How to deal with incompetent PhD student as an undergrad

Question

I am an undergrad who was recruited to join a lab by this PhD student and help her with her thesis, but since working with her I have come to the conclusion that she is incompetent and probably not going to finish her PhD. I often question her judgment especially related to safety and her research. This is my first research job, so sometimes I am unsure if this is normal, but at the same time I don't want to pick up bad habits. Some of the highlights include:

• Lack of safety awareness. No gloves/splash goggles when working with (hot) concentrated acids and bases. Some of these experiments are run outside the fume hood, and sometimes on the floor when there is no space on the lab bench. Lab bench is a mess and when I mention cleaning up she says it'll take too much time.
• When I ask her about her research proposal, she seems confused and is unable to answer basic questions about previous results. Previous experiments all seem inconclusive, need to be rerun, or she can't remember. One of the major part of her proposal is to investigate a particular mechanism, but when I ask what tests she plans on running, she has no idea.
• I will talk to her about papers that I found, sometimes exactly matching the experiments we want to run, and she seems surprised. I will mention things from papers we've both read or thesis of previous students and she has no clue so most conversations about research is unproductive or she offers very superficial, obvious observations. Conversations with other group members are much more productive.
• She (and I) have very little to share during group meetings because experiments are sometimes poorly designed and she does not plan them out. She will have a rough idea of what she wants to do, but no procedures or plan so lab time is spent planning the experiments out. She seems to have a very bizarre attention to some details but not others. For example, when running some high purity experiments she doesn't want us to wash the beakers with soap due to fear of contamination, but then she'll proceed to run these experiments on the dirty lab floor.
• She has poor organization and samples are sometimes lost or results are not written down.
• She has very rudimentary technical skills. I have watched her use the computer multiple times and instructions on how to use simple programs need to be written down step-by-step with very specific instructions on which button to press... etc. Sometimes she wants me to write a program from a paper, but she is so inept that she is unable to offer any assistance/advice, and after I'm finished writing the program she will have no clue how it works.

At times, it seems like I'm doing all the literature search, running the experiments, writing the programs, and coming up with new ideas while she grades homework. She says she is going to graduate this year.

Our PI is a very hands off person. I spend a lot of time reading literature and have ideas of other experiments we can run related to this research area in general. I would like to run these experiments myself. Since we're working in the same research area, however, sometimes when I discuss these ideas the grad student will mention wanting to include it in her thesis (even though it wasn't in her proposal). And because of how unproductive she is, I would prefer not to work with her anyways. I'm also concerned that the PI will think that these are good ideas and that I should work with this student to test them, particularly because I am an undergrad.

How can I politely distance myself with her and start doing some independent research?

Answer 1

No gloves/splash goggles when working with (hot) concentrated acids and bases. Some of these experiments are run outside the fume hood, and sometimes on the floor when there is no space on the lab bench.

Do not work in this lab. Do not even go in. It could kill you. Obvious safety problems are often accompanied by even worse, hidden problems.

Consult your university's safety policy to determine if you can/should/must report this situation.

The other problems are insignificant by comparison. Find a new PI.

Answer 2

How can I politely distance myself with her ... (emphasis added)

You can be fully honest without using judgmental terms such as "incompetent". You can also approach the situation as though having a PI who is "hands-off" does not mean that you have a PI who is unwilling to fix safety violations.

The safety concerns, as noted, can be grounds for you to leave immediately. Certainly, with any indication of an immediate, dire threat to your safety, leave the lab with no hesitation. In those cases where you feel inclined to report such violations to higher authorities, keep in mind that you have an obligation to inform the PI as the first responsible authority in the chain. By example, an emergency phone call to your campus equivalent 911 number must be followed directly by a call, text, or email to the PI. In the US, academic laboratories are now required to have those contact points visibly posted on the outside of the laboratory doors.

Should you wish otherwise to continue with the current PI, a potentially workable alternative would be to ask that you have your own workspace physically separated from the student in question. When you would want to do this, you have to address the PI in an opening request. By example:

• Since I have been working in the laboratory with (student's name), I have been confronted with situations that I feel are violations of safety protocols. I no longer feel comfortable working in the same physical laboratory space as (student's name). I would like to meet with you to discuss my concerns and to understand how they should be properly addressed.

Independent of the immediate, dire safety violations, you can also decide how far you really want to get involved in the longer game to make changes to the underlying violations that you see. When you decide that you must/will report such violations, do so in writing. Email the student. By example:

• I came to the laboratory today at 9am. An open container of what appeared to be concentrated acid was sitting on the bench top. I had to leave the laboratory out of safety concerns and could not do my work. Let me know when you have cleaned up so that I can get back to my research work.

• I had arranged with you yesterday that I would need to have the fume hood clear for my research work. I came to the laboratory today at 9am. The fume hood was not cleared. I had to leave the laboratory and could not do my work. Let me know when you have cleared the fume hood so that I can get back to my research work.

You can consider the balance of copying the PI or not on these emails. If the graduate student seems receptive to email as "polite" reminders, you may do better to avoid essentially spamming every complaint that you have to the PI. Alternatively, you may want to copy the PI for good reason, for example if the violation that you are reporting is extremely serious or is something that was raised in a previous group meeting and yet still remains unresolved by some agreed upon time at that meeting.

If you must report violations to the department head/chair or to the safety officers, you should do so without going around the PI as your first step. Collect your message with date stamps. Send them in bulk to the PI.

• I can no longer work in the laboratory because (student's name) is not providing me with a safe, effective work space. I am enclosing a record of messages to (student's name). They show that, over the past weeks, I have been able to complete any research activities because (student's name) is not doing her job. I would like to meet with you to determine how best to proceed.

At some point, a growing collection of non-critical safety violations can become dire and immediate in their own right, especially when they go unattended despite due notices. When you would wish to raise such a case to an even higher authority beyond the PI, it helps to have the written records (emails) in order. Do the respect to give due notice also to the PI, for example

• We have discussed a range of safety violations at our group meetings. Because the violations continue to happen, I can no longer continue working in the laboratory. As I leave, I am also sending the attached list of my records of reporting the numerous safety violations to the (chair / safety office) because, unless corrected, these violations can pose an inadvertent danger to anyone who might enter the laboratory without advanced notice.

... and start doing some independent research?

From the rest of your report, it sounds as though you already have a good grasp of how to start. Your obligation going forward is not to the student. It is to the PI who has given you permission to work in the laboratory with the student. Perhaps you should re-orient your research goals accordingly. To this end, your next step might be to ask for a meeting in an email to the PI. By example:

• I have been working with (student's name) for the past few months. At this point, I believe that I have a strong grasp of the research goals and a good set of workable ideas in order to achieve them. I would like to present a proposal for a research project that I can undertake independently of (student's name). Are you available for this meeting?

Before you do, create what I might call a "Proposal for Independent Undergraduate Research". Outline how you will work on a topic that can be done entirely separate from the goals of the PhD student. Address how your results are truly able to be done separate from those being studied by the PhD student. Basically, structure your proposal such that, if your work is never done, the PhD student is not harmed and, if your proposed work is completed, the PhD student can REFERENCE the results but not include them as though they are also her own work. The "polite" return on this investment is likely that you may correspondingly have to REFERENCE results obtained by the PhD student to the degree that they support or enable your research to proceed.

Finally, you are not responsible for whether the PhD student does or does not complete her dissertation successfully. Your observations of her work habits, skills, aptitude, and motivation are part of lessons in life-long learning on how to cope with others who are not as organized or as able to perform in the same ways as you can. Disengage from the emotional responses these observations bring and make sound, non-judgmental, professional decisions on where you want to go next for your own success.

Answer 3

This person's incompetence is endangering the safety of themselves and others, as well as the laboratory environment and integrity of experiments being conducted there. Report these safety violations to the appropriate authority immediately, and refuse to work with this person any further out of regard for your safety.

As an academic, you have a right to be safe and an obligation to keep yourself and others safe, even from themselves, and even if doing so is liable to have negative repercussions. Someone this slapdash is unlikely to find commercial work anyway due to their lack of adherence to basic procedures, so you are actually doing them (and the world) a favour by preventing them from getting any further before their disregard for safety is addressed.

Do not feel guilty about doing the right, safe thing. Feel good about preventing harm to others.

Answer 4

I am afraid to say that this "hands-off" PI of yours is a common type in academia. They tend to be charismatic and great at pulling in money for what is often spruced-up boilerplate research which industry has decided to outsource. They are "busily important" and smile a lot. They have droves of bushy eyed youngsters working from them. They have a lot of time available for those who deliver, and those who cannot swim are left to sink. Your unfortunate PhD student is just one of them.

If you are one of those rare ones who can swim all by themselves, and deliver the goods that will make you golden in the eyes of this PI (who, I warn you, will cop the credit), then by all means proceed. But you are low in the food chain. Any conflict with the PhD student (despite your best intentions) will play out badly for you.

All in all, I have to second what someone else said here: get out of there, get away from that PI.

Answer 5

Simply change labs so you don't have to deal with the politics of working in a lab where you have changed mentors.

Answer 6

Be cool. It is not the end of the world. Explain your concerns. If things don't improve, escalate it.

Answer 7

A person that disregard safety so much must, even after receiving warnings, must be fired and it is almost your duty to promote such consequence.

She may became homeless, she may lose her student visa, her magnificent career's prospects will crash, whatever, at least she will be alive (and she would not put in danger the lives of others).

[disclaimer: I say this even not knowing the other side of the story, I do not care, this is much more serious than sexual harassment, which is an issue that get people fired with one-sided stories, at least in theory]

Regarding you: you are undergrad, you now have enough experience, change immmediately PI/lab/project.

Do not worry about the ideas you had now, you already demonstrate critical thinking and, when exposed to literature and state-of-art science, I can assure you will have other sparkling ideas to follow.

Plus, an idea is not a good idea if developed by only one person. If your actual PI will "steal" your ideas, much better, 1-2 years down the road you can apply for fundings to develop the ideas with the backup of reference and citations (maybe even a reference letter) from PI's publications, providing you solid ground to further the work in the field: science is not about who is first having the idea, it's about the first that publish the idea (or the last, since science is an incremental business ;), you know, standing on the shoulder of giants and all that motivational crap that you can find in Linkedin&aphorisms from Abraham Lincoln [1]).

New research topics/ideas are 10% intuition and 90% implementation, if you had these novel ideas just by reading literature and by being exposed to that toxic (in the real meaning of the word) lab, for sure these ideas are circulating and coming to the mind of the professional of R&D (i.e. other PhDs and PostDoc working in other labs and preparing their proposals to get funded ...).

Each person is unique, but ideas are not. We often celebrate the faster person having some ideas and developing them (and we are deeply wrong in this), do not neglect that person was not the only one and his/her ideas would have nil-value if he/she was the only one working on those ideas.

[1]

not everythin' ya read in the Internet is true (Lincoln, 1884)

Answer 8

I am sorry, but I find it very hard to believe the above.

Getting payed as a PhD candidate involves grants, and thus great effort by PIs or postdocs to get funding etc. If your candidates do not graduate, you can not get grants easily, your reputation as professor is a bit damaged, so it is not something to be taken lightly.

I find it hard to believe someone so incompetent is hired, let alone continue 3 years without anyone noticing or doing something about it, and all of a sudden an undergrad reveals this.

If that was the case, statistically some accident/ other catastrophe would have happened.

Does she have any results under her belt already or something?

PIs have great experience on this (literally decades), you can address to them for this.

Well if the situation and chaos is that bad all across this lab, you made a poor choice.

Either continue for a bit together with the shenanigans and graduate and never look back, or get the big decision and restart all over.

However, again, rethink on the whole situation a bit. It reminds me of when I see a footballer on tv and comment that I would do better.