student and asked him to show me how to derive the equation. He was very happy that finally someone was willing to go through the derivation with him because he ws worried that he made some mistakes. No one helped him with this part so far. I was puzzled. I said, ”Isn’t there a theorist on the author list? What is his contribution to the paper if he doesn’t check the equation? Moreover, this is the field he claims to be the expert.” The student is not as confronting or direct as me. He replied in a very polite way, ”Dr. C usually respects what we did and he rarely did big challenge or modification on our paper.” I was a little pissed and almost wanted to yell, ”Do you want me to ’respect’ you in the same way? How can you be more critical if no one ever challenge you as an advisor. Do you honestly feel that it is a really good thing to be polite in dealing with science?” Unbelievable.... Some people are so lazy - they want to put their names on the paper but they don’t want to do any hard work. And I stop my own lab work and work hard to give other people credits. Anyway, I follow my own conscience to do what I think is worthwhile. But it annoys me that I have colleagues who doesn’t work much and gets credits from my hardwork.

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2/14
剛剛想弄清理論的模型, 所以去查早期一篇日本人寫的理論模型. 他們最後結論的一句話, 讓我覺得很好笑 -- The practical merit of the present results is doubtful, though some of them may be useful in the calculation of the second virial coefficient.
這年頭很少作者會寫自己做的東西沒什麼價值, 大家都在 boast 自己的東西很重要... 日本人果然謙虛的可愛. :D