Feeling the PRESSURE

So there are many of us "science kids" that in our undergrad sat in seat listening to the horror stories of scientists tampering with data to meet deadlines and please bosses. I remember a day when I was sitting in Nudds' lecture and he mentioned that many DFO researchers feel this pressure. I thought, as well as all my classmates at the time, that this was baloney and there should be no reason to tamper with data or produce statistical reports that don’t show the "real" discovered truth. I mean its about precision not accuracy right?
Well these past weeks, I've been feeling the "pressure." Our rather incompetent dysfunctional team had to present our research to our big Buena (boss) and there were many (in fact a plethora) of questions we failed to answer....not because we didn’t know the answer but bec in the end the answer had more to do with personal vendettas and agendas than it had to do with logical reason. That is to say many things were missed bec someone on the team decided that he/she knew more than the methods stated...or the method advocate (me) came off too natzi-ish, or because the method advocate (me still) went away on 2 weeks vacation to a beautiful island paradise! So in the end everyone was to blame...we all sat heads hung. I mean I really shouldn’t have vacated over x-mas (I'm Hindu, I don’t need to celebrate) but they (the team) and their pettiness really were getting to me. Communication was low, feelings were too often a factor in decision-making and I just didn’t/ couldn't deal with it as no one is confrontational, ergo NO one wanted to talk about the issues.
In the end we've synthesized the data...it looks very bleak to me...but we then cut samples (that had incomplete data sets) and we ran regressions to generate information on a sample size of 50 but really there was grouping there and arguably the sample size should be 10-ish. But after that huge budget was blown its not like we can hold out for next years spawning season and re-run trials. We just have to use what we have!

In the end the data isnt soo bad. Its not pristine by any means though....and the whole thing has taught me the need for multi-ple pre-study planning sessions so that the whole team can get on the same page....come hell or high water....

In other news, the whole aquaculture launch is bigger than I thought! The Director General of WorldFish is coming down from Penang, Malaysia and the Head of Fisheries Slones is around....as well as Bingu of course. The count down to Bingu is approx 10 days!