Peer Review Blues

I've been working on responding to reviews of the last paper submitted from my postdoc work.  This process is never fun, and this one is especially tough because I haven't thought much about this project since I submitted the paper a couple of months ago.  I'd much rather be working on this blog, and I have a long list of cool sciency parenting topics that I can't wait to tackle, but I'm trying to find the discipline to spend a few hours a day revising this paper.  And a few hours a day is all I have at the moment.  It is a pain, but I need to get it done and get it done well.

On the other hand, I'm trying to appreciate that this peer review process serves a vital purpose, and my paper will be better for it by the time it is published.  It isn't a perfect system, but it certainly goes a long way towards ensuring that scientific data are published with integrity.  If you aren't familiar with this process, here it is in a nutshell:  I and my co-authors submit a paper, which we've probably spent months writing and rewriting, to a scientific journal.  The journal sends the paper out to a few other scientists in the field and asks them to evaluate the quality and relevance of the work.  In an ideal world, the reviewers are unbiased evaluators of our work, though everyone knows that everyone has some biases and judging something like the "relevance of the work" can be very subjective.  The reviewers either send the paper back saying it isn't fit to publish and it is too hopeless to even try (I've had that reply a few times) or this paper is OK, but it has substantial problems that you need to fix.  Apparently it is possible to get reviews that say this is an excellent paper and we should publish it right away, but neither I nor anyone I know has ever had this experience, so I think it could be a myth.  I'm at the "fixing" stage now.  Some of the reviewers' issues are easy to deal with, others not so much.  I will make some changes to the manuscript and write lots of polite justification to the reviewers, resubmit, and hope that they deem my work fit to publish.  And oh yeah, if they do, I will then pay them to publish it.  But then my work will be out in the world, for everyone (or everyone with access) to see.

As a consumer of science, I have to appreciate the peer review process.  I have been in the business of reading, evaluating, and interpreting science for more than a decade now, and all along, it has been nice to know that the paper I am reading had to pass through a panel of "experts" before it got to me.  I think this matters to me more than ever now that I am a mom.  I turn to science to answer my parenting questions, which I care deeply about.  I am delving into research both inside and outside my field.  I don't have a scientific background in child psychology or sleep science, and though my research background gives me lots of tools to evaluate any scientific article, I'm glad that the peer review process means that the articles I read have been given a passing grade by other scientists in that specific field. 

Still, blogging is a lot more fun.  It is freeing (but a little scary) to hit "publish" on a blog post that I sat down to write maybe just a few minutes before and then let the peer review happen in public via comments, Twitter, and page views.  It is a different kind of writing for me for sure, and I like it.  I'd better get back to revising the paper, but stay tuned for more posts once I get this thing done.  

(Re)Introduction and Intention

I thought I should take a moment to update the blogosphere on who I am and what I am doing here. I started this blog last June when I was a pregnant postdoc, working in a lab at a major research university, where I was studying the effects of gestational diabetes on the fetus. After a couple of posts, the blog fell by the wayside for about a year. I got busy with trying to get as much work done as possible before the baby was born and with trying to get enough sleep, which has been a losing battle ever since. Once BabyC arrived, my world of course forever changed. I muddled through the first few months of being a mama, alternating (minute-to-minute) from being overwhelmingly happy to overwhelmingly tired to being generally overwhelmed.

Once I sort of got the hang of the mama thing, I started working on getting research papers published from my postdoc and even PhD work. I was able to get a surprising amount done in 2-hour increments at my kitchen table, and I have several papers in various stages of being published as a result. I hate to leave something unfinished, so it is important to me to get my work published. However, I don’t anticipate going back to academia or a lab bench anytime soon. Husband, BabyC, and I just moved to Eugene, Oregon, which is a lovely little college town where we might be able to stay forever. While there are lots of cool things happening here, there isn’t a lot of biomedical research. Husband has a new job that can support us. I really want to be with BabyC most of the time, and I feel lucky to be able to do that. But I also feel a little lost, now that I don’t have work that is my own.

So here’s where the intention comes in. I need to develop some small career for myself which will allow me to keep up with science, continue learning, and be of value to others. It would be great if I could do that from home (or a coffee shop) and if I could do it part-time for now while BabyC is little. My goal is to write about nutrition and health parenting issues, drawing from the scientific literature to answer practical questions. I’m going to start by posting small articles on this blog in order to build a sort of portfolio, get some practice with this type of writing, and hopefully get a little feedback from readers. Eventually I will start pitching story ideas to magazines and hopefully pick up some freelance work.

I realize that I probably sound pretty naive to an experienced writer or blogger, and I am the first to admit that I really have no idea what I am doing when it comes to building readership for a blog and breaking into writing for magazines. Maybe some of you will offer some advice to me. Maybe you will enjoy coming on the journey with me, wherever it ends up.

I don’t claim to be any kind of expert on parenting. BabyC is my first baby, and I’m learning as I go. That puts me in a position to be in touch with the issues that first-time parents fret about. What I can offer is the ability to search and evaluate scientific literature and distill it down to a useful form. With a background in research, I have been trained to be skeptical and rarely take anything as an absolute fact. I also hate being wrong, so I am much more likely to say, “it’s complicated and here’s why” than to give a straightforward answer. Most importantly, I have no agenda. I just want to make well-informed decisions and do the right thing for my kid, within reason.

I welcome any feedback on my posts, and I would also love to hear your story ideas. If you are a parent, what questions do you have? If you are a writer, do you have any advice to help get my tiny writing career off the ground?

Things that get in the way of writing when you are a stay-at-home, trying to be a work-from-home, mom

I’ve been trying to work on an honest-to-goodness sciency parenting piece of writing. When (not IF, note the confidence here!) I finish it, I’ll post it on this blog. This particular piece is about iron nutrition for babies transitioning from a milk diet to solid foods. My baby hates cereal, in fact hates eating anything with a spoon, and I’ve been fretting that she isn’t getting enough iron since I can’t feed her that disgusting fortified baby cereal (Preview: I did enough research today to ease my fears a bit, but you’ll have to stay tuned for the fun sciency details.) My goal is to write pieces like this on a free-lance basis for parenting magazines. You can laugh if you want. Or if you have any advice about this dream of mine, please let me know. I’ll write more about my plans soon, but first let me tell about why I’ve made so little progress today. If you are a parent and/or a writer, I’m sure you can relate.

This afternoon, I feel like I am finally getting to the meat of the issue. I have even gotten to the point of building a spreadsheet with lots of confident little numbers. I run to the kitchen for a quick glass of water. Husband, who often works evenings and nights so is kicking around the house in the middle of the day, says: “Baby is napping… I think we should go take a “nap” too (wink, wink).” Are you kidding me? But I’m trying to work… No, nobody is paying me to do said work. No, nobody is making me do it, but I need it. (Husband is surprisingly understanding and supportive despite my weak argument.)

Later, husband is off to work and baby is in bed. The evening is all mine. I schedule it out in my head:

7-7:30 - eat and flip through a cookbook to try to make a grocery list for tomorrow;

7:30 – 8 - clean up kitchen, feed the pets, throw in a load of laundry, etc. ;

8-10 - WRITE;

10-10:30 – get ready for bed and do a little reading, then sleep!

Problem is, that “etc.” turns into a million things. Have you ever read “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie”? I know you have, probably million times, right?

Here’s the version that I lived tonight:

If you give a cat some cat food, you might find ants in her dish.

So you dump the anty food into the trash but then realize that if you don’t take it out now, you’ll have ants all over the kitchen.

So you take out the trash, which means pulling in the cans from the curb.

As you drag the cans up the driveway, you realize the plants are looking sad and droopy, and you can’t remember the last time you watered them, so you stop to water the garden.

The garden is happy, so you go in to take care of those ants, which means squishing them with a wet paper towel since you aren’t sure if there is a safe ant killer with a baby crawling around the house.

While you are on your hands and knees, you realize just how dirty the floor is, so you get the broom out and start sweeping.

After you have swept the whole house, you have a really impressive pile of dirt, and you are glad that you took care of that job, you really are, but it is now 8:40 and time to write.

So you sit down at your computer, but before you get back to the iron question, you have to cruise around a few blogs (important research) and then you decide to jot down a few notes about how difficult it can be to get any writing done.

OK, so I’m no children’s book writer. Can I make a career out of writing about how difficult it is to write? Because it is 9:45 and lots of questions about iron remain.