Rejected models

I am still involved in a collaboration that dates from my postdoc. This collaboration has been previously referred to as the “doomed project”.

The Doom has reached new depths today.

For the story, this collaboration was a very original one in the whole project since it gathered very diverse teams. However, the work has been hindered by the collaboration’s initiator constant stalling (I’ve stopped counting the number of times I have explained some simple things I do). It was also slowed down by another collaborators business (and lack of research staff). Both these guys are very senior, and whatever happens or doesn’t over the course of this will bear little consequence for them. On the other side there’s me, a not-any-longer postdoc but still-needs -publications, and a researcher who is desperately trying to bring this forward because it’s a big chunk of her thesis. She is the Patient Mediator (PM).

Since about three years now, PM has patiently herded all these people, the most difficult being the senior people. And yet, we still seem to be discussing really basic stuff. “Can stepwise girl present what kind of variables she intends to compute?” (I have done this at least four times, and have other people in the group). And now the other bloke is saying “Yeah, well I don’t really agree with the use of the method used by stepwise girl” - except, I did not use this method this time, as presented in PM’s presentations, and my reports on more than one occasion. He is also poopooing some other methods I used (linking it to a supposedly very poor habit of people in my discipline), but omitting to mention that if we drop that approach, we also drop of whole chunk of info.

I am sick of this crap, but am sticking with it because of PM who needs the thing to get done. But I think these two blokes are setting a very poor example of collaborative work that is always on the tone of opposition and non-constructive criticism. How come it is always PM who needs to propose steps forward? How come we still are wasting every one's time of basic stuff that we discussed? How come we still cannot see whatever will possible here?