Dear Kev,

We scientists have to deal with a lot of stress.For instance if we devolope a break thru we have to learn what caused it in the experiment, or we could not notice it and eventualy have to re-do the experiment.

Kev, It may seem stressful but it is important to check and doublecheck work. Good wishes, Sallie

Hi Kev,

Sometimes being a scientist can be very stressful, but most of the time it is not any more or less stressful than other kinds of jobs where you work in an office. When I have an important deadline to meet, such as a NASA proposal submission deadline, or I am putting together a conference presentation, I may have to work a lot of overtime to get things finished. However, most of the time I work pretty much a normal 40 hour week, and only spend a few hours at home in the evenings reading journal articles or preparing lectures for a class.

When I want to publish a paper in a journal, it usually goes through a process called peer review. This means that the editor of the journal will send the paper out to at least 2 other scientists, who will critique the paper and send their comments back to the editor. The journal editor will read the comments and then forward the comments to me. If the reviewers and the editor decided that my paper is acceptable as written, I probably won't have to do much more work except maybe reformat figures for publication. However, the reviewers and the editor usually request revisions. I then go back and re-do some of the data analysis, if necessary, and make as many of the modifications requested as possible. I then write a response to each of the comments. Sometimes the reviewers can ask for unreasonable changes, so in these cases, I need to explain to the reviewers and the editor why I will not make all of the requested changes. I have heard horror stories from other scientists about reviewers who are extremely difficult or biased, but I have not encountered this problem yet. The peer review process can be a little stressful if you get a difficult reviewer, but most of the time it actually helps me to write better papers. As long as I write clearly and give honest, accurate descriptions of my procedures and results I do not need to worry about other scientists investigating my findings. If I have done my research properly, they will be able to see that the data support my conclusions.

Kris