CHAPTER ONE
The journalist
Are there any highly successful research scientists who are also decent human beings?
Let me tell you: a triumphant scientist – one who dominates a field of research – will not have a record of selfless concern for the wellbeing of their staff. These researchers do not foster a compassionate work environment within which no-one fears admitting to a mistake or pursuing an unproductive direction.
Prestige is not awarded. It is snatched. Not by those scientists who practice sympathy and compassion. Instead, the victor is the hard-hearted master of combat in a cutthroat arena. Weapons of choice include a domineering personality, some bullying, and the violation of moral principles. Decency does not enter into it.
Such people will view their post-docs as little more than a feverish assembly line. A resource that is productive well into the evenings, and through much of the weekend. But it’s also a testing ground. A small percentage of these post-docs possess the personality and work-ethic to flourish in this exacting environment. They will become first author of a seminal paper. Such science-speak pays homage to the most important contributor of data to a research study published by a leading scientific journal (one that has contrived a snappy yet all-encompassing title, such as Science, Nature, or Cell). These successful post-docs are further nurtured with networking opportunities and glorious letters of recommendation. They establish their own laboratories at other academic institutions. They contribute to franchise expansion. One in which the franchisee is indebted to the intellectual capital of the franchiser. These favors must be repaid. Therein lies the means to weaken the guard rails of the peer review system.
I am well-qualified to be a whistleblower. I have first-hand experience. I was one of its victims.
So was my marriage.
Scratch that. I am striving to be an honest narrator.
My relationship with Simon would have stunk eventually. The scientific shit I encountered served only to foul the air more quickly.
Here’s my backstory. Simon and I met in the fall of 2015, soon after we had both started grad school. I well-remember one of our first conversations, because it speaks to the type of person he was, in those days.
I had been intrigued by his description of himself as a secular Jew. I had no idea what being Jewish was all about. “Isn’t that an oxymoron?”
“Only in an Orthodox context. But that’s not me. I believe Judaism isn’t simply sustained by religion.” He explained that he had a strong connection to his Jewish family, their community, and its culture. It just happened that he was agnostic as far as God was concerned.
And then he had talked about Purim. The way he explained it, there was some playacting to a boisterous audience, together with a surfeit of eating, drinking and dancing.
“Ha!” I had exclaimed. “For you, every day is Purim.”
He had applauded my reference to our active social life. Because he was the one driving it. It was part of his living-for-the-present mindset. He was the quarterback for our group text-chain. This was how he kept us all informed on the bustling music scene. This was why our drinking-group always made its quorum.
It was thrilling to be with someone who could wholeheartedly play the uninhibited party animal. Life was never mundane. That had been a large part of my attraction to him. The sex hadn’t been half bad either.
Nevertheless, we took our studies seriously. We both frequently worked beyond a core, nine-to-five schedule (although ‘core’, for us, was more like ten-to-six). At that time, we were humming the same tune: we understood the nature of this profession, and its demands. We were able to give each other moral support, without even thinking about it.
Eighteen months in, we were married.
During those cheerful days, it never occurred to me that Simon’s carefree spirit might have been simply one final student fling. An indulgence nurtured by a lack of responsibility. In his endeavor to be the untroubled reveler-in-chief, he benefitted from bypassing a major inconvenience for a post-doc. He was freed from taking rent or mortgage payments from a meagre salary. His parents had been the enablers. They had purchased a Chapel Hill condo for him to use while he worked his way through grad school. To be fair, I had benefitted too. The condo’s property title was repurposed to become his parents’ wedding gift to the two of us.
These were also good times because I found studying for a Ph.D. to be an easygoing and intellectually-rewarding activity. It was also much like being self-employed. I was just working for myself.
Of course I did have a supervisor. I appreciated that she often guided the overall direction of my work. She was hands-on with the technical training, but nevertheless I was encouraged to independently design and perform experiments, analyze the data and draw my own conclusions. I could always call on her for assistance, and I never felt pressured. She helped me to publish my work in mid-range journals. It was all fun, and low-key. I was allowed to enjoy the pursuit of knowledge, at my own tempo.
Unfortunately, this all means I can now appreciate why my Ph.D. supervisor was a scientific also-ran who could only bring in grants that were charitable slim-pickings. She never earned the recognition that generates invitations to speak at conferences. She did not possess a competitive nature, she was honest, kind and considerate, and she put the needs of her staff above her own.
The only other member of our group was our lab-tech; he played a lot of tennis, watched even more on TV, and was teetotal; obviously we didn’t have much in common, but we got on well enough.
But all good things. . .
Simon and I graduated at around the same time. That’s when it all changed. Everything.
In January 2020, I moved to another, local university to take a post-doc position in a cell biology group. Moving into this new and larger laboratory was a culture shock. I was woefully unprepared for entering such a ruthless environment.
For starters, I was provided with a smaller workspace than I was used to. I was sandwiched between two, more senior postdocs. I was in a constant battle to preserve my bench territory, and maintain my hold on the reagents that I had spent precious time preparing. So, I hit on the idea of mislabeling my reagent jars to make the contents less attractive for pilfering.
I also formed strategies to beat the competition to communal lab equipment. At first, I tried to introduce a booking pad, but no-one used it. So instead, I simply made a habit of taping a large typed note to the equipment: “I will be using this at [insert time and date].” I also have a temper, so the others quickly learned not to cross me on that one.
My fiery disposition also stopped me from being on the losing side whenever there was Sharpie pillage. Without this precious but short-lived marker, you would lack the ability to label assay tubes and storage vials; in other words, you couldn’t work. One time I taped my Sharpie to the underside of the kneehole below my workbench, but the others still found it. I went postal on that one. It never happened again. But I wasn’t nurturing a friendship circle, for sure.
And then Covid hit. Social distancing limited the number of staff that could be in the laboratory at a given time; two groups of alternating shift workers were created. All that can be said on the plus side was that I could now spread out into the other shift’s workspace. But of course, so could they. I had to clean up the mess they invariably left in “my” area, before I could begin each workday.
On top of that, I learned that there were good data and bad data. My supervisor’s favorite team-members were those that could produce the data that varnished his own ego, by supporting and extending his latest notable hypothesis. Contrary results, that my experiments had the unfortunate tendency to produce, would be picked apart at lab meetings (conducted through Zoom; Ugh!). Inconsistencies in my data would be exposed, and the manner in which my experiments had been performed would be rubbished. There might have been an element of payback here. Perhaps this was retaliation for the times I hogged the lab centrifuge. In any case, these storm clouds exacerbated the adversarial atmosphere.
After only twelve months, I was forced out. The final coffin nail was hammered in by my supervisor on my last day, when I was notified that none of my results would ever be published.
I had no hope of my rising from the graveyard for has-beens. I did not have my name associated with academic papers. I knew I could never secure a supportive reference letter from my employer.
I realize I am not the only one to be harmed by this incredibly stressful occupation. Some have fared far worse. In 2014, during only a four-month period, four UC Berkeley scientists committed suicide, reportedly because they were so overwhelmed by the mental trauma induced by this profession. You can easily verify that sad information on-line.
I will not hide what helped me get through my crisis. I had revenge to plot.
But first, I had to deal with the other shit that hit the fan. During the year when I floundered, Simon had prospered. An antithesis to my failure. He had landed a position at a pharmaceutical company. This was how I learned he was an accomplished actor with the versatility to play very different characters. He became fully immersed in his new role by which he could climb the corporate ladder. Both late nights in bars and live music dropped off our calendar. Simon wanted our social life to revolve around dinners with high-flying work colleagues.
He had become drawn to those who were fond of trash-talking the Biden presidency. This was certainly out of my comfort zone. I also didn’t welcome the company of other couples that included a stay-at-home Mom. It had never before occurred to me that potty training, car-pooling, and tee-ball could be construed as topics of general interest. I also learned that crafting an over-achiever requires endless bellyaching. And there are targets aplenty. The kid’s teacher. The soccer coach. The babysitter. The other kid’s parents.
But the conclusion about the value of parenting was always the same, “It’s so rewarding.”
Maybe work on the sales pitch?
“As you’ll see when you start a family.”
So, no pressure? I never let on that Simon and I had set a low bar for engaging in conversations about bringing children into our lives. We had briefly touched on the issue in the months after our wedding, but only inconsequentially. Like it was no more important a topic than mulling over the purchase of a kegerator. Having draft beer in our house could be nice at some future point, but for now I’m ok with bottles from the grocery store.
In any case, I had not been losing sleep wondering how Simon might turn out as a parent. My foremost concern was to see if he could manage to be a husband. There was no improvement on that score when I told him I didn’t like his new friends and I would rather stay at home and work on my writing.
Simon’s upwardly-mobile plans for our future did not include our condo. We were supposed to cash in its equity for a property with a larger footprint, in a more desirable neighborhood. We ought to be driving cars that drew envious glances, and our calendar should be populated with exotic vacations. These aspirations had all been predicated on his premise that both of us should be enjoying significant incomes.
But, I think, there was much more to it than dollar signs. In Simon’s world, image had become all important. Perhaps he believed that an independently successful wife would enhance his own social identity? Maybe he imagined that an opportunity to broadcast my talents would have boosted his own status? Look how well I have chosen.
Instead, for Simon, it was a real downer being encumbered with an unemployed wife.
I did want a job. I told him that. But I longed to regain the enjoyment of just working for myself, irrespective of the financial reward, or rather, the lack of it. This was why I fell back on an interest in journalism.
As an undergraduate, I had pursued a minor in this subject. I set out to make it as a freelance science writer. I enrolled in a graduate, science-focused writing class. There were aspects of the coursework that were repetitive of my earlier training, but I did gain some useful contacts from within the publishing industry.
Another decision I made early-on was to complete the break from my academic life with an identity change. I adopted a writer’s pen name: Lydia Goode. I changed my appearance too. I let my hair return to its natural brunette color, instead of routinely dying it to the golden blonde that I had once preferred. Off went the shoulder-length tresses. I told my hairdresser to replace them with a tousled pixie-cut. I was a little nervous going into this revamp, I must admit. But now I am happy that this new style complements my full cheeks and rounded jawline. As another bonus, I was no longer paying for hair coloring.
Simon’s contribution to my retraining efforts was to struggle with the concept. “This freelance thing doesn’t seem to be a rational decision.”
My first instinct was to fire back angrily.
“Dick-head! It’s not a ‘thing’, not some random thought I’ve pulled out of the fucking air. . .” I did warn you that I have a temper.
But – much to my later regret – that’s not how I responded. I had foolishly considered the possibility I could deflect with some flippancy.
“Simon, did you know ‘freelance’ is a synonym for success?”
(Pause for dramatic purposes as Simon’s jaw drops into WTF mode).
“Sir Walter Scott introduced the term in Ivanhoe. He wrote about medieval warriors who offered their services to the highest bidder. This is also going to be my winning strategy. Taking only the best bids.”
I remember the shock of being on the receiving end of Simon’s snort of derision; considering the intensity of his rasping mockery, it’s a wonder he didn’t expel snot onto his shirt. What was going on here?
The answer to that question? Arguments about money. That was a new one for us. We had each been successfully pooling a portion of our separate incomes into a domestic expenses fund, but we still retained our own bank accounts. That had worked well until it didn’t. Because I couldn’t.
This was why Simon was now willing to go on the offensive: “Why can’t you get a proper job?”
I was no longer keeping my thoughts to myself, nor did I feel bound by the constraints of eloquence.
“Fuck you, Simon!”
And so it went. The more we fought, the more strongly I committed to my writing. Kind-of-an immovable object versus unstoppable force.
I was now beyond pining to recapture our grad school vibe, when any disputes we did have were inconsequential. Should we listen to punk at Local 506, or the Indie band at the Cradle Back Room? I knew those days would never return. That bond between us had been only weakly forged from an imperfect alloy.
There was one telling occasion when we talked relatively calmly, we cried, we apologized, and we still claimed to love each other. He pledged to be more patient about my lack of income, and I undertook to at least explore other employment opportunities. Then we indulged in a brief fuck. Of a kind that prompts a demand: I want my money back.
I would never say ‘making love’. That phrase belongs to the lyrics of a young teenager’s playlist. But I won’t deny the significance of sex within an appropriate emotional context. The genuine affection, a closeness. That wasn’t us, not anymore. We’d simply participated in a perfunctory and unsatisfactory exchange of bodily fluid. Small wonder that neither of us felt incentivized to keep our promises.
Although, for a while afterwards, we did at least tiptoe around an uneasy truce, even if that was only out of a sense of embarrassment. It also seemed to me that Simon was going out of his way to avoid conflict by spending even more time at work. I agreed with his assertion that this was a helpful distraction for him. In any case, it certainly brought me some relief. I welcomed the extra hours of silence, the increased freedom to work on my writing projects, and the opportunity to retire to bed early, where I would pretend to be asleep when he came home.
But our short, unofficial ceasefire could not even take us through my first year of unemployment. November had rolled around. Other portents of doom appeared. Hanukkah would begin at the end of that month. Consequently, Simon had become increasingly concerned that the impending gathering might finally expose the fragile nature of our relationship to his family. As for me, I had started to become stressed about Trump. His poll numbers at that time were better than Biden’s, and it was still three years before the 2024 presidential election. The Republicans hadn’t even selected their candidate! But that was a topic I felt unable to broach with Simon. All-in-all, there was no doubt that domestic pressure was building.
There was just one, all to brief, joyous interlude. I brought in a couple of lucrative writing commissions. Well, I thought they were lucrative. At least in relation to my modest earnings up until that point.
This was how we came to our pivotal moment. I was so excited. I even stayed up until Simon came home.
His response was crushing. “Is that all?”
I was devastated. Just three words. Yet they overflowed with spite. It was contempt for my gall to claim this as a success. It was an insult of my low expectations. I was foolish for daring to dream this would solve our problems.
I cringe now, as I recall that I had offered him a get out of jail card.
“Simon, this is what I am, now. I’m a writer. It’s working for me and it’s paying me. This is what you need to accept - assuming you still have any hope of rescuing any relationship. If you don’t, if you can’t, then it’s time for me to walk out. . .”
He had retaliated with a dismissive shrug. “Go ahead. Leave. I don’t give a shit.”
Then he revealed just how desperate he had become to own this trainwreck. In a tone that dripped with ridicule, he bragged that instead of devoting his evening hours to the company, he had identified a more receptive vagina. His glorious moment of: ‘so there’!
To make sure he was not in any doubt about the strength of my feeling on this revelation, I hurled a dinner plate across the length of the kitchen, with his neck as my intended target. Unfortunately – or so it had seemed at that time – my lack of experience with ultimate frisbee saved him from any danger of decapitation. Instead, my misfired ceramic missile inflicted serious collateral damage upon an innocent, wall-mounted mirror. The irony of this incident only struck me some days later: my short Jewish marriage had been bookended by shattering glass.
There is no excuse for Simon taking advice from his dick when making workplace decisions, but it does take two to tango. His slutty supervisor should have responded more circumspectly to her damp underwear, and instead digested the company’s well-advised policy on office hook-ups within the chain of command. Her behavior had placed her into my crosshairs, and with my recent failure to make one head roll still in mind, I had not been inclined to pass up a second opportunity.
To this end, my divorce attorney had pointed out that North Carolina is one of only seven US States in which one can make a civil claim against a third party who has sex with a plaintiff’s spouse. The offense is known as a ‘criminal conversation’.
I had been appalled about the prospect of going to court. It was a frightening vision of being cross-examined in a public forum. All to squabble over the pertinence of an archaic euphemism. After all, their furtive rendezvous had surely not been prompted by a desire for dialogue. Except, I suppose, an occasional, “I’m coming.”
My attorney calmed me down. I think she must also have pictured her 30% flying out of the window. She pointed out there was an approach whereby we could reach a satisfactory resolution without going to court. We would just threaten to do so. Also in our favor were the betting odds on Simon and his boss having swapped incriminating phone calls and text messages. Evidence of these exchanges could be obtained from the telecom companies, through submission of a subpoena request to the court. It would all be our bluff, the attorney explained, but the ‘conversationalist’ had more to lose from public exposure than I did. In addition to the acute embarrassment of being outed, she would probably also get fired.
This approach worked like a charm. As well as being relieved of a court date, I had the pleasure of receiving a generous but non-disclosable restitution.
As part of the separate divorce settlement, Simon was obliged to buy out my half-share of our condo; his parents stumped up for him. I doubt they did this happily, because the value of the property had doubled from its original purchase-price, due largely to the Covid-inspired inflationary spiral. Mom and Dad might now have concluded that their son was high maintenance.
Our separation was finalized in the summer of 2023. That’s when I completed my exit from the curses of the triangles. One that speaks to geometry (the isosceles between three centers of learning that encloses a biotechnology hub known as Research Triangle Park) and the other being a metaphor (a marriage plagued by a third party). I moved to the town of York, in South Carolina.
I’ve lived here for nearly six months. I like that it’s small community. I am pleased with the reasonable music scene. There are plenty of welcoming bars and community events. Maybe when I feel like dating again.
I am now satisfied with my new career. The portfolio I have posted on Kolabtree demonstrates that I have published articles in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Scientific American, as well as the News sections of the very top-ranking journals that I disparaged earlier. I’m even mostly managing not to fixate on the outcome of next year’s election.
I have also broadened my brand by creating and managing itstoiletscience.com. Maybe you have already been one of my visitors?
My web site actually hosts a range of biomedical content, despite the implication of the rather specific URL. That choice was inspired by the first article I wrote and uploaded: my reflections on an academic study into the under-reported danger of toilet plume bioaerosol exposure in public restrooms.
I have developed a routine. A strategy that works for me. I am no longer scared of constructing a poor draft, which means I have vanquished blank page syndrome. I write in bursts – no more than thirty minutes at a time. This discipline helps to focus my concentration. Being single also helps; fewer distractions.
So now I feel confident I can carve out separate time to fulfil another ambition. One of revenge upon the system that destroyed my naïve enthusiasm for scientific research. People should know about this.
To this end, I think I’m going to gain assistance from a recent event of some significance: the murder of Professor “Chuck” T. Standish. This, I think, could turn out to be a real gift.
Updated August 3, 2025