I am an undergraduate student in a major university outside the US. I
started working with a professor as a freshman 2.5 years ago. As I had
no job and the time and an impressive experience as a programmer, I
managed to get to work with him. Very quickly he had his fantasy
worker at hand ? cheap, productive and easy to master his field of
interest (sort of a boring sub-discipline in the social sciences). The
only issue was our simple work agreement ? I work for a low pay, do
all aspects of research, programming, experimenter management,
bureaucracy and the like ? and he writes the papers for publication.
This seemed like a sound deal since having a good research resume upon
finishing undergraduate studies is something very little has
accomplished, and naturally gives you a sure ticket to any Ivy League
university's doctoral program.

Over time, he started behaving in a weird manner. The more productive
research I gave, the worse relation I got from him (cutting my pay for
some time, humiliating me in front of others, etc...). Though
investing considerable amount of money in our projects and having five
successful experiments ready for publication in the top journals of
the field (which was my part of the deal - all he did is investing 15
minutes per month on average), he never got to publish any paper. For
the last 1.5 years he's been using every possible excuse to delay any
writing on his part (Ye, I am just about to begin writing in a
month... I just have that review for blah blah and multiply that
behavior over 1.5 years?). Over the time, I did considerable
networking in the organization, but useless in a degree ? he is the
only professor in our department who actually has a budget, so all my
other cooperations are stuck with lack of funding. But the worst thing
is that I am to finish my degree during the forthcoming year, which
means that I need some articles at hand quite soon before I can admit
to a highly reputable university (publication is a lengthy process
from the point you send the manuscript, something which he simply
doesn't do for reasons beyond my understanding).

We had a hard conversation several weeks ago. I told him I am about to
leave the job and that he could forget from all my productions. He
suddenly became very 'cooperative'. Admitting he mistreated me for
that long, he went on to show me (and I am not joking, read the
following twice) his medical papers that excuse his diminished working
capacity. Anyway, he was to assure me that from now on we'll meet
every week, when he will be presenting his progress in writing.

On our first meeting he presented a single paragraph. The next week he
presented 3 new ones. You don't need to be a top scholar to understand
that this kind of progress will yield a single paper in,
approximately, years.

As I can see it in psychological terms, he exhibits negativistic
behavior ? you put no pressure, nothing is done. You do put pressure ?
things are done in a painfully slow and counterproductive way (passive
aggressiveness). Other personality features - has very high regard to
what others think, but that makes little difference since there is no
serious ethics organization in my state and the university system is
strongly protective of its faculty. I have, on its face, zero power
against him in the system, except for leaving my job. Those of you
highly competent with psychological terms - he can be clinically
described as suffering from borderline personality disorder,
negativistic subtype (Millon's definition) though one with high
functioning level.

What I need is a highly creative idea of how to deal with this man, so
he'll take his job seriously and let the papers out. The solution
cannot be trivial in my sense. If it does seem as one for you, please
request a clarification first. I will accept nothing but a really wise
solution which takes the full picture into account, preferably a
what-if kind of solution (algorithm-like), taking all possible
consequences into account.

I am desperate about this issue. Your advice is highly valued.

Thanks a lot in advance!

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 23 May 2004 07:13 PDT

jimmyred-ga,

Sorry to hear about your complicated situation, and I hope it works
out well for you.

One thing that wasn't clear to me...why aren't you writing a paper (or
two) yourself?  You have the data.  You seem to have an understanding
of the topic area.  You may not have the credentials of your
professor, but what the heck...every researcher has to have a first
paper sooner or later.

Many research assistants write papers on their own, either as a solo
author, or with their professor as a co-author.

Try writing up a draft paper, and ask the professor to review it prior
to submission.  It may be just the thing to motivate his involvement,
and get him to make a meaningful contribution (for which he will want
to add his name as an author -- possbily first author -- no doubt),
and actually have a published paper with your name on it.

What do you think?

pafalafa-ga

---

Clarification of Question by jimmyred-ga on 24 May 2004 08:05 PDT

Dear Pafalafa,

I did suggest him that I'll write the paper and give it to him for
editing, but he insists that no matter how good I am at writing, the
time it will take him to correct my manuscript is longer than the time
it will take him to write everything on his own. Therefore, he
completely resists this idea.

---

Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 24 May 2004 08:21 PDT

He resist tghe idea...but so what?  Sounds like the type of person who
will resist anything, so it's no surprise he'd oppose you writing a
paper.

But write it anyway!  Give him the draft, and let him know you'll
submit the manuscript in two weeks (or whatever) so you hope he can
offer you feedback before then.

If he does, great.  If he doesn't, submit the paper and see what
happens (but you might want to ask someone else -- perhaps another
professor -- to review the paper beforehand).

What would be the downside to giving this a try...?

First of all this is normal.  Professors use you until they can't use
you anymore.  He will have you invest time in 10 more experiments if
he could.

What pafalafa-ga said is an easy answer.  It is something that most egotistical
eccentrics would say.  It is easier said than done; however, it is a
good idea if modified.  Bring a voice recorder with you next time you
see your professor.  Approach him with some sample paragraphs that
have some outright obvious errors or easily clarified ambiguities in
them.

For example, if your professor was writing a paper on Pavlov's Dog,
write in a statement that the dog salivated when it heard a bell
because it thought it was going to get walked, instead of the real
conclusion of thinking it was going to get a treat of food.  Your
professor, unless totally mentally gone, will get flustered with you
and explain to you that you are totally wrong in great detail, because
that is a trigger point for your demeaning professor. Don't back down
on your stupid answer!!!  Keep on arguing so you get rebuttal.  He
might actually start writing more paragraphs.  He needs you for
interaction to get any work done at all.  It is part of his condition.

This of course takes energy on your behalf, but look at it as productive time. 

The feelings of flusterness by him are actually bursts of energy with
his "paragraphs" riding on top of as a wave. Record these with your
recorder or take notes.  If you know all the answers, then write the
paragraphs yourself.  In the corporate world, you don't get credit for
anything anyways, so suck it up like a real man.  Who cares if your
professor is plagiarizing off of you.

Your professor is in his position of power and will stay there, but he
NEEDS you to do it.  Since you gave him a timeline, you are TRAPPED
with him in this timeline.  Nonchalantly piss him off to FASTFORWARD
the process.  He wants to be able to boss you around.  It makes him
feel normal.  He's used to having you around.  So let him 'bitchslap'
you, but at the same time with paragraphs flying out of his mouth.

In return your professor will want more experimental work from you. 
At this point, you turn into a complete bumbling idiot or leave the
country.  He'll be clueless.  He'll have nothing else he can do but
use your writings, which are in fact his, out of laziness.  Tell him
your having a rough time because of sexual misfunction, a death in the
family, fiance' cheating, you have a tumor, etc. Tell him you are
leaving the country. He'll want you out of his hair, but feel sorry
for you.

At this point he will find another undergrad that may actually
complete and edit the work.  This is normal also.

In a month it will be over, but he'll still want something else from
you...your balls!    BUT  you won't be there.  I did this for my
thesis work.  There were three papers based on my work, with my name,
published when the professor was not in my presence.

Good luck.  Have fun.  Just go through the motions.  Be patient.     Thanks, 
                                                                     Toadgoody

Dear toadoody,

He really tries to avoid me with the paragraphs thing. He actually
emails them to me and then says there is nothing to negotiate about,
that he has a clear line of thinking, and therefore refuses to discuss
his writing.

I actually do not understand the tape recorder thing. I do have a good
one, but what is it good for? He emails me everything.

Sorry, but you are not very clear on this issue. What do you suggest?
That I write my own version of all the papers and give them to him?
Also, if I leave I don't really have many alternative jobs. What will
I get out of pissing him off? Do you think that if I criticize his
writing he will do the job faster?

Thanks a lot!
Jimmy

You do need to read your job discription, contract and any guidelines
the University has reguarding the sort of work you are doing. You want
to avoid getting too far out of line. Start writing the paper as if
your rolls were reversed. 'Accidentlly' let him read small portions of
the paper, by as many means as possible. Give him short (but polite)
answers to his Emails and verbal comments. Let him be the one who
want's to communicate. Spread early drafts of parts of your paper
around so you can not recover them if he asks you to stop
communicating with outsiders. Send segments to people who might offer
you a job if he fires you for insubbordination or other cause. Be
commpletely honest. When he apparentlly gives 5 minutes to consciering
some aspect of your paper say he gave it 5 minutes and a bit
sarcastically infer his 5 minutes is worth an hour of most peoples
time. Don't lie on his behalf, but at the same time don't understate
his contribution to the paper.  Neil

You should keep some middle drafts of the material you leaked to him
and some not important other papers relating to the job, that you can
give him if he demands that you turn over everything to him. As you
give them, tell him you think there are more, and give him a few more
sheets of paper each time you see him, so he gets the impression that
you will be finding stuff to give him forever. Keep several bags of
trash with one or two papers in each if he wants to sort your trash.
Thanks to zerox machines you can keep giving him papers long term.
IMHO you do not have to give him your most useful papers, but you can
pretend to to humor him. During this phase you should have more time
to accelerate the work on your paper and modify some of the
experiments he askes you to do to optimise your paper. You should
start sending your paper to the least likely publishers ASAP, but
don't tell him unless he askes. He may respect you for playing hard
ball while pretending to be a doormat.   Neil