Overview of alexanderadams on PostgraduateForum.com

Overview of alexanderadams

Signup date: 18 May 2014 at 4:48pm

Last login: 27 Dec 2014 at 11:05am

Post count: 21

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alexanderadams 21 posts
10 years ago

Hi,

I know how you feel right now. I also graduated in 2012 and obtained a decent job as an officer in one of the hospitals in my country. After working for a year, I decided to quit my job because my passion is always in research and teaching. My parents were against me when I decided to continue my PhD. They are also very conservative parents like yours and expected me to marry, have kids and settle down at the age of 26-27.

I have been doing my PhD for 1 year but they still think that I made the worst decision ever in my life for quitting my previous job. I guess they will stop complaining when I graduated from PhD. Goodluck :)

Sample Collection

alexanderadams 21 posts
10 years ago

Quote From chickpea:
I've seen your other thread that you posted now, and it's clear that you're in a difficult situation. Is there an identified member of staff at your uni/department who is responsible for PhD students as a group? Or a student welfare service, student union rep etc? I would go to someone like that and talk about the problem, as it does sound like you need to get some support.

Yes. There is a support group in my campus that I can talk to. However I don't really think it will be reliable as far as talking about harassment is concerned. I am thinking to convince my supervisor that I have enough samples and just being quiet about this matter. It will be the best one since I don't want to cause any drama in the future.

Sample Collection

alexanderadams 21 posts
10 years ago

Quote From chickpea:
Your field is very different to mine, but in your position, I would go on trying to get more samples if that is what your supervisor has advised, and since there is no reliable way to calculate how many are needed. It does sound a bit frustrating if it is progressing so slowly, but that is also the case in my study which is very different - I think it's a very common PhD experience to feel as if data collection is never-ending!

The only problem I have now is the person who is in charge to give me the samples is harassing me. He always yells at me and cannot tolerate even a tiny mistake I do like asking question if I don't understand anything. He's beyond useless. I want to tell my supervisor about this problem as this will definitely create unnecessary stress towards my studies but then thinking he's my supervisor's best friend, I don't go with the plan.

However I really don't need unnecessary stress right now. I need to finish my lab works as soon as possible and start writing my thesis. Should I tell my supervisor about this problem?

Someone is harassing me!!! Help!!

alexanderadams 21 posts
10 years ago

Hello,

I will be second year PhD student very soon. I've been collecting samples from this person for more than one year. Everything started fine until last week he started to harass me. I am scared now. He's one of the professors in my university. He's also the best friend to my supervisor. Luckily my sample collection has already met the target so I don't have to deal with him anymore. But my supervisor asked me to collect me just in case I lost the samples. However I can't deal with him anymore. Sometimes he made fun and yelled at me in front of all his staff. Sometimes he made abusive and homophobe jokes against me. He also has several times made sexual advancement towards me.

I just had to be patient because I got to collect the samples from him. I wanted to tell my supervisor but then he wouldn't believe me because that person is his best friend. What should I do? Should I stop the sample collection and be quiet about this since my samples are enough for research? Or should I tell the department about this harassment?

Sample Collection

alexanderadams 21 posts
10 years ago

Quote From chickpea:
You haven't said what your subject area is, what kind of experiment you are doing or what kind of sample you mean - perhaps with a bit more information, someone might be able to comment. If you did a reliable calculation that said you need 20 samples and you've exceeded that number, it sounds like you've done what you set out to do, but since you're doubting it, perhaps it is best to check with your supervisor?

I am doing a research on cancer. However it is very hard to get the samples for my research. Usually the samples will only be available once in a month if I was lucky. My research is mostly on microarray. I have already talked to the statistician and he said for my research, there is no sample size calculation. The only thing I have to do is to collect all samples available in one year to be included in my study.

I have talked to my supervisor but then he wanted to have more. Should I continue to collect more or try to convince him that my sample collection is enough?

Sample Collection

alexanderadams 21 posts
10 years ago

anyone???

Sample Collection

alexanderadams 21 posts
10 years ago

Hi everyone,
I am a PhD student.
I have been collecting samples for 1 year and a month. My sample size calculation is 20. I have collected more than 20 samples so far. I am wondering whether my sample size will be enough or not. Should I continue my samples collection or just stop at this time? I have lots more works to do in the lab to fulfill my other objectives.

Thanks in advance.

What did you do when your experiments failed?

alexanderadams 21 posts
10 years ago

It sucks when everytime the experiment I did failed. I am still trying to figure out what went wrong but I guess I should take your advice and go for academic coma for a week. Thanks for your prayer

What did you do when your experiments failed?

alexanderadams 21 posts
10 years ago

I have already repeated my experiment for 5 times to no avail. What did you do when you were in this situation? Did you go celebrate? I plan to celebrate my failure tonight

Online study about alcohol consumption - £7 Amazon voucher if you complete the study

alexanderadams 21 posts
10 years ago

Can I still participate if I live outside UK? JK. The voucher sounds tempting. :) All the best for your research

Another rejection...how many did you guys get?

alexanderadams 21 posts
10 years ago

I applied for 3 but got accepted for 1

How long does it take to collect biological specimen

alexanderadams 21 posts
10 years ago

Quote From datura:

What are your supervisor's expectations of how you should get the samples by the way? If he does not want collaborators from elsewhere then I assume he wants to get samples from a local hospital?
Also, how did you phrase it when asking about collaboration? I mean, there is also a difference between collaboration and requesting tissue. I am also using tissues I got from other national hospitals but I am not actually collaborating with them (in that they will not have any co-authorship whatsoever once there is a publication). Maybe there was a bit of a misunderstanding and your supervisor just didn't want to share the glory?

Yes my sample collection is very slow. My supervisor is very paranoid when it comes to collaboration or collecting samples from other hospitals since he's afraid they would demand co-authorship or steal his research. Even I'm not allowed to reveal certain aspect of this research to the person who is complete stranger such as biostatistians who are not from our universities. It's very difficult to persuade him to collect sample/ ask for advice in statistics as I already asked for his view on the matters mentioned.

I am very stressful now. My sample collection won't meet the target set by my supervisor if I were to collect samples for 1 and a half year only. Based on my calculation, I will only meet the demand set by my supervisor if I collected the samples in 3 years which is not going to happen since I am on scholarship and I need to graduate on time. My supervisor is blaming me now for sample collection and nothing further I can do until he agrees to collect samples from other hospitals.

How long does it take to collect biological specimen

alexanderadams 21 posts
10 years ago

Quote From HazyJane:
I used to work with microarrays so you have my sympathies on the cost aspect! Realistically it is very difficult for a PhD student to do 'enough' experiments on the funding available.

Whether or not you get to improve your sample size, being aware of the limitations the size places on the interpretations is very important for when you write up (whether for papers or your thesis). No statistically significant findings may be due to under-powering the study. In contrast, detection of homogeneity or heterogeneity between your samples may be difficult to interpret without controls - how do you know that similarities/differences are related to the tumour (or tumour subtypes) and don't simply represent naturally occurring homo/heterogeneity across the general population?

Sorry if I am giving you too much to think about. I am familiar with your conundrum as I used to do similar work when I was a lab scientist and it frustrated me the way that I was told very small sample sizes were ok when I could see potential flaws with the approach. Either way, your thesis will be fine, but it may affect publications leading from it.

The study we are doing is comparing gene expression of non-cancerous and cancerous samples. By control, you mean non-cancerous tissue collected from the same organ of the same patient having cancer? Or non-cancerous tissue collected from normal patient without cancer?

I have already collected 12 samples for 7 months. Do you think I can reach 30 samples in the next 9 months? I am so worried I might not reach the target. My supervisor is pushing me for at least 50 samples and blaming me for lack of samples. I am feeling guilty right now as if lack of sample is because of me.

How long does it take to collect biological specimen

alexanderadams 21 posts
10 years ago

Quote From HazyJane:
Well, it could also depend on whether you're doing hypothesis testing or hypothesis generation.Different study designs have different requirements with regard to sample size. Do you also have control subjects for your study?

If you google "how to determine adequate sample size for micro array" there are some helpful looking papers. A biostatistician with a lab focus will be more helpful than an epidemiologist in this scenario.

We don't have control subjects for our study. I guess our study is not case-control study for epidemiologist to understand our study. I have found a very good software to calculate sample size for our study and I guess it will be very helpful to aid the justification of my microarray study. My colleague also did small sample size for microarray study due to lack of fund since microarray slide is very expensive.

How long does it take to collect biological specimen

alexanderadams 21 posts
10 years ago

Quote From HazyJane:
As I said, you ought to discuss this with a biostatistician. Whether or not 20 samples is adequate depends on the hypotheses you're testing.

Thanks. I already had several discussions with several good statisticians but all of them have no idea how many samples are adequate for microarray study. I guess they have no idea when it comes to experimental medicine because most of them are specialists in epidemiology study only. Thanks again for answering my question