I will be starting my third year clinical rotations tomorrow. I'm definitely excited for this: I've been away from medical school for a long time and I look forward to getting back into things and, this time, actually interacting with patients and providers.
Starting third year has a few implications for my blog. First, on difficult rotations I would expect my frequency of posting and length per post to decline. I will try my best not to let this happen, using the blog as my econ outlet especially during months where any substantial research is not realistic to undertake. Second, I will probably include more observations about American health care, especially as it relates to my hospital experiences, than I have in the past. This is a change I welcome: part of what will make my third year more interesting than it would have been pre-PhD is that I now see things with a different set of eyes. I also would like to learn more about American health care, and blogging more about these issues is one step towards that end.
In any case, I look forward to updating this space in the coming months and offering new perspectives and comments. I also look forward to your continued readerships and comments.
Showing posts with label grad school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label grad school. Show all posts
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Thursday, June 4, 2009
Some Graduate School Advice
I just graduated with my PhD a few weeks ago and have been spending some time thinking over my grad school experience. In the coming weeks, I'm sure I have a lot to say about choosing a grad school, a research field, an advisor, etc, but I thought I'd start by talking about the most important things I learned during the journey. Here goes:
(1) Follow all your leads and persevere: The most important piece of advice I've got. Most projects will not go smoothly, either because of lack of data, some weird programming bug, or some other unforeseen difficulty. If you think it's a good project, with your intuition screaming "yes" and you sense that a breakthrough is possible, KEEP GOING. Sometimes you need to hit your head against the wall, over and over, till it breaks down. I was in this position about seven months ago, needing a third paper for my dissertation and not sure if I was going to get it to work in time to graduate by May. I found some interesting preliminary results on the long-run effects of clean water and I decided to go forward, working really hard to get data and program what turned about to be conceptually easy, but difficult in practice. It paid off, and I am hoping to expand this paper over the next year in several ways.
As far as the "following all your leads" part, if you think of an interesting question, find some data (it's usually very cheap!) and spend an hour or two seeing if you can't get some preliminary evidence or "proof of concept." If you do, follow it up: the results may surprise you and might have an interesting project on your hands.
(2) But know when to stop: This applies to two situations. The first is with a project that just won't work out anytime soon. And the second is with a mostly complete project. In both situations, the marginal hour, or tweak here and there, will likely not lead anywhere. In the first case, stop, but always keep it in your mind: you're breakthrough could happen a few years later. In the latter case, send the thing out already!
Of course, while you're in the thick of it it's hard to distinguish between when you should take route (1) or (2) [I've been late to pull the trigger on several occasions!]. I think that's part of what graduate school gives you, an intuition of when things will work and when they won't. Until you get there, the best way to distinguish between (1) and (2) is to outsource the experience and intuition based calls to people who have a comparative advantage in these things: your advisors.
(3) Sell, sell, sell!: This is something I really picked up in the last six months of grad school. How well your paper does or how well your talk is received is really based on (a) whether your intended audience gets what you are saying and (b) how well you couch your work in the larger scheme of things. Basically, people need to understand what you are doing and realize that it is important. The only way to get this is with a nice sales job.
For people in fields that are necessarily interdisciplinary (health economics or health service researchers both fit that bill), you need to be able to communicate to people who look at problems with a different disciplinary lens. I noticed that my talks went a lot better when I cut out the economics jargon and explained things in a more universal language. My writing got better from this, as well.
In motivating talks and papers, it is always important to bring in the larger literature first, show where your study is situated, and, at multiple junctures, point out exactly why your study is important and all the new stuff it adds to our knowledge. Humility is good, I've learned, but too much gets you left behind. (On the same plane, too much boasting is bad, too. Never oversell your paper!)
(4) Get really good at fundamentals: My personal view is that it is a lot easier to learn about different topics than it is to pick up different skills. As such, I think the best investment during your graduate years, especially when you are taking classes, is to invest in skills. In any statistics based field, being a quant jock makes you the cool kid at school: everyone will want to work with you.
This doesn't mean that one shouldn't read up on interesting topics. Far from it (see below)! Just make sure you get the requisite tools.
(5) Always work the margins: Grad school is full of ups and downs. On the research side, you'll go from being uber productive to not so productive and back again. I think its really important to have a strategy of riding out low marginal productivity months. This might be the time that you (a) read a lot (b) write a lot (c) take a vacation. Whatever you do, make sure you do it with relish. At some point you will become productive again and have a storm of ideas. When you do, embrace it and go to town.
Some other nuggets of note:
(6) Keep a notebook or pda with a list and short description of all your ideas: Some of them won't pan out initially, but you might be able to revisit them in the future.
(7) Read the popular press: Two of my working papers have come from taking data to statements and problems outlined in newspaper/magazine articles.
(8) Read the literature, but don't binge on it: Some good advice that I got early in grad school was to know the literature, but don't read so much that it destroys your creativity. If you think of an interesting idea, play with it in your mind and ask yourself how you'd address the research question. Once you do, Google Scholar it and see if its been done. If it has, pat yourself on the back for coming up with an interesting question and do it again if the authors adopted your methodology. If not, go to town.
(1) Follow all your leads and persevere: The most important piece of advice I've got. Most projects will not go smoothly, either because of lack of data, some weird programming bug, or some other unforeseen difficulty. If you think it's a good project, with your intuition screaming "yes" and you sense that a breakthrough is possible, KEEP GOING. Sometimes you need to hit your head against the wall, over and over, till it breaks down. I was in this position about seven months ago, needing a third paper for my dissertation and not sure if I was going to get it to work in time to graduate by May. I found some interesting preliminary results on the long-run effects of clean water and I decided to go forward, working really hard to get data and program what turned about to be conceptually easy, but difficult in practice. It paid off, and I am hoping to expand this paper over the next year in several ways.
As far as the "following all your leads" part, if you think of an interesting question, find some data (it's usually very cheap!) and spend an hour or two seeing if you can't get some preliminary evidence or "proof of concept." If you do, follow it up: the results may surprise you and might have an interesting project on your hands.
(2) But know when to stop: This applies to two situations. The first is with a project that just won't work out anytime soon. And the second is with a mostly complete project. In both situations, the marginal hour, or tweak here and there, will likely not lead anywhere. In the first case, stop, but always keep it in your mind: you're breakthrough could happen a few years later. In the latter case, send the thing out already!
Of course, while you're in the thick of it it's hard to distinguish between when you should take route (1) or (2) [I've been late to pull the trigger on several occasions!]. I think that's part of what graduate school gives you, an intuition of when things will work and when they won't. Until you get there, the best way to distinguish between (1) and (2) is to outsource the experience and intuition based calls to people who have a comparative advantage in these things: your advisors.
(3) Sell, sell, sell!: This is something I really picked up in the last six months of grad school. How well your paper does or how well your talk is received is really based on (a) whether your intended audience gets what you are saying and (b) how well you couch your work in the larger scheme of things. Basically, people need to understand what you are doing and realize that it is important. The only way to get this is with a nice sales job.
For people in fields that are necessarily interdisciplinary (health economics or health service researchers both fit that bill), you need to be able to communicate to people who look at problems with a different disciplinary lens. I noticed that my talks went a lot better when I cut out the economics jargon and explained things in a more universal language. My writing got better from this, as well.
In motivating talks and papers, it is always important to bring in the larger literature first, show where your study is situated, and, at multiple junctures, point out exactly why your study is important and all the new stuff it adds to our knowledge. Humility is good, I've learned, but too much gets you left behind. (On the same plane, too much boasting is bad, too. Never oversell your paper!)
(4) Get really good at fundamentals: My personal view is that it is a lot easier to learn about different topics than it is to pick up different skills. As such, I think the best investment during your graduate years, especially when you are taking classes, is to invest in skills. In any statistics based field, being a quant jock makes you the cool kid at school: everyone will want to work with you.
This doesn't mean that one shouldn't read up on interesting topics. Far from it (see below)! Just make sure you get the requisite tools.
(5) Always work the margins: Grad school is full of ups and downs. On the research side, you'll go from being uber productive to not so productive and back again. I think its really important to have a strategy of riding out low marginal productivity months. This might be the time that you (a) read a lot (b) write a lot (c) take a vacation. Whatever you do, make sure you do it with relish. At some point you will become productive again and have a storm of ideas. When you do, embrace it and go to town.
Some other nuggets of note:
(6) Keep a notebook or pda with a list and short description of all your ideas: Some of them won't pan out initially, but you might be able to revisit them in the future.
(7) Read the popular press: Two of my working papers have come from taking data to statements and problems outlined in newspaper/magazine articles.
(8) Read the literature, but don't binge on it: Some good advice that I got early in grad school was to know the literature, but don't read so much that it destroys your creativity. If you think of an interesting idea, play with it in your mind and ask yourself how you'd address the research question. Once you do, Google Scholar it and see if its been done. If it has, pat yourself on the back for coming up with an interesting question and do it again if the authors adopted your methodology. If not, go to town.
Friday, June 20, 2008
ASHE Conference
I will be attending the American Society for Health Economists (ASHE) Conference this weekend through early next week. Follow the link to check out the conference bill: it looks phenomenal! I will make a concerted attempted to blog about the proceedings in semi-real time, so definitely stay tuned.
Also, I will be presenting and discussing a paper at the conference. The abstract for my paper is provided below (let me know if you are interested in the topic and want to learn more or collaborate). Regarding the latter, I read a long time back in some economist's autobiographical account that being a good discussant and reviewer helps you develop street cred as a researcher. Nothing like a little self-promotion before I disappear from the research world to get plundered by medical school...
Paper Title: The Intergenerational Transmission of Height: Evidence from Mexico
A growing body of work suggests that health may be transferred across generations. This paper has two aims: to quantify intergenerational associations in height, a summary measure of long-run health and nutritional status, and to explore different factors and mechanisms that may generate these correlations. Using data from a rich household survey in Mexico, I use a variety of econometric methods to explore the nature of intergenerational correlations in the heights of parents and their children (aged 0-6 years). In particular, I use conditions faced by mothers and fathers during their childhood years as instruments for their heights, arguing that this strategy focuses attention on the portion of parental height sensitive to environmental conditions and public investment. I also explore gender differences in parent-child associations in height. I find that IV estimates on maternal height are generally twice as large as the corresponding OLS estimates, with the IV coefficient on paternal height near zero. These findings are highly robust to inclusion of a rich set of parental and household characteristics. Furthermore, the association between instrumented maternal height and child height is much larger for boys than for girls across all specifications, which is in contrast to the coefficients on predicted paternal height and measures of household resources. The results suggest that the portion of maternal height sensitive to environmental conditions faced during childhood is an important determinant of child health and, consequently, that early life conditions faced by girls may have intergenerational consequences. More speculatively, the results also suggest biological explanations beyond simple genetic transfers may explain an important portion of mother-child associations in height.
Also, I will be presenting and discussing a paper at the conference. The abstract for my paper is provided below (let me know if you are interested in the topic and want to learn more or collaborate). Regarding the latter, I read a long time back in some economist's autobiographical account that being a good discussant and reviewer helps you develop street cred as a researcher. Nothing like a little self-promotion before I disappear from the research world to get plundered by medical school...
Paper Title: The Intergenerational Transmission of Height: Evidence from Mexico
A growing body of work suggests that health may be transferred across generations. This paper has two aims: to quantify intergenerational associations in height, a summary measure of long-run health and nutritional status, and to explore different factors and mechanisms that may generate these correlations. Using data from a rich household survey in Mexico, I use a variety of econometric methods to explore the nature of intergenerational correlations in the heights of parents and their children (aged 0-6 years). In particular, I use conditions faced by mothers and fathers during their childhood years as instruments for their heights, arguing that this strategy focuses attention on the portion of parental height sensitive to environmental conditions and public investment. I also explore gender differences in parent-child associations in height. I find that IV estimates on maternal height are generally twice as large as the corresponding OLS estimates, with the IV coefficient on paternal height near zero. These findings are highly robust to inclusion of a rich set of parental and household characteristics. Furthermore, the association between instrumented maternal height and child height is much larger for boys than for girls across all specifications, which is in contrast to the coefficients on predicted paternal height and measures of household resources. The results suggest that the portion of maternal height sensitive to environmental conditions faced during childhood is an important determinant of child health and, consequently, that early life conditions faced by girls may have intergenerational consequences. More speculatively, the results also suggest biological explanations beyond simple genetic transfers may explain an important portion of mother-child associations in height.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
My Prospectus Abstract
I will be handing in my prospectus, which is basically a glorified dissertation proposal, to the powers in charge (the Wizengamut?) this coming Monday. The abstract is provided below. If you are interested in this area of research and would like to hear more and/or collaborate, drop me a line. (I anticipate I'll be working on this broad topic for at least several years, so there is plenty of time to get in touch with me.)
A growing body of evidence from the biomedical sciences, epidemiology, and economics has shown that shocks to health and nutrition in utero and in early childhood are strongly associated with health and socioeconomic outcomes later in life. Furthermore, there is evidence that these correlations may extend to the next generation, as well. However, less is known about the causal nature of these associations, the relative importance of early life conditions in explaining broad trends in population health, how later life investments and experiences interact with endowments formed early in life to produce health outcomes in adulthood, and the exact mechanisms underlying these long-run and intergenerational associations. This thesis attempts to address these gaps in the context of two issues of policy interest in developing countries: obesity and intergenerational transfers of health status. The first paper will explore the recent and rapid rise in overweight, obesity, and associated morbidities among low and middle income countries. Using data from Mexico, I will empirically examine the effects of early childhood experiences, economic factors that ostensibly drive changes in diet and physical exertion, and the interaction between the two, on the prevalence of high body mass, type II diabetes and hypertension. The second and third papers will consider intergenerational correlations in height, a measure of long-run health and nutritional status. In the second analysis, using data from ruralVietnam Mexico
A growing body of evidence from the biomedical sciences, epidemiology, and economics has shown that shocks to health and nutrition in utero and in early childhood are strongly associated with health and socioeconomic outcomes later in life. Furthermore, there is evidence that these correlations may extend to the next generation, as well. However, less is known about the causal nature of these associations, the relative importance of early life conditions in explaining broad trends in population health, how later life investments and experiences interact with endowments formed early in life to produce health outcomes in adulthood, and the exact mechanisms underlying these long-run and intergenerational associations. This thesis attempts to address these gaps in the context of two issues of policy interest in developing countries: obesity and intergenerational transfers of health status. The first paper will explore the recent and rapid rise in overweight, obesity, and associated morbidities among low and middle income countries. Using data from Mexico, I will empirically examine the effects of early childhood experiences, economic factors that ostensibly drive changes in diet and physical exertion, and the interaction between the two, on the prevalence of high body mass, type II diabetes and hypertension. The second and third papers will consider intergenerational correlations in height, a measure of long-run health and nutritional status. In the second analysis, using data from rural
Friday, June 6, 2008
Obesity and Fast Foods Revisited
A recent post on the Marginal Revolution blog cites a study by economists Michael Anderson and David Matsa suggesting that greater access to fast food restaurants has little effect of body weight. This conclusion is drawn from two pieces of evidence. First, eating out increased total caloric consumption by only 24 calories a day. Second, the authors use the presence of highways as instruments for the local density of restaurants (to get around the fact that the placement of fast food restaurants may be correlated with demand for increased body weight and fatty foods, etc), with the resulting estimates showing little to no effect of an extra neighborhood restaurant.
Interestingly, another study, by economist Richard Dunn, finds a much larger effect of fast food restaurants on body weight despite using a very similar instrumental variable strategy. The differential results might be due to the time period under consideration (the former studies the mid 1990s while the later examines 2005) or, more intriguingly, the way fast food restaurant intensity is defined and coded in the data. The Anderson and Matsa study groups all full and limited services restaurants together while Dunn focuses specifically on McDonald's, Burger Kings, KFCs, and other establishments similar in spirit. Indeed, Dunn's results suggest that the type of restaurant matters in terms of the treatment effect estimates.
A short digression: I'm surprised that people think 24 extra calories a day is not a big deal. I recall a Stan Misler renal pathophysiology lecture where he commented that one extra can of soda a day, without concomitant increases in energy expenditure, over several months would greatly facilitate a transition from normal to high BMIs. The extra can of soda is about 100 calories. Given this, its not hard to imagine an extra 24 calories adding up (though over a longer period of time), as well. And this is saying nothing about the differential distribution of nutrients across home produced foods and fast foods.
Anyway, the results from both papers suggests that the jury on whether fast foods are a culprit in driving the obesity epidemic is still out. Furthermore, from the perspective of a graduate student, this debate provides two further take-home points. First, changes in measurement can drastically alter the substantive conclusions gleaned from any study. Second, it is important to follow up on seemingly closed research areas and/or definite studies, both to scrutinizing methodology and to revisit strong conclusions that may have broad policy impacts. Related to this latter notion, here is an interesting working paper by Daniel Hamermesh on replication in economics.
Interestingly, another study, by economist Richard Dunn, finds a much larger effect of fast food restaurants on body weight despite using a very similar instrumental variable strategy. The differential results might be due to the time period under consideration (the former studies the mid 1990s while the later examines 2005) or, more intriguingly, the way fast food restaurant intensity is defined and coded in the data. The Anderson and Matsa study groups all full and limited services restaurants together while Dunn focuses specifically on McDonald's, Burger Kings, KFCs, and other establishments similar in spirit. Indeed, Dunn's results suggest that the type of restaurant matters in terms of the treatment effect estimates.
A short digression: I'm surprised that people think 24 extra calories a day is not a big deal. I recall a Stan Misler renal pathophysiology lecture where he commented that one extra can of soda a day, without concomitant increases in energy expenditure, over several months would greatly facilitate a transition from normal to high BMIs. The extra can of soda is about 100 calories. Given this, its not hard to imagine an extra 24 calories adding up (though over a longer period of time), as well. And this is saying nothing about the differential distribution of nutrients across home produced foods and fast foods.
Anyway, the results from both papers suggests that the jury on whether fast foods are a culprit in driving the obesity epidemic is still out. Furthermore, from the perspective of a graduate student, this debate provides two further take-home points. First, changes in measurement can drastically alter the substantive conclusions gleaned from any study. Second, it is important to follow up on seemingly closed research areas and/or definite studies, both to scrutinizing methodology and to revisit strong conclusions that may have broad policy impacts. Related to this latter notion, here is an interesting working paper by Daniel Hamermesh on replication in economics.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Hepatitis B and Pro-Male Sex Ratios Revisited
Many of you are probably aware of Emily Oster's controversial study on the potential (causal) effects of Hepatitis B on population gender ratios (see here for a non-technical summary). Oster's paper sparked a great debate as to whether the disease could truly explain a significant portion of the gender imbalance in many of the Asian countries, such as China, where the male/female ratios are remarkably large. Oster and Gang Chen recently revisited the Hepatitis B hypothesis as it applies to China. Their findings:
Earlier work (Oster, 2005) has argued, based on existing medical literature and analysis of cross country data and vaccination programs, that parents who are carriers of hepatitis B have a higher offspring sex ratio (more boys) than non-carrier parents. Further, since a number of Asian countries, China in particular, have high hepatitis B carrier rates, Oster (2005) suggested that hepatitis B could explain a large share - approximately 50% - of Asia's \missing women". Subsequent work has questioned this conclusion. Most notably, Lin and Luoh (2008) use data from a large cohort of births in Taiwan and find only a very tiny effect of maternal hepatitis carrier status on offspring sex ratio. Although this work is quite conclusive for the case of mothers, it leaves open the possibility that paternal carrier status is driving higher sex offspring sex ratios. To test this, we collected data on the offspring gender for a cohort of 67,000 people in China who are being observed in a prospective cohort study of liver cancer; approximately 15% of these individuals are hepatitis B carriers. In this sample, we find no effect of either maternal or paternal hepatitis B carrier status on offspring sex. Carrier parents are no more likely to have male children than non-carrier parents. This finding leads us to conclude that hepatitis B cannot explain skewed sex ratios in China.
For what it's worth, I applaud Oster, who is clearly a top-flight researcher doing interesting work, for her academic courage and honesty. It's just great to see an example where one's ego does not interfere with his/her quest to learn the Truth. Good lesson for graduate students such as myself.
Furthermore, despite this retraction (at least with respect to China), Oster is not leaving the topic behind. Indeed, the fact that Hepatitis B explains a good deal of the gender imbalance in some countries but not others is intriguing and worthy of further exploration. This is exactly what she is doing this new working paper, which attempts to reconcile the scientific and population evidence on Hep B and sex ratios.
Excellent research on an interesting line of work. I'd be curious to see how this plays out in the future.
[Ed - 5/13/08 - I was recently informed that the Marginal Revolution blog put up a very similar post yesterday on this topic. Just for the record, I wrote this post as soon as I saw Oster's NBER working paper, and prior to me finding out what other blogs had to say. Also, just as an FYI, you might want to check out the comments under said MR post. The discussion there is pretty interesting.]
Earlier work (Oster, 2005) has argued, based on existing medical literature and analysis of cross country data and vaccination programs, that parents who are carriers of hepatitis B have a higher offspring sex ratio (more boys) than non-carrier parents. Further, since a number of Asian countries, China in particular, have high hepatitis B carrier rates, Oster (2005) suggested that hepatitis B could explain a large share - approximately 50% - of Asia's \missing women". Subsequent work has questioned this conclusion. Most notably, Lin and Luoh (2008) use data from a large cohort of births in Taiwan and find only a very tiny effect of maternal hepatitis carrier status on offspring sex ratio. Although this work is quite conclusive for the case of mothers, it leaves open the possibility that paternal carrier status is driving higher sex offspring sex ratios. To test this, we collected data on the offspring gender for a cohort of 67,000 people in China who are being observed in a prospective cohort study of liver cancer; approximately 15% of these individuals are hepatitis B carriers. In this sample, we find no effect of either maternal or paternal hepatitis B carrier status on offspring sex. Carrier parents are no more likely to have male children than non-carrier parents. This finding leads us to conclude that hepatitis B cannot explain skewed sex ratios in China.
For what it's worth, I applaud Oster, who is clearly a top-flight researcher doing interesting work, for her academic courage and honesty. It's just great to see an example where one's ego does not interfere with his/her quest to learn the Truth. Good lesson for graduate students such as myself.
Furthermore, despite this retraction (at least with respect to China), Oster is not leaving the topic behind. Indeed, the fact that Hepatitis B explains a good deal of the gender imbalance in some countries but not others is intriguing and worthy of further exploration. This is exactly what she is doing this new working paper, which attempts to reconcile the scientific and population evidence on Hep B and sex ratios.
Excellent research on an interesting line of work. I'd be curious to see how this plays out in the future.
[Ed - 5/13/08 - I was recently informed that the Marginal Revolution blog put up a very similar post yesterday on this topic. Just for the record, I wrote this post as soon as I saw Oster's NBER working paper, and prior to me finding out what other blogs had to say. Also, just as an FYI, you might want to check out the comments under said MR post. The discussion there is pretty interesting.]
Saturday, May 3, 2008
A Prospectus for the Rest of Us!
In a few weeks, I will have officially completed my third year as a PhD student (or my fifth year of my MD/PhD quest, which sounds a lot sadder). Part and parcel with this achievement comes a fairly major institutional requirement: I have to submit my 20 page research prospectus by mid June. Completion of the prospectus promotes me to "candidacy." (I only recently realized the significance of this term. My e-mail footer for the last three years had ended with "PhD Candidate." Apparently, by doing so, I've "lied to thousands of people" since coming to Yale).
Like most things I do, I've approached the whole prospectus writing process in a seriously manic, yet somehow careless, fashion. The way this is supposed to work is that you first come up with a question, then talk to your committee (or those who you intend to con into being on your committee), then write the prospectus based on those ideas, and then carry out the research. My process has been almost opposite: do the research, form the committee, get confused between several ideas, talk to the committee, toss around two more large ideas, and, ultimately, set off on writing the prospectus. In some sense, I've treated the prospectus as something that comes into place once I've generated enough data. The problem with doing this is that your ideas might be so disparate that they do not naturally fit together into a thematic dissertation (though you can make the theme as vague as you want, perhaps, to get around this) or you explore so many things that you are confused between different directions you could pursue. This is my problem now. I am fairly confident about two of my papers, but the lead paper - well, that remains something to be decided!
That being said, for the purposes of the prospectus, none of this actually matters! The point is to have something coherent down that the graduate committee thinks is interesting, doable and illustrative of your knowledge of the field. Not everything you write in the prospectus has to work out. Given this, perhaps the best thing to do is to find something you are broadly interested in, figure out some specific questions and data sources you could use, get the prospectus done early and then go to town. This is what I would advocate to other grad students in the pipeline and I am certainly in position to do this right now.
But, for whatever reason, I don't want to submit my prospectus until I am confident that all three papers I propose will materialize in the final dissertation. Given what I just said, this is irrational: I think this is a pretty good example of cognitive dissonance or, more precisely, some kind of pre-emptive action to avoid cognitive dissonance. I don't want to hand in something other than what I said I would hand in - I don't want to appear inconsistent over time.
Well, it's time to bite the bullet. I am currently working on finishing up this prospectus. I plan on studying the astonishingly quick transition of low and middle income countries from malnutrition to obesity, particularly focusing on the intersection between biology and economic factors that may drive such changes (paper 1), as well as intergenerational transfers of health status. (papers 2 and 3).
Hopefully, whatever I produce and hand in will follow this script. And if it doesn't...well, I guess thats OK, too.
Like most things I do, I've approached the whole prospectus writing process in a seriously manic, yet somehow careless, fashion. The way this is supposed to work is that you first come up with a question, then talk to your committee (or those who you intend to con into being on your committee), then write the prospectus based on those ideas, and then carry out the research. My process has been almost opposite: do the research, form the committee, get confused between several ideas, talk to the committee, toss around two more large ideas, and, ultimately, set off on writing the prospectus. In some sense, I've treated the prospectus as something that comes into place once I've generated enough data. The problem with doing this is that your ideas might be so disparate that they do not naturally fit together into a thematic dissertation (though you can make the theme as vague as you want, perhaps, to get around this) or you explore so many things that you are confused between different directions you could pursue. This is my problem now. I am fairly confident about two of my papers, but the lead paper - well, that remains something to be decided!
That being said, for the purposes of the prospectus, none of this actually matters! The point is to have something coherent down that the graduate committee thinks is interesting, doable and illustrative of your knowledge of the field. Not everything you write in the prospectus has to work out. Given this, perhaps the best thing to do is to find something you are broadly interested in, figure out some specific questions and data sources you could use, get the prospectus done early and then go to town. This is what I would advocate to other grad students in the pipeline and I am certainly in position to do this right now.
But, for whatever reason, I don't want to submit my prospectus until I am confident that all three papers I propose will materialize in the final dissertation. Given what I just said, this is irrational: I think this is a pretty good example of cognitive dissonance or, more precisely, some kind of pre-emptive action to avoid cognitive dissonance. I don't want to hand in something other than what I said I would hand in - I don't want to appear inconsistent over time.
Well, it's time to bite the bullet. I am currently working on finishing up this prospectus. I plan on studying the astonishingly quick transition of low and middle income countries from malnutrition to obesity, particularly focusing on the intersection between biology and economic factors that may drive such changes (paper 1), as well as intergenerational transfers of health status. (papers 2 and 3).
Hopefully, whatever I produce and hand in will follow this script. And if it doesn't...well, I guess thats OK, too.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
What if Lay People Don't Think Much of Your Dissertation?
Here's a conversation I've been having a lot recenetly:
Other Person: What are you doing your thesis on?
Me: I'm looking at intergenerational poverty and health
Other Person: Oh fantastic! What are you doing specifically?
Me: (Thrilled that someone is interested) Well, in my first two papers, I'm studying intergenerational associations between parent and child height, which are strongly associated with an assortment of health and economic outcomes in adulthood, and trying to tease apart the mechanisms enabling these transfers. The main idea is that a notable portion of this appears to be driven by pathways that are amenable to public policy intervention. In the second paper I address this aspect, and study the extent to which these correlations are modulated by public health programs and enviromental shocks.
If the person is still interested, I go on and talk about my nascent model and empirical methodology, which actually is intuitively simple but still geeky and technical. Usually though, the person is not interested: "Oh...ummm...great...hey, I gotta run, talk to you later." (And I haven't even gotten my third paper!)
Recently, I realized that these conversations get to me. In general, I find my project exciting and interesting - otherwise I wouldn't be pursuing it. Every now and then, though, I have these doubts: what if it's NOT that exciting or interesting or (gasp) that important? At those times, some external validation is nice So I chat up my advisors and they seem genuinely excited about my work. So it's all good...right?
To some extent, yes. It's your professors and peers that know your field well, and who have a good sense of what is important and what is not. However, these days health economics (and econ in general) seems to have transcended the realm of nerd-dom into the public conscience. People are avid consumers of economics (see the comments in any Freakonomics post for proof), and I suppose one would want the public to see the value in what he/she does.
I'm not just referring to validation of the sort where one writes a paper on something fun and has it picked up in the New York Times. It's also that many health policy makers are not economists and probably don't read much academic health economics. Many of us came into this field with an eye on figuring stuff out that's helpful to people. So, if outsiders don't see the value in your work or find it disinteresting, perhaps non-economist policy makers might not either. Also, doing a PhD involves life sacrifices and it's a bit of a monastic existence. If what you are spending night and day on is not "important," then what the hell are you doing?
In the event that outsiders are lukewarm about your work, where does that leave you? After countless conversations such as those outlined at the beginning, this is the question I am asking myself. My advisors, other health economists, and I see some value in my work. Few other people I have talked to share that excitement. How am I supposed to feel about that? I think there are four rationalizations:
1) My research might not be policy relevant, but advances the science - I've used this one before, but I don't like it. While any one paper need not be policy relevant, it should help provide information on some theory or behavior where that understanding would be useful in informing policy. I think my dissertation might touch on this, but I'm not sure.
2) My research is designed to show of my technical skills and get me a good job. All policy relevant work will commence after procuring said job - Not bad. However, I am part of the Department of Health POLICY and Administration. What am I projecting if my dissertation has no "policy" in it? I might be good at stats but does my thesis send the signal that I am not imaginative when it comes to policy evaluation?
3) People are slow to come around - Many times, there is a lag between evidence and the recognition of the value of that evidence. So, a nice, perhaps delusional, thought is that my research is important, and others will come around to seeing that.
4) I am doing what I want to do - Perhaps the best of the set. See number 7 in this (excellent) list.
Other Person: What are you doing your thesis on?
Me: I'm looking at intergenerational poverty and health
Other Person: Oh fantastic! What are you doing specifically?
Me: (Thrilled that someone is interested) Well, in my first two papers, I'm studying intergenerational associations between parent and child height, which are strongly associated with an assortment of health and economic outcomes in adulthood, and trying to tease apart the mechanisms enabling these transfers. The main idea is that a notable portion of this appears to be driven by pathways that are amenable to public policy intervention. In the second paper I address this aspect, and study the extent to which these correlations are modulated by public health programs and enviromental shocks.
If the person is still interested, I go on and talk about my nascent model and empirical methodology, which actually is intuitively simple but still geeky and technical. Usually though, the person is not interested: "Oh...ummm...great...hey, I gotta run, talk to you later." (And I haven't even gotten my third paper!)
Recently, I realized that these conversations get to me. In general, I find my project exciting and interesting - otherwise I wouldn't be pursuing it. Every now and then, though, I have these doubts: what if it's NOT that exciting or interesting or (gasp) that important? At those times, some external validation is nice So I chat up my advisors and they seem genuinely excited about my work. So it's all good...right?
To some extent, yes. It's your professors and peers that know your field well, and who have a good sense of what is important and what is not. However, these days health economics (and econ in general) seems to have transcended the realm of nerd-dom into the public conscience. People are avid consumers of economics (see the comments in any Freakonomics post for proof), and I suppose one would want the public to see the value in what he/she does.
I'm not just referring to validation of the sort where one writes a paper on something fun and has it picked up in the New York Times. It's also that many health policy makers are not economists and probably don't read much academic health economics. Many of us came into this field with an eye on figuring stuff out that's helpful to people. So, if outsiders don't see the value in your work or find it disinteresting, perhaps non-economist policy makers might not either. Also, doing a PhD involves life sacrifices and it's a bit of a monastic existence. If what you are spending night and day on is not "important," then what the hell are you doing?
In the event that outsiders are lukewarm about your work, where does that leave you? After countless conversations such as those outlined at the beginning, this is the question I am asking myself. My advisors, other health economists, and I see some value in my work. Few other people I have talked to share that excitement. How am I supposed to feel about that? I think there are four rationalizations:
1) My research might not be policy relevant, but advances the science - I've used this one before, but I don't like it. While any one paper need not be policy relevant, it should help provide information on some theory or behavior where that understanding would be useful in informing policy. I think my dissertation might touch on this, but I'm not sure.
2) My research is designed to show of my technical skills and get me a good job. All policy relevant work will commence after procuring said job - Not bad. However, I am part of the Department of Health POLICY and Administration. What am I projecting if my dissertation has no "policy" in it? I might be good at stats but does my thesis send the signal that I am not imaginative when it comes to policy evaluation?
3) People are slow to come around - Many times, there is a lag between evidence and the recognition of the value of that evidence. So, a nice, perhaps delusional, thought is that my research is important, and others will come around to seeing that.
4) I am doing what I want to do - Perhaps the best of the set. See number 7 in this (excellent) list.
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Teaching
In many graduate programs, teaching fellowships are a necessary part of one's PhD experience: in exchange for a generous stipend and (hopefully) access to all of the college/university's vast resources, PhD students get the privilege of helping educate some America's best and brightest.
For many graduate students, the (mandatory) opportunity to teach brings both excitement and apprehension. I know I definitely had mixed feelings. On the one hand, the psychic benefits of educating eager students and capitalizing on all the perks that come with authority are attractive features of the teaching fellowship or teaching assistant program. On the other hand, the more time you spend helping other people, the less time you have for your own research.
In my program, we are required to teach 40 hours. At first glance, this seems like a really good deal. However, that 40 hours actually means four 10-hr/week semesters of teaching. Apparently, compared to those "poor, unfortunate souls" in humanities programs, this isn't too bad, either.
So far I have completed 35/40 hours required. I have to make a decision about the remaining 5 hours. Should I fulfill that by teaching? By a research assistant job? Should I get an outside grant and buy my way out of these responsibilities altogether? Here are the pros and cons of teaching, as I see them:
Pros
1) Teaching students is rewarding, especially when they notice the effort and reciprocate by getting excited about the material. I've had some phenomenal students thus far, especially in the undergraduate health politics and health economics courses. It was great to be able to inspire them and get to know them before they go on to do big things.
2) You can reinforce your knowledge in a subject you already know or learn something completely new. I've TAed health policy and health systems, health and political science, and health econ courses. All of them are centered around U.S. health care, something I knew comparatively little about. Now I have a good handle on how everything works. Not only that, I also have a sense of where the interesting research questions are. So if I can't get a job doing international stuff, I could always study Medicaid or P4P or something.
Cons
1) 10 hours/week is more of a time commitment than you'd think. Actually, it wasn't a big deal during second year, when I TAed in addition to taking a full load of courses, but was more so this past semester, my first year of "full dissertation time." I'm obsessed with finishing this program as quickly as possible - after all, I need to go back to med school! - and in order to do so, I think you need to get off to a strong start early on in the third year. There were many times when I felt that teaching responsibilities (writing exams, grading exams, holding section, etc) were destroying any momentum I was picking up. As such, I've taken this semester off to focus fully on research work.
2) For most students, TAing responsibilities involving teaching section, coming up with exam questions, and grading exams and problem sets. I think you can get pretty good at those things, as well as skills like explaining things well, connecting with students, etc, after two semesters of teaching. After this, I think there are diminishing returns to TAing as far as it making you a better teacher. I was lucky in my third iteration in that the professor I TAed for expanded my responsibilities into helping come up with the syllabus, give lectures, and work with guest speakers. I don't think I'll be as fortunate on the fourth go.
3) Diminishing returns also apply to labor market returns to graduate experiences in teaching. At the research powerhouses, I think they care a lot less about your teaching experience than what papers you've written; this also applies for tenure. If this is true, it might be better to spend time RAing and get on some random publication (or get a grant and focus fully on my own work) than teaching.
(Many of you may have had graduate student TAs that seemed less than happy to be teaching you. Reasons 1-3 may explain their long faces.)
I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I'm definitely applying for the grant, but there is no guarantee I will get one. If it comes down to it, the decision between TA and RA is tougher. I'll keep you posted.
For many graduate students, the (mandatory) opportunity to teach brings both excitement and apprehension. I know I definitely had mixed feelings. On the one hand, the psychic benefits of educating eager students and capitalizing on all the perks that come with authority are attractive features of the teaching fellowship or teaching assistant program. On the other hand, the more time you spend helping other people, the less time you have for your own research.
In my program, we are required to teach 40 hours. At first glance, this seems like a really good deal. However, that 40 hours actually means four 10-hr/week semesters of teaching. Apparently, compared to those "poor, unfortunate souls" in humanities programs, this isn't too bad, either.
So far I have completed 35/40 hours required. I have to make a decision about the remaining 5 hours. Should I fulfill that by teaching? By a research assistant job? Should I get an outside grant and buy my way out of these responsibilities altogether? Here are the pros and cons of teaching, as I see them:
Pros
1) Teaching students is rewarding, especially when they notice the effort and reciprocate by getting excited about the material. I've had some phenomenal students thus far, especially in the undergraduate health politics and health economics courses. It was great to be able to inspire them and get to know them before they go on to do big things.
2) You can reinforce your knowledge in a subject you already know or learn something completely new. I've TAed health policy and health systems, health and political science, and health econ courses. All of them are centered around U.S. health care, something I knew comparatively little about. Now I have a good handle on how everything works. Not only that, I also have a sense of where the interesting research questions are. So if I can't get a job doing international stuff, I could always study Medicaid or P4P or something.
Cons
1) 10 hours/week is more of a time commitment than you'd think. Actually, it wasn't a big deal during second year, when I TAed in addition to taking a full load of courses, but was more so this past semester, my first year of "full dissertation time." I'm obsessed with finishing this program as quickly as possible - after all, I need to go back to med school! - and in order to do so, I think you need to get off to a strong start early on in the third year. There were many times when I felt that teaching responsibilities (writing exams, grading exams, holding section, etc) were destroying any momentum I was picking up. As such, I've taken this semester off to focus fully on research work.
2) For most students, TAing responsibilities involving teaching section, coming up with exam questions, and grading exams and problem sets. I think you can get pretty good at those things, as well as skills like explaining things well, connecting with students, etc, after two semesters of teaching. After this, I think there are diminishing returns to TAing as far as it making you a better teacher. I was lucky in my third iteration in that the professor I TAed for expanded my responsibilities into helping come up with the syllabus, give lectures, and work with guest speakers. I don't think I'll be as fortunate on the fourth go.
3) Diminishing returns also apply to labor market returns to graduate experiences in teaching. At the research powerhouses, I think they care a lot less about your teaching experience than what papers you've written; this also applies for tenure. If this is true, it might be better to spend time RAing and get on some random publication (or get a grant and focus fully on my own work) than teaching.
(Many of you may have had graduate student TAs that seemed less than happy to be teaching you. Reasons 1-3 may explain their long faces.)
I'm not sure what I'm going to do. I'm definitely applying for the grant, but there is no guarantee I will get one. If it comes down to it, the decision between TA and RA is tougher. I'll keep you posted.
Saturday, January 5, 2008
How to Innovate: Stop Reading Academic Papers?
One of my professors last semester had this piece of advice for graduate students: if you find an interesting research question, work through how you would attack the problem before doing a literature search. His point was that reading the literature, especially in the problem and research strategy generation phase of a project, stifles your creativity.
A recent NYT article makes a similar point:
This so-called curse of knowledge, a phrase used in a 1989 paper in The Journal of Political Economy, means that once you’ve become an expert in a particular subject, it’s hard to imagine not knowing what you do. Your conversations with others in the field are peppered with catch phrases and jargon that are foreign to the uninitiated. When it’s time to accomplish a task — open a store, build a house, buy new cash registers, sell insurance — those in the know get it done the way it has always been done, stifling innovation as they barrel along the well-worn path.
The rest of the article primarily considers strategies of how to get around the curse of knowledge at the organizational level, whereas my Professor's tactic tries to hit the problem at an individual level. Here are some questions/thoughts I had:
1) Is the curse of knowledge primarily a manifestation of framing, since an analysis presented in a certain way governs the way one thinks of the problem subsequently?
2) Do the benefits of knowledge outweigh the costs? I hear about a lot of projects that stem from "I read this and that paper and saw that I could make the following substantive improvements." I'm guessing that a lot of research is done that way. Such contributions require a fairly deep understanding of the existing body of research and where it is different.
3) Following from (2), I wonder if researchers self-select into the "innovation" (extensive margin) path or the "replicate and extend" (intensive margin) path. Is it possible for a single researcher to do both, or does it make more sense to specialize according to comparative advantage?
4) I'm guessing the innovation path is riskier, though if things pan out, returns will be much higher. If so, to what extent do academic incentives govern whether or not a given researchers chooses to innovate or incrementally add to the literature? For example, in the medical research world (excluded the more basic science oriented work) my guess is that the tacit requirements to publish in quantity drive the marginal researcher towards the "replicate and extend" path. Another example: some argue that academic tenure is justified in that it provides security for researchers with great promise to take on riskier projects.
5) In training graduate students, is their an optimal reading/creating ratio? After all, we learn about approaching problems from how others approach problems. There is really no way around that. But where is the point where we approach negative marginal returns?
6) What is the biological basis of the curse of knowledge? In my first year neuroscience course, one of the professors pointed out that we start out with many more synaptic connections as infants and children than we possess as adults. His take on this was that, with learning and experience, we strengthen the appropriate connections while "weeding out" the others. "This is why as kids we have all these crazy ideas, but as we grow up we have less and less of these," he said. From an evolutionary perspective, I can see how pruning out the crazy ideas makes sense. However, to the extent that evolution is a satisficing process, perhaps the pruning that goes on is a bit much. Are there ways to engage children such that they retain some of this "innovative craziness" later in life? Is there any research on this?
A recent NYT article makes a similar point:
This so-called curse of knowledge, a phrase used in a 1989 paper in The Journal of Political Economy, means that once you’ve become an expert in a particular subject, it’s hard to imagine not knowing what you do. Your conversations with others in the field are peppered with catch phrases and jargon that are foreign to the uninitiated. When it’s time to accomplish a task — open a store, build a house, buy new cash registers, sell insurance — those in the know get it done the way it has always been done, stifling innovation as they barrel along the well-worn path.
The rest of the article primarily considers strategies of how to get around the curse of knowledge at the organizational level, whereas my Professor's tactic tries to hit the problem at an individual level. Here are some questions/thoughts I had:
1) Is the curse of knowledge primarily a manifestation of framing, since an analysis presented in a certain way governs the way one thinks of the problem subsequently?
2) Do the benefits of knowledge outweigh the costs? I hear about a lot of projects that stem from "I read this and that paper and saw that I could make the following substantive improvements." I'm guessing that a lot of research is done that way. Such contributions require a fairly deep understanding of the existing body of research and where it is different.
3) Following from (2), I wonder if researchers self-select into the "innovation" (extensive margin) path or the "replicate and extend" (intensive margin) path. Is it possible for a single researcher to do both, or does it make more sense to specialize according to comparative advantage?
4) I'm guessing the innovation path is riskier, though if things pan out, returns will be much higher. If so, to what extent do academic incentives govern whether or not a given researchers chooses to innovate or incrementally add to the literature? For example, in the medical research world (excluded the more basic science oriented work) my guess is that the tacit requirements to publish in quantity drive the marginal researcher towards the "replicate and extend" path. Another example: some argue that academic tenure is justified in that it provides security for researchers with great promise to take on riskier projects.
5) In training graduate students, is their an optimal reading/creating ratio? After all, we learn about approaching problems from how others approach problems. There is really no way around that. But where is the point where we approach negative marginal returns?
6) What is the biological basis of the curse of knowledge? In my first year neuroscience course, one of the professors pointed out that we start out with many more synaptic connections as infants and children than we possess as adults. His take on this was that, with learning and experience, we strengthen the appropriate connections while "weeding out" the others. "This is why as kids we have all these crazy ideas, but as we grow up we have less and less of these," he said. From an evolutionary perspective, I can see how pruning out the crazy ideas makes sense. However, to the extent that evolution is a satisficing process, perhaps the pruning that goes on is a bit much. Are there ways to engage children such that they retain some of this "innovative craziness" later in life? Is there any research on this?
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