I recently had a meeting with my 2 supervisors in order to decide ‘what to do next’. I’m sure many people have these sorts of meetings and I’m sure some people also feel like I do afterwards – that nothing ever gets sorted and the ‘big decision’ is always put off until another meeting. Anyway, during this meeting I was criticised for not making a coherent link between experiments I’ve done and experiments I would like to do next. I was also criticised for not discussing what my experimental results may mean and speculating enough.

Basically, I’m trying to figure out how a compound works in a disease state and there is next to no literature published about it. I’ve just finished a big set of experiments (in control conditions) and the results are unexpected, in fact the complete opposite to what was expected (!). I did a lot of reading and found that a related compound has a particular effect, which one paper showed to be due to a certain mechanism. Interestingly, this mechanism has a bi-directional effect (ie., in control conditions it does one thing and in pathological conditions it does the opposite). Therefore, the related compound had a particular effect in control and the opposite effect in disease.

I used this evidence from literature to come up with 2 hypotheses: if I do these experiments again in disease my compound will do the opposite to what I saw in control AND that the compound is having a particular effect which is due to a certain mechanism. The experiments for the first hypothesis are ongoing at the moment. For the second hypothesis I suggested an initial and relatively simple experiment just to see whether there was a certain difference between control and disease baseline conditions.

Like I said above, I was criticised for suggesting such an experiment because my supervisors didn’t see the link. I honestly don’t understand this as I did what any scientist/researcher would do: I researched what I could of the literature and came up with a possible explanation for apparently contradictory results. The really annoying thing – and the reason for my post – is that during the same meeting I was also criticised for not discussing my results in sufficient detail and being speculative enough. Am I missing something here??

What do they mean by link? To the actual research questions? research objectives?

Or link to each other? (do they need a link?)

What do you get from the 'not sufficient' criticism? Is it because of poor literature? quantity of literature is too small? (how many have you read?). How long have you done the experiment before the actual reporting?

Write everything up (talking doesn't really help when it comes to science) and sent it to both of them. It is possible that you can publish a paper because there is a gap and your results are novel.

Actually, a few months back me and my supervisor were fighting whether a particular effect could be noticed in certain conditions. While we were fighting and being rude to each other (instead of actually doing the work to prove our point) another research team from another university published a paper that covered the topic.

Good luck!

Thanks for your posts guys.

To clarify: it's the link between the experiment I have done and the experiment/s I want to do next (to make a start in explaining the unexpected result from the initial experiment). I have done lots of reading - and am continuing to read - about similar research. It was through this initial bit of research that I came up with a hypothesis, so I then researched the potential experiments I could do in order to test this hypothesis.

I recently had to write up the first experiment for two separate reports (one for my sponsors and one for the uni) and in both I discussed the possible explanations for the unexpected result and both supervisors have seen this. At the 'what to do next' meeting I suggested an experiment that would answer (in my opinion) a fundamental question that I envisage getting asked at my viva and/or journal article reviewers. The sequence of experiments that would follow, whatever the result, would yield some very important results not only for my thesis but for my sponsors too.

My primary supervisor has since turned round and said that maybe this particular experiment should be left until my 3rd year (I'm half way through my 2nd) and that I should concentrate on another set of experiments for the time being. The experiments he wants me to do now will not address the unexpected results I recently obtained and now I feel even more annoyed.

Has anyone else been told that particular experiments should be put off until their final year? I'm not sure whether I'm being impatient or whether my supervisor is being dumb/procrastinating.

The issues are different for different disciplines. I have two supervisors from two different disciplines as my research is interdisciplinary. I just make up my mind what to do, although I tend to go more with my main supervisor as my research is more in that field. It's your research so it's your decision IMO.

This can be tricky. Have you asked your supervisors for clarification on what they mean by discussing and speculating, can they give you some examples of what they expect? Similarly, do you understand the rationale for doing the experiments your supervisor suggested? If not, ask them to explain again! Maybe they envisage the research going in a different direction than you?

I’ve been in a similar situation, I did a lot of reading etc, and kept proposing certain experiments, but I don’t think my supervisor ever really got what I was on about. But my supervisor was very much the free rein type, with too many projects going to keep track of what everyone was doing, so after several frustrating and circular discussions, I basically just went did what I wanted anyway. Luckily for me I was right, it all worked out and we got a very good paper out of it. But I knew I could get away with this without annoying my supervisor too much, and I suppose it could also quite easily have gone wrong.

There is danger in a student ignoring or not properly understanding a supervisors advice, and being somewhat arrogant in the face of the wealth of experience a supervisor has in doing research and getting students through a phd successfully. But there is also danger in supervisors getting stuck in particular ways of thinking, not listening to the student, not thinking carefully about the experiment and making assumptions. Afterall, most scientific breakthroughs are made my young researchers with a fresh perspective.

So I guess my advice is- don’t do experiments you don’t see the point of just because your supervisor says so. But make sure you properly understand your supervisor’s perspective, and remember that they have a lot more experience and know things that you don’t. After this, if you are still sure about your approach, and are not just being naive, keep trying to argue for the experiments you want. But you also don’t want to annoy your supervisor or explicitly go against their instructions- this is the tricky part.