I work with some very bright people. Many of them are very bright scientists. However, this can sometimes lead to problems; if they believe the understand how something works (and they are wrong) they cannot start to comprehend any explanation of how it actually works.
No, they understand it, so therefore what I'm saying, if it differs from their understanding, is as a matter of course incorrect.
The only way I can get my message across is by not talking about the actual issue, but by using an analogy and leaving them to apply it. Which they invariably do, very rapidly. Well, they are bright, after all.
For example ....
The scientists/ researchers fill in forms in en electronic system, which come through to me for validation. A major update of the system worked only on forms started after the update (i.e. forms they had started filling in beforehand were still in the old format even if they were finished and submitted after the update). However, some months later we were still receiving "old" forms, which shouldn't have been the case. It dawned on me that they were using a past "successful" application, then just over-writing the parts that related to the new application.
They were, however, insistent that this was a new application.
"You must have used an old form".
"It's a brand new application!"
"But did you use a previous form?"
"I've already told you, I only started it last week!"
Ok, this isn't working. "Imagine you have a twelve year old piece of paper with writing on it. You take an eraser and rub out the writing, then write something new on it. How old is the piece of paper?"
"Oh! ....You mean I should have gone with "Start new submission rather than one I did four year ago!"
And again.
They are applying for permission to conduct research at NHS sites, and have to list the legal entities responsible for those sites on the application form. Frequently they list the actual sites, which means that the software will not work properly, so I ask them to correct it.
"But I'm not doing my research there".
"No, but that's the legal body responsible for the research site, so that's what you list".
"But I'm doing my research somewhere else!"
Ok, here we go again. "Imagine your child is going on a school trip. They bring a consent form home from school, and you sign it to say they can go. That doesn't mean that you're going on the trip!"
"That makes sense now. Thank you!"
But the one that my colleagues like best (so far) escaped from my mouth earlier this week.
The system that the researchers use is not the same one that I use, but a gateway system. This means that they can prepare forms, upload documents, etc., in their system, but until they actually press the "Submit" button, I can't access them.
On a particular submission, I had asked for particular documents three ties, explaining each time that they had to be uploaded and submitted, and by this point the researcher was getting as frustrated as I was that I was still asking for them.
"But they're in the public area. You should be able to see them."
"But I don't have access to that system. You need to transfer them from your system to mine".
"But I've already uploaded them!"
Ok, how to explain this. "Imagine you've written a letter. You put a stamp on it, and put it on your hall table. If you don't put it into the post box, when is it going to reach me?"
Five minutes later, the documents transferred across.
So the moral is - don't talk to scientists about what they think they know; talk to them about their home lives.
Or, to put it another way: imagine a researcher is a human being ....
Wednesday, 19 June 2013
Thursday, 13 June 2013
The tale of Snowball's ear
As mentioned in my previous post, our cat Snowball has had health problems lately.
Snowball, as her name implies, is pure white. This means that her ears and nose are at risk of damage by the sun, and we have to put high factor sun cream on her when she goes outside. This doesn't go down to well with Her Majesty.
It's now over ten years since we adopted her, and she's approaching 15 years of age. She's intelligent, loyal .... and stubborn. The first time we went on holiday, leaving her in the care of friends, she stayed in the room she last saw us until we returned two weeks later.
When I say the first time we left her I do, of course, mean the only time. By the following year she had a passport, and came with us to France.
The only trouble with taking her on holiday with us, even if only to France, is that the weather is better.
Four years ago we took her to Brittany. Several times a day we put sun cream on her ears and nose. And several times a day she immediately licked it off and went out into the garden. The result was that she got quite badly sunburnt.
A few months after we returned, we noticed brown discolouration on the edge of one ear. we took her to the vet whose thoughts matched ours - skin cancer. He explained that the standard treatment was to remove the whole ear but suggested that, given her age, we should monitor it and only take action if it either spread or caused her distress.
For a few years there was no change.
Then earlier this year I thought I noticed a change. After a few days I mentioned it to Luc, and he replied that he thought the same.
She went back to the vet - now a different, younger vet - who again said that the standard treatment was the removal of the ear. We were reluctant to proceed, but started keeping a photographic record of the marking on her ear.
Five weeks later we 'phoned the vet and arranged to bring her in for surgery the next day.
She's quite an old lady, and was very badly treated in her youth, so I was very concerned about her, but was relieved to get the 'phone call saying she was recovering from the anaesthetic and could be picked up at around six that evening.
She looked pitiful. It hadn't crossed my mind that he would need to shave part of her head, or just how thick the fur on her head was. Just about all of the ear was missing, and the dark stitching really showed up against her white fur. And to add insult to injury, her right foreleg had also been shaved for the anaesthetic and drips, and was now covered by a blue elasticated tube bandage.
The only good point about this was that the bandage was bothering her more than the ear. For the next 24 hours, all was well.
At six o'clock the following evening, she managed to remove the bandage; I don't know how. But without this distraction, she immediately became aware that something was wrong with her ear, and started scratching it, so we had to put a cone collar on her.
Not good!
Within a few seconds she was finding it stopped her going through gaps she normally used, and when she tried to work out what was happening it caught on the ground.
She promptly went upstairs to sleep on it. Which she couldn't do because of the collar.
After two hours she came back downstairs. Pausing in the doorway, she surveyed the lounge and then took a route that knocked over just about everything possible.
Some time during the night (Luc keeps odd hours) she made enough of a nuisance of herself to have the collar removed. I woke up at 05:30 to find her sleeping next to my pillow as usual.
Luckily, she appeared to understand what behaviour had led to the collar, so she didn't scratch again. I did say she was intelligent.
Five days after the surgery, we received the results from the histology. It seems she had a rare and very aggressive carcinoma, that would have rapidly spread through her body, most likely going to her lungs next. However, the excision was clean with good margins, so we have every hope that it has been wholly removed before it spread.
Two weeks after her surgery she had a post-op examination and was declared to be making excellent progress. The loss of her ear does not appear to be causing her any distress, and she's now grooming normally; if anything, her behaviour shows less sign of anxiety than before the operation. And the fur on her head is starting to grow back, although there's still some way to go.
And, for which I am very thankful, she doesn't seem to be holding any sort of resentment towards us.
She remains my bright, beautiful and brave angel.
Snowball, as her name implies, is pure white. This means that her ears and nose are at risk of damage by the sun, and we have to put high factor sun cream on her when she goes outside. This doesn't go down to well with Her Majesty.
When I say the first time we left her I do, of course, mean the only time. By the following year she had a passport, and came with us to France.
The only trouble with taking her on holiday with us, even if only to France, is that the weather is better.
Four years ago we took her to Brittany. Several times a day we put sun cream on her ears and nose. And several times a day she immediately licked it off and went out into the garden. The result was that she got quite badly sunburnt.
A few months after we returned, we noticed brown discolouration on the edge of one ear. we took her to the vet whose thoughts matched ours - skin cancer. He explained that the standard treatment was to remove the whole ear but suggested that, given her age, we should monitor it and only take action if it either spread or caused her distress.
For a few years there was no change.
Then earlier this year I thought I noticed a change. After a few days I mentioned it to Luc, and he replied that he thought the same.
She went back to the vet - now a different, younger vet - who again said that the standard treatment was the removal of the ear. We were reluctant to proceed, but started keeping a photographic record of the marking on her ear.
Five weeks later we 'phoned the vet and arranged to bring her in for surgery the next day.
She's quite an old lady, and was very badly treated in her youth, so I was very concerned about her, but was relieved to get the 'phone call saying she was recovering from the anaesthetic and could be picked up at around six that evening.
She looked pitiful. It hadn't crossed my mind that he would need to shave part of her head, or just how thick the fur on her head was. Just about all of the ear was missing, and the dark stitching really showed up against her white fur. And to add insult to injury, her right foreleg had also been shaved for the anaesthetic and drips, and was now covered by a blue elasticated tube bandage.
The only good point about this was that the bandage was bothering her more than the ear. For the next 24 hours, all was well.
At six o'clock the following evening, she managed to remove the bandage; I don't know how. But without this distraction, she immediately became aware that something was wrong with her ear, and started scratching it, so we had to put a cone collar on her.
Not good!
Within a few seconds she was finding it stopped her going through gaps she normally used, and when she tried to work out what was happening it caught on the ground.
She promptly went upstairs to sleep on it. Which she couldn't do because of the collar.
After two hours she came back downstairs. Pausing in the doorway, she surveyed the lounge and then took a route that knocked over just about everything possible.
Some time during the night (Luc keeps odd hours) she made enough of a nuisance of herself to have the collar removed. I woke up at 05:30 to find her sleeping next to my pillow as usual.
Luckily, she appeared to understand what behaviour had led to the collar, so she didn't scratch again. I did say she was intelligent.
Five days after the surgery, we received the results from the histology. It seems she had a rare and very aggressive carcinoma, that would have rapidly spread through her body, most likely going to her lungs next. However, the excision was clean with good margins, so we have every hope that it has been wholly removed before it spread.
Two weeks after her surgery she had a post-op examination and was declared to be making excellent progress. The loss of her ear does not appear to be causing her any distress, and she's now grooming normally; if anything, her behaviour shows less sign of anxiety than before the operation. And the fur on her head is starting to grow back, although there's still some way to go.
And, for which I am very thankful, she doesn't seem to be holding any sort of resentment towards us.
She remains my bright, beautiful and brave angel.
Sunday, 2 June 2013
"May you live in interesting times!"
It's been quite a week. Aside from work, that is - which is always "quite a week".
On Saturday, we were booked for an event we've never done before, in a place we've not been. We ran the route through Google Maps, and it estimated 35 minutes, so we allowed around 50 minutes.
Google Maps didn't allow for both the M25 and the M20 to be at a standstill.
We took to the country roads, which would have been more fun if it weren't for the packs of cyclists riding two abreast at low speeds, only speeding up when we came across horses. Not really helpful.
Arriving 20 minutes after the fair had started obviously meant that we couldn't take the car onto the showground, but had to unload in the car park and carry everything across. I dropped off the first boxes of snakes at our appointed pitch and went to get the next batch - only to be told on my return, by the man from the pitch next door, "You'll have to move those! My wife won't have them near her!" Of course, it was too late to switch people round, so all we could do was move to the far end of the pitch, and suffer angry looks from the pair of them all afternoon - especially as we were busy all afternoon and they had very few customers.
Sunday started out warm, which we were pleased about, as we had a big show. Unfortunately it turned out to be hotter than we had expected, which led to problems with some of the reptiles and made for a somewhat stressful afternoon. You'd think that South American, African and Australian animals could cope with 20 degrees ..... And on Bank Holiday Monday we were back at the same event, with the similar concerns.
Tuesday as a University Closure Day - an extra day off work - which I rather needed. Added to which I looking forward to seeing The Piff the Magic Dragon Show at an intimate little theatre with a friend I haven't seen for over a year and three of her friends, who I didn't know. The two of us had had tickets to see Piff (www.piffthemagicdragon.com) back in March, but at the last minute she wasn't able to come so her ticket had gone to waste, and I was looking forward to treating her. Until I got a message from her in the morning to say she was too ill to come so, once more, her ticket went to waste.
It also meant I had tickets to hand over to three people I didn't know, wouldn't recognise, and couldn't actually contact .... Not the most relaxing of starts. The show was great fun though, although it didn't go exactly to plan ....
On Wednesday I was back at work. Well, physically I was, but my mind was with my poor, lovely cat Snowball who was at the vet having surgery to remove her ear as the "probable cancer" that started to show some time ago has now suddenly spread. She's an old girl - around 14-15 years - so I was quite concerned how she'd handle the anaesthetic, and also the loss of her ear. In fact, she did very well. It was the following evening when we had to put on a cone collar to stop her scratching her wound. For the first 20 minutes she appeared confused and frustrated as the collar stopped her going through gaps, caught on the ground, and generally made life difficult for her.
It must have taken all of 90 minutes for her to work out how to knock the most things over and cause such absolute chaos that her collar was taken off again after just a few hours. Luckily, she seemed to understand why it had been put on her, and she's left her ear alone ever since.
Then today we learnt that, although we have made our own bookings for next weekend, someone we work with quite frequently has assumed we're available to work with him and advertised it widely. So now we're trying to arrange another team ...
On Saturday, we were booked for an event we've never done before, in a place we've not been. We ran the route through Google Maps, and it estimated 35 minutes, so we allowed around 50 minutes.
Google Maps didn't allow for both the M25 and the M20 to be at a standstill.
We took to the country roads, which would have been more fun if it weren't for the packs of cyclists riding two abreast at low speeds, only speeding up when we came across horses. Not really helpful.
Arriving 20 minutes after the fair had started obviously meant that we couldn't take the car onto the showground, but had to unload in the car park and carry everything across. I dropped off the first boxes of snakes at our appointed pitch and went to get the next batch - only to be told on my return, by the man from the pitch next door, "You'll have to move those! My wife won't have them near her!" Of course, it was too late to switch people round, so all we could do was move to the far end of the pitch, and suffer angry looks from the pair of them all afternoon - especially as we were busy all afternoon and they had very few customers.
Sunday started out warm, which we were pleased about, as we had a big show. Unfortunately it turned out to be hotter than we had expected, which led to problems with some of the reptiles and made for a somewhat stressful afternoon. You'd think that South American, African and Australian animals could cope with 20 degrees ..... And on Bank Holiday Monday we were back at the same event, with the similar concerns.
Tuesday as a University Closure Day - an extra day off work - which I rather needed. Added to which I looking forward to seeing The Piff the Magic Dragon Show at an intimate little theatre with a friend I haven't seen for over a year and three of her friends, who I didn't know. The two of us had had tickets to see Piff (www.piffthemagicdragon.com) back in March, but at the last minute she wasn't able to come so her ticket had gone to waste, and I was looking forward to treating her. Until I got a message from her in the morning to say she was too ill to come so, once more, her ticket went to waste.
It also meant I had tickets to hand over to three people I didn't know, wouldn't recognise, and couldn't actually contact .... Not the most relaxing of starts. The show was great fun though, although it didn't go exactly to plan ....
On Wednesday I was back at work. Well, physically I was, but my mind was with my poor, lovely cat Snowball who was at the vet having surgery to remove her ear as the "probable cancer" that started to show some time ago has now suddenly spread. She's an old girl - around 14-15 years - so I was quite concerned how she'd handle the anaesthetic, and also the loss of her ear. In fact, she did very well. It was the following evening when we had to put on a cone collar to stop her scratching her wound. For the first 20 minutes she appeared confused and frustrated as the collar stopped her going through gaps, caught on the ground, and generally made life difficult for her.
It must have taken all of 90 minutes for her to work out how to knock the most things over and cause such absolute chaos that her collar was taken off again after just a few hours. Luckily, she seemed to understand why it had been put on her, and she's left her ear alone ever since.
Then today we learnt that, although we have made our own bookings for next weekend, someone we work with quite frequently has assumed we're available to work with him and advertised it widely. So now we're trying to arrange another team ...
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