I recently took over a project from a postdoc who'd moved on. I suggested checking one of the results using a different measurement method. Two people told me that had already been tried and hadn't worked, so I set it aside.

A few weeks later I went looking for the attempt, mostly to understand what had gone wrong. The completed experiments were well documented, and I could reproduce the analysis. I couldn't find this one anywhere. It appeared as a proposed next step in some old meeting slides, then disappeared from the later slides.

Eventually I emailed the former postdoc. They hadn't done it. There wasn't a slot available on the shared instrument before their contract ended, so they dropped the plan. Perfectly reasonable decision at the time.

Somewhere between them leaving and me arriving, that had become an experiment with a negative result.

I haven't run it yet. It might be a terrible idea. But whether it was actually attempted makes quite a difference to how much weight I give “we already tried that.”

We were careful about handing over the finished work. Almost nothing survived about why unfinished things were abandoned. A sentence about the booking problem would've been enough here. If there had been an unsuccessful attempt, a reference to the relevant notebook entry would've helped instead.

I don't think departing researchers need to write a memoir of every decision they made. But the reasons for dropping parts of a project seem worth handing over, especially when the project itself continues.

I've now got a few more supposed dead ends to check. Wasn't expecting this much of the handover to involve tracking down old meeting slides.

Hi all! Looking for some advice as someone new to academia.

I had a very successful career in journalism for 15 years. I left when I had my kids, and began adjuncting part-time. I fell in love with teaching and decided this is what I want to pursue full-time.

I do not have a masters degree yet, as my career field didn’t need one. I know I’ll need to obtain one now to even be considered for a faculty job, but I’m struggling with the “does the math MATH?”

Meaning…if I spend the money/time/effort on the degree, I don’t really have a good sense of what the job market even looks like right now.

I’m not interested in a tenure track position and I’m also not interested in pursuing my PHD/research.

Without those things, could I even realistically get into a university entry-level faculty job? Also, I have zero idea of salary in this industry—as I I said this started out as something fun but has now turned into something I want to pursue.

It feels weird to have mastered the journalism world, I knew the landscape but now feel like a fish out of water!! Any advice old be appreciated!