Hello everybody.

I am going through my last months of funded PhD studies with a very poorly developed project in my hands. I was assigned a PhD project based on some preliminary data from a collaborator lab, pointing towards a very fancy but experimentally elusive hypothesis. After several weeks, months and even years spent trying to stablish the basic core of the hypothesis (basically, trying to replicate our collaborator´s data in finer experimental conditions) no reliable and coherent data have emerged. In desperation, I visited our collaborator´s lab and found out that until recently they had no idea about my project and that they do not take the preliminary data they obtained too seriously themselves.

I feel devastated, hopeless and truly fooled by my supervisor and his guidance. Due to the lack of reproducibility of my data in comparison to our collaborator´s, my self-stem resulted completely cracked down during the first years of my research and at no point did I question the whole hypothesis. I admit my fault in this sense, but when one gets data from more experienced researchers and the supervisor sells the story as solid and true (because it actually makes sense, just evidence is lacking), I guess it is natural to blame oneself rather than questioning other more experienced people. Besides, my supervisor always behaved reluctant when I proposed to ask help to our collaborators for these experiments, so until the very last months I had no external assistance regarding my work. Now that I found out that not even the original conceivers of the idea take it seriously, I feel my supervisor´s negligence has led my into a no way out point. No chance to complete my PhD and, what´s worse, a 5 years back hole in my CV with no demonstrable production.

Because I do enjoy research, reading papers, reflecting on them, making questions and experimenting, I am currently contacting different labs introducing myself and inquiring about possible PhD opportunities. It is also what preserves my psychological health.

I would appreciate to know about anybody else who went through something similar and I will be happy to read any advice from you.

Thank you.

Sorry to hear about your experience. Are you able to discuss it with another academic/head of dept/pastoral carer and see what you can salvage?

Thanks for your reply TreeofLife.

Well, I have shared my situation with some people outside my group and even communicated with some PIs with relatively promising first exchange of ideas. I see that path, although long and tough, more plausible than solving this nonsense I have in hands.

Whilst it means the project has not been a success, does it necessarily mean you can't get a PhD?

You have been given a hypothesis and data, tested the hypothesis, and disproved it. That is research, and surely should be enough?

I think you need to have a frank discussion with your supervisor and head of department about how you get from a negative result, to a PhD. Then if you want you can look at postdocs to continue research.

In short, it isn't great, but it isn't a disaster!

Thank you for your message Sisyphus.

I know that theoretically the way you described the scenario looks more promising, but sincerely, I did not collect much but a tone of negative results upon which I cannot build up a storyline presentable as a dissertation. Any minimally critical mind would wonder, very pertinently, "why did you insist on the issue after the fourth try?”. It is really this poor.

I have openly discussed the situation with my supervisor but his feedback is, said formally, ridiculous and surrealistically nonsense. He proposes additional experiments which I find questionable after just a few seconds of consideration (and believe me, I am not super smart). I start to believe he is playing with my desperation so that one day I explode and say something I should not and he can terminate the agony with his hands clean and an excuse to preserve his name.