u/You_Stole_My_Hot_Dog

Up until now I've always worked with very clean data; I haven't had to make many hard decisions since the data looks as expected. However, I'm now working on a bit of a messy single-cell analysis that requires tough decisions. Stuff like removing a couple clusters due to high mt read % (easy to justify) but also one with inexplicably low mt read %. We also have very different library sizes, so there's some nuance to our analysis in what we can/cannot compare.

I'm usually in favour of adding too much to the supplement rather than too little. Is it typical to plot out these QC metrics in the supplement to explain why we made these decisions? Like a before and after removing poor quality clusters, or showing count distributions, etc. I see a lot of papers that just mention something like "after removing low quality cells, we..."

I sometimes go to the literature/english sections to look for books to read (if a prof is using in a course, it’s probably a good book). The ones in the textbook section are way cheaper than the ones in the general bookstore section; like $10-20 cheaper. Is it unethical to buy these? I don’t want students who need these to run out.

I’m defending in a month and I seriously could not care less about my research. I had a great experience with a fantastic supervisor, we published a handful of papers that others have found very useful, but I‘m fully over it. I don’t find any of this interesting anymore. I’ll likely leave the field and go for something adjacent once I’m done.

I’m not the slightest bit nervous about my defense (I’ve presented my work a dozen times and know this field inside and out), I’m just dreading having to read my papers again and justify them in front of people. I know they’re going to drill me on the importance of the work (my committee members are generally skeptical of my lab’s methods) and I’m somehow going to have to pretend it’s all super important and changes the way we approach our research area. When in reality I don’t care if this work never gets cited a single time and nothing ever comes of it.

Anyone else feel this way?