How do you deal with shitty collaborators?

How do you deal with shitty collaborators?

I'm analyzing this super cool data set that was collected by someone else. The woman who collected the data came to my PI because she wanted to do a number of complex analyses but lacked the expertise to do them, so my PI asked if I could do it. The project is pretty exciting, and I have enough results for a high impact paper.

The only problem is that this woman is completely unreliable. I need some additional files that contain critical info, otherwise we won't be able to publish. She keeps making promises to send the files but then sends an excuse last minute (high school level shit, like 'I lost my laptop charger') or sends the wrong files. Moreover, she's not doing her part when it comes to the writing. I've been waiting multiple weeks for her to add small sections to the manuscript, so she's delaying the process. This is especially annoying considering that at the start of the project she was really pushing me to do the analyses as soon as possible so I crunched about a months worth of code in the span of 9 days.

I talked to my PI about it, but he can't do much considering we need her for the project, and in the end it's her data.

So how do you deal with people like this? Anyone with similar experiences?

what does it mean when a girl looks at you like this? Does she want help with her homework or something/

Drop her and stop working until she gets her shit together.

The moment she stopped contributing was the moment you should have stopped working too.

She is looking at a magazine you fucking beta orbiter. I know your only interaction with women is helping them with homework but not everything they do is related to that.

Her eyes look like she just caught you looking at her rack and she is socially pissed about it.

I'd be shooting myself in the foot. If everything works out, we'll submit this thing to Science. I'm not about to pass on an opportunity like that. If the data hadn't been that great, I'd have stopped weeks ago.

If a woman doesn't want a fella to look at her tits, she shouldn't wear clothing that exposes them. C'mon, bruh. It's all part of the game.

And for OP, I wouldn't spend another 5 minutes working on this paper until data ditz get her shit together.

I've found that the shitty researchers are all AA babies that don't really care about getting publications out as soon as possible because they don't need to. She doesn't care because her genitals will give her a tenture track position over you regardless of her h-index. You're the only one htat needs to be competative so it's best to take on projects where you only need to rely on yourself.

That's a very neutral bored look.

She is already working with you and I suppose you have kept your part of the work to yourself.

If this is the case then just halt the progress until she gets her shit together and when she continues doing her shit then you continue too.

She probably has other shit to do relating to research so you should probably do the same. The fact that she would collect data she was not able to analyze tells me that this project is just some side thing she is doing for fun.

Tell her you're not working on the project until she gets you the specific files you need.

And then don't work on the project until you get the specific files you need.

Time is your most valuable resource.

>If a woman doesn't want a fella to look at her tits,
There's a big difference between wanting "a fella" to look at your tits and wanting Chad to look at your tits. You creep.

>If a woman doesn't want a fella to look at her tits, she shouldn't wear clothing that exposes them.

I know, that is why I said socially pissed.

Women are supposed to be sluts but then they are also supposed to pretend they are not sluts.

Women wear yoga pants but if they catch a man staring they are meant to go
>Oh, you are such a pig for looking at my ass that I am showing to you!

If a woman is a slut and accepts it that is indecent, according to society. If a woman is a slut and pretends like she isn't then that is a tasteful lady.

Just like how men are supposed to stare at an ass but are also supposed to pretend like if they did not stare at the ass they just stared at. If you do not stare at the ass then your friends will say you are gay but then if you get caught looking at the ass and you admit it then you are a retard.

Human behavior 101 nigga.

>The fact that she would collect data she was not able to analyze tells me that this project is just some side thing she is doing for fun.
There are people that do entire PhDs just stamp collecting while being too much of a stupid lab drone to use the data themselves.

In fact most grad-students are like this, that's why so few actually find reasonable jobs afterwards.

Halting work on the project is not really what I want to do, because that means I'll need to do more later on. I have the time now because of the summer break (so no teaching obligations), come September I'll be fucking swamped again. I guess in the end it's the idea that makes most sense though, I can't really physically force her to do shit. It's a shame.

>Women are supposed to be sluts but then they are also supposed to pretend they are not sluts.
>Women wear yoga pants but if they catch a man staring they are meant to go
Confirmed for not Chad. Women are delighted when a Chad pervs on them and will smile/blush when he does, they only give that look when some ugly/beta stares at them.

/r9k/ please go

Your gender politics was fun 2 years ago but no more.

I'm not from /r9k/ I'm too Chad to hang out with those betas.

I don't care how she looks at me. If she is going to expose her tits to the world, I for one am going to look at them and enjoy the experience. I like tits. Sue me.

To be fair, she did have the insight to think of these analyses. They're quite non-standard in the field, and at the right of sounding like a pompous asshole, there aren't many people around that can do them.

>right
risk*

You do realize that you're on Veeky Forums right now?

Veeky Forums is full of fit Chad alphas with trust funds allowing them to study meme degrees like pure math or upper middle class alphas in it for the money/prestige.


Seriously though, is accurate behaviour in general. Let's not pretend that you don't get pissed off when an ugly landwhale eye fucks you, it implies that you are in a league where it's socially acceptable for them to engage with you which makes you feel some slight disgust manifesting in the OP look. However, you'll never have this response when a 10/10 cardio bunny checks you out.

Guy, you sound dumb as hell. Seriously. Just saying.

Because I am. I'm leeching on my trust fund to stay in math grad-school so I can fuck college girls and eat pizza for as long as possible.

Only reason I'm even published is because my dad's contacts got me a god-tier adviser.

Well, at least you're honest about it.

What do you publish about? Some kind of nonsense algebraic geometry, yeah?

>She keeps making promises to send the files but then sends an excuse last minute
This sure raises enough red flags for a Chinese parade.

Are you sure the data are not fabricated? I'd check those extra carefully if I were you. The number or retractions these days is rather scary.

A publication in Science is a nice carrot to wave in front of you so make sure you scrutinize the data carefully. It might be too good to be true.

If you find even the slightest irregularity you need to inform your PI pronto and make sure you do so in writing in case poo goes down.

I see why you would think that, but there's simply no way she could have fabricated it. Without going into too much detail, it's a highly dimensional dataset with all kinds of intricacies that would be very difficult to fabricate, even for myself. It's not as simple as her sending me a spreadsheet. This woman barely even knows how to use a computer, much less write the code to create something like this from scratch. She had a rough idea of the things that we should look at in the data, but the eventual analysis plan was done by me, and it included steps that she had never even heard of. I guess the short of it is, if she could create a dataset like this, then she could have 'analyzed' it and wrote the paper too. There would be no need to involve my PI and me in the project.

There are many things that could be going on here. So here is a pretty outrageous conspiracy I heard of back when I did my PhD:

>Two PhD students were getting sick and tired of the PI taking their results and publishing under his own name ONLY. Time for drastic measures.
>So both students sit down, fabricate an experiment with plausible but wrong results, keep it in their lab books and wait.
>In time the PI enters the lab in their absence, sees the results, and copies it all. He then write up a paper based on a result he has not performed and unbeknownst to him *nobody* has performed. Paper is sent in, in his name only.
>Paper is accepted and published. None of the students are named on the paper.
>The results are rather remarkable so people try to reproduce these. They cannot. More try. They fail too. The case starts brewing up. Inquiries are made. Investigations started.
>PI defrocked.

I love a happy ending.

Have you considered just being a man, picking up the phone, and asking her wtf? Quit being a pussy.

>Experimentalists

Jesus

The fuck this can't be real. I cannot imagine a student sabotaging their own PI instead of quitting the group or talking to the ombudsman or chair of their department.

There's no reason at all to think there's a conspiracy going on in my case.

There's politics involved. She's a PI herself, I don't want to burn a bridge and then have my PI be pissed off at me for it.

I did politely urge her to send me the things that I need, and multiple times. But I can't get overtly irritated, that's what my PI does for me. He actually did a few times, and he's not a very subtle guy at all, but it doesn't seem to get the point across.

Are you sure the data is legit? All those stupid excuses may be her buying time because she know it'll be risky publishing it

I think you are a bit naive here.

Departments and institutes want to up the publication count. They do not want to upset the apple cart. So when a PhD student suggests questionable ethics on a tenured staff they will not be believed. Instead they risk their entire future careers.

I know of a few cases around here.

The story goes that Kissinger was once asked what was the worse: national politics or academic politics. He replied academic politics was the worst since there is so little to fight for.

Good to hear, yet...

>There's politics involved. She's a PI herself
Uh. You are SURE the data is hers? Really sure?

Publications heading for Science are high hanging fruits. There is zero reason to delay. Something is very wrong here.

Confront her, have a talk. You'd be surprised how wide-spread it is to be oblivious to another persons' perspective. She might fully know what she is doing, but even then, from there on she would have to play the game at a different, more strenuous, level.
If the only thing that matters is the result, and you are otherwise fucked, then you might up your game, by acting burnt out and stressed, e.g. maybe claim that the time window has been set to an earlier date if that can be done in any way, make it so that in the end, not doing shit is much more painful than actually working. Pain is felt much stronger than motivation with assholes.

*didn't know she's a PI, nevermind the 'upping your game'. Just have an upfront conversation.

Yes. I suspect the problem is that her file system is a fucking mess, and she's too lazy to dig and find me the right file.

>You are SURE the data is hers? Really sure?
Guy, you're just going to have to take my word for it because I won't go into detail about the type of data. It came from her lab and she herself set the project up and was involved with collecting the data, but so were about a dozen other people. There's nothing wrong with the data itself, there is literally 0% chance that she could have fabricated it. It is an impossibility.

Well, my PI already did after I mentioned this issue to him. Nothing changed.

No, she is stupid... She wanted to sell my data somehow, ...

And when it comes to my, I am telling you I remember nothing after Ive been arrested by police for getting storage at martket...

And when it comes to my cops arested me

That post made literally zero sense.

Is this a bot?

If it is, then it must have been using /int/ as the training set.

Idk I'll let you know if a girl ever looks at me

>teaching obligations

how do i avoid this hell while still being in a research position?

no there isn't. who's a fella and who's a chad in this case? either way you're making someone stare at you.

>mfw took the bait

Depends on where you are. In most places it's a necessary evil, but the amount of hours you need to put in vary quite a lot across countries and institutions.

A universal solution: Get a big ass grant so you can do whatever the fuck you want.

No bot, hi-top...

I am talking about one with yogapants that used to look on cutting vegetables with me at museum

I think this guy gets it right. Don't you think why she can't give you such an important data right now? Don't you think it's just because all the way it wasn't just HER data?

>Don't you think it's just because all the way it wasn't just HER data?
We've been over this.

>there is literally 0% chance that she could have fabricated it
But someone else could.

This is getting mildly annoying.

Ah, so you're new here. That explains a lot.

Ask her why she keeps making excuses, without being too confrontational. Come from an angle of calmness.

No, you believe her for no reason yet you have no idea why is she holding on the paper with stupid excuses.

It sucks so much, that youve dont believe that data that apears real can be generated faster than human can accept them, or somehow,see if they are real... ... Am I chat bot or what? Who am I??

I was here longer than this actual board.

I can't exactly call her out on making excuses, because I would be implying that she's lying.

>for no reason
Why do you assume this? And more importantly, why don't you just take my word for it? It's sloppiness and unprofessional behavior on her part, and nothing more than that.

Reffering to picture, I think I remember I was right.

Whine about it and ask Veeky Forums.

Yup, I figured that one out all on my own. Hence the thread.

I'll say it again: quit being a pussy and have an adult conversation with her. You can be polite and yet not fuck around with games at the same time.

Like I said, I did that already. So did my PI. I have the feeling that the more I bug her for this stuff, the less she feels like doing it.

Half life explained more science than her, ...

So, you want a Veeky Forums pass because you posted in someone else's thread and you don't know if their thread got pruned or deleted?

Then you've already gotten your answer, dumbass. Move on.

Maybe she hacked him and got all of his analyses?

Except I don't. I was mostly looking for people with similar experiences here, not for little pricks like you.

...

>I was here longer than this actual board.
Shouldn't you have tenure or be a PI yourself then?

>I was mostly looking for people with similar experiences here
I spent some years as a post doc before leaving for industry. And what you write about her gives me a real baaaaad feeling. If you have Science or Nature lined up for your publication you sure put the pedal to the metal. The impact factor is just way too high for meaningless delay. People cancel their holidays over such an opportunity.

I spent 25 years navigating a political landscape in both academia and then industry, quite successfully I might add. If you've had a sincere, direct discussion with this woman and have not received a satisfactory response/conclusion, you can either accept it for what it obviously is, whine to your boss about it which you've already done, or whine to her boss about it. If she is the boss, you've done all you can do. Move on.

So much, I cant still read a book for free with this digital data, I think gay whore can have better logic than you.

Ohh, i get it. Yeah, no one wants hijacked data.

>Shouldn't you have tenure or be a PI yourself then?
I was doing my undergrad when this board got added. It takes a while to become a PI, but I'm on my way.

>If you have Science or Nature lined up for your publication you sure put the pedal to the metal.
My feelings exactly. It's not like this thing is under review already though, and I don't think we'll get scooped because it's really a unique dataset, and I've implemented some pretty innovative analyses. So I think she thinks we're good for now, she doesn't seem to be used to this fast paced way of working.

>you've done all you can do. Move on.
I guess this is difficult to accept because it would suck to throw away a project like this. But in essence you're right, I can't do anything that I haven't already tried, besides losing my temper. So all I can do is wait and see if she turns around.

No, they need to pay to get hijacked data... I think freud leave university, then after second world war workers party had problems... There is virtualy no data being hijacked...

Here's hoping, op.

thanks buddy

although your pic is sending a mixed message

Wouldn't have it any other way ha ha. But seriously best of luck.

i really hope shes okay

call and annoy her every day at least one, maybe even twice. Get her to commit to stuff and promises and when she doesn't deliver get mad at her; basically just get a backbone.

Thanks for the suggestion, but if you read back you'll see that this is not really a viable option.

Just saw this thread right now, skimmed through the answers and your follow up responses.
Why do you inquire for alternative ways of handling your unfortunate situation, but dismiss the first and apparently common first reaction, that is, doubting her sincerity? Doing this, you settle yourself back into your current situation, doing nothing but waiting for change on her side.
You don't have to, or should, jump to extreme conclusions, but you should accept for yourself that you are not fine with this situation and DO something. Start another means of communication, or at the very least find out if other projects have a similar flaw in information flow.

>doubting her sincerity
If by this you mean the suggestion that the data are not genuine, then my reason for dismissing this possibility is that I cannot elaborate on why I know for a fact that they are. I brush over it because it is irrelevant to the discussion, and talking about it would not help my current situation.

If by 'sincerity' you mean her commitment to the project, then I don't remember dismissing that at all. She spent multiple years collecting these data together with other people. In that respect she has already fully committed. Where her commitment is lacking I suppose is finishing the project, by turning it into a paper.

Anyway, since I started the thread I got an email from her explaining in part why she's been so inactive: She was negotiating a better position at another institution and just signed the contract. This has no consequences for our future collaboration, but it does explain why she hasn't been reachable. I again reminded her of exactly the things that I need, so hopefully I'll have them soon. Beyond that there's nothing I can do.

You're more than welcome to let this thread die by the way. It wasn't my intention to focus it entirely on my current predicament, I was mostly looking for experiences from other people. But instead I ended up talking about myself 99% of the time.

>money/prestige
>pure math
choose one

Chicks like to dress like that because it boosts their self esteem and makes them feel good about how attractive/cool/whatever they are. They're doing it for themselves, not for other people.

It's not that different from other shit like getting piercings/tattoos, dying one's hair, using makeup, etc...

I agree.

Maybe she thinks your analysis is incompetent and is trying not to hurt your feelings. Some people don't like confrontation.

Why do you need her?

Right the paper all by yourself, publish as the single author and on the acknowledgements section you can say how wonderful it was that she shared the data with you.

She came to my lab in the first place because my PI and me are one of the few people who can actually implement what she wanted.

The data are her property. Publishing it without her approval would be intellectual theft.

Did you offer her pie?

Curiously, no. I haven't offered her pie yet. Great suggestion, I'll give it a try.

Butterscotch or cinnamon?

The f*ck kinda pies are those?

She single?

Probably not, them science bitches when they ain't busy with some shit they're either staying healthy because they're smart or getting off on something So they ain't distracted when they need to be Doing some shit.

Nice tits

Except that "cool" and "attractive" only make sense because other people look at you.

Whelp, after my last email I finally got part of the things that I needed, and she finished a part of the manuscript that she was supposed to write. Things are moving forward.

No, married and has kids.

I keep revisiting this thread because of the OP picture.

Is there a way you can just ignore her completely and do all the shit yourself?
Obviously she is no use.

Yeah just like recreate the data and when writing the paper make this a little anecdote...the guys on big bang theory do that all the time..the anecdote part.

No, because without her I have no data. She's essential to the project because she owns the data.

But could you recreate the experiment?