Ygthkb

To be brief, I am a PhD student, and I have recently had some disagreement with the way the advisor handled our collaboration on research. This was initially a fairly minor thing. I was advised to work on obtaining results he had already published At the time, no harsh words were exchanged at all, and there was some degree of understanding although I was not happy with the mistake.

This has escalated beyond belief as soon as I relayed this problem to an administrative person, to explain there was a mutual mistake and I needed more time to present some new results instead of my old ones. I explained the situation briefly to the person responsible for these things, made it clear I held no animosity or any interest in dwelling on it, and just needed some recovery time to move forwards.

This has resulted in my advisor going on a furious rant at me in public, saying he refuses to work with me anymore. In private, the advisors have said that my 'complaints' have made the group look bad (no complaint was ever made, only a request for further time), and that they have now lodged some files or something on me with people at the university marking me as a problematic student. I have also been told that my complaints will make it difficult for me to get a job even after graduation, if I get to that point, because my advisor has no intention of giving me a reference, much less a positive one.

What on earth can I do? It seems that my career is now in ruins before I have even started.

This whole situation has made me disgusted. But I cannot work elsewhere if they follow through on their threats. How can I salvage my potential career?

You have not quite told us what happened with you, your advisor and your research group. But even your vague description betrays what I believe to be a lack of awareness to certain aspects of professional/interpersonal interaction which is now biting you in the ass.

This was initially a fairly minor thing. I just needed to explain to others that there was some confusion which my advisor admitted to me privately

This was not a minor, thing - it was a large thing. A huge thing probably. Why?

• You repeated something told to you in confidence, to outsiders, and made it (somewhat) generally known.


• You assigned blame to your advisor while (seemingly) hinting he was incapable/unwilling to take on the blame, thus slighting his character as a person and as a manager.

... and this was even before any official complaints were lodged about anything and anyone.

Now, maybe that's not the only way to look at what happened, but it could very well be the way that your advisor and many others - in and out of your research group - see things. It's possible that, on the merit of the original matter, what you said was true - but that doesn't help with how you conducted yourself.

This whole situation has made me disgusted.

You must realize that the feeling may be mutual. Try to look at things from the other person's perspective - what do they expect and believe - and be aware that they will judge you from that perspective, not on the basis of the facts, or what you consider to be the facts and circumstances.

What on earth can I do?

Unless it jeopardizes the integrity of yours and others research - swallow your pride/disgust, stash your ego somewhat, and apologize to your advisor for your conduct. Be, or pretend to be, penitent.

Does this mean that he's not really to blame for anything? Not really. Maybe most of the blame is with him. But - that doesn't really matter. You have to be generous with taking blame and cutting people slack (whether they deserve it in your opinion or not), as long as others/society/science don't suffer as a consequence. That's an important salve to apply to situations of people being offended.