Be forewarned, this is a rant.

So Sunday night I received an email from my supervisor, RedBull.  It's a doosy.  In the email, she states that I have not made it clear in my Research Statement (for the tt apps) that my accomplishments in her lab are part of her research program.   Despite the fact that within the statement, it clearly says, "As a postdoc in such and such lab, I accomplished the following.."  Secondly, she believes that my proposed future research overlaps too closely with her current grant and her grant-yet-to-be-written.  I gave her my statements in the second last week of September and asked for her feedback, which I got in the form of an email.

Without giving the details of the email, there are three reasons why all I have to say is, "Wow, just wow." 

First, my recent data analysis (as of 1 1/2 mths ago) revealed X, something that was not detailed in her grant and because I was still working on the analysis I hadn't yet showed her this result.  This result, X is interesting but not really surprising.  Given my reading on a very tangential but related aspect of X, I realized that it does suggest that one possible future route.  A route that matches my expertise and background not hers.  This future route was clearly outlined in my research statement.  Before I wrote the statment, I double checked her current grant to make sure that I didn't overlap with this work and any of her ongoing projects.  Because it didn't, I went ahead and wrote up my idea.  Now she is claiming that this is the future of her research program.  Her actual words in the email were that I haven't shown any indepedence of thought and that my future directions overlap too much with her grant-yet-to-be-written.  My work was derivative and not original.  All of the 5 faculty members that I had look at this statement thought it was great and were extremely supportive.  She, however, has decided that I should rewrite the statement only days before it is due. 

The second reason I say, "Wow, just wow." was that when I interviewed for this postdoc position, I clearly asked if I would be allowed to take part of the system and use it to establish a research program.  Because of her willingness to share the system, I accepted the position.  On two subsequent occassions, I voiced my interest in doing Y and Z with this system because my training was in this area and it complemented her current work.  And her response in no way indicated that she was opposed to this. 

The third reason I say, "Wow, just wow." is that it's a research statement bitch, not a grant application. What you propose to do and what you acutally do are never the same thing.

I should not be surprised by this response, but over and over again, bad behavior in academics continues to amaze me.  Time and again RedBull has shown herself to be a "greedy" supervisor who pays lipservice to the idea of mentorship.   I am disappointed because her email clearly belies a lack of trust in our relationship.  In my opinion, science cannot progress without the free exchange of ideas.  And this is only possible when there is trust that the other party will respect the creativity and ideas of the other. I might as well be in biotech.  Clearly, this will affect how I communicate my ideas to her in the future. 

I am absolutely not rewriting my research statement at this point.  And frankly, I don't care if I work on this organism or another - I have nothing invested so nothing is really lost.  And I'm not worried about running out of ideas, I'm a creative and conceptual based scientist who is happy to work any system to answer what I think are the really cool questions.

But it does raise a larger and perhaps a more delicate issue, how do PIs deal with trainees who are interested in taking a part of the system to establish a research program?  I know it varies from lab to lab, discipline to discipline.  I'd be interested to hear what other people's experiences have been with this issue.  Presumably things are outlined explicitly before it can get too far.

The timing of this email reflects poor communication and mentorship on her part.  As one tenured faculty member, whose words of wisdom I trust, said, "This is not a good postdoc for you and she is a very poor mentor. I'm so very sorry. "

Yup, and people wonder why there are so many disgruntled postdocs.