How Can I Be Polite at this Point?

[DaShi]

I am taking responsibility. She has ****ed up the project and now I am going to have to repeat it myself. The issue is, how do I convince her to let me do that? Because she seems to think everything has gone smoothly.

[rah]

That will be good experience for the real world. Most of your future bosses will be morons.
Familiarity helps there. If she trusts you, you will find it easier to convince her that her time is too valuable to be spent doing tasks that you are more than capable of doing. Stroking egos works 75% of the time. (not based on scientific research)

[KrazyHorse]

Why did your uni (which I presume is a real, First World uni) put you under the guidance of a PhD at a Chinese institution (none of which are truly world class AFAIK)?

[SlowwHand]

I thinking of changing my project to "Incompetence in Health Research in China." What do you think?

She just emailed me after I told that one interview was completely unreadable. We will have our meeting on Monday morning. Then I suspect I will be arrested for stealing state secrets or something.

[DaShi]

My school emphasizes international internships, especially in third world countries. So they are aware that things like this can happen. I spoke to a student who graduated this year and did her internship in South America. She had to throw away all her data after she discovered, too late, that her interviewer was leading the subjects.

I choose this internship because they allowed a lot of freedom for designing the project. Plus, this region has some of the highest TB prevalence in the world. Their own past projects were also quite good. The school works closely with British university, so it seemed experienced. However, from what I've seen of their past records, the people who I am working with have not worked with other foreigners before. I spoke with some of the people who have worked with other interns, and they seemed knowledgeable, which probably only lulled me into a false sense of security in their abilities. I think part of the problem is that the deputy dean, who is more experienced, has just retired this summer and usually takes charge of this kind of this stuff, has passed it off to one of his postdocs. If I can fix it, it will be a good project. One thing their interviews have shown me is that the data is there. It just needs to be dug out. If I can't fix it, I'll just have to find a new topic for my thesis.

[Theben]

Finally. Drama that I didn't cause and isn't BK/asher/wiglaf related.

Fixed.

[KrazyHorse]

BK's on ignore, and Asher's rants are too predictable. As for Wiggy, does he actually cause drama?

[Theben]

It has the appearance of drama to the untrained, and one can always treat it as such.

[Sirotnikov]

Good to see someone taking responsibility

Learning to control clueless bosses is an important skill. Also difficult to learn when you expect people to be competent.

[DaShi]

Note to self, don't let the research team see my notes:

Here we have a patient that had a disturbing experience and wants to talk about it. This is excellent. He is an outlier and thus helps us better understand the extremes of the situation. I've not had a single course in qualititative methods. Yet, I understand clearly how valuable this patient could be to the study. However, you *********, who seem absolutely clueless to anything involving this study or research at all, have completely screwed it up. Wonderful data was lost here. You should all resign from science for the shame you've brought.

Can I have your PhD, you're not using it.

If this was Japan I'd bring them wakizashis for seppuku.


Sorry, venting. However, they did have at least two interviews that we actually fairly good. For one, they must have been tired and decided to follow the topic guide. During the other, the lady talked so much that it covered up their incompetence.

[Combat Ingrid]

[DaShi]

It helps if you post things that I can see.

[Sirotnikov]

Here let me quote him then

[DaShi]

I'm sorry. I meant that I couldn't see the picture. It's a red x. I have no reason to put CI on ignore.

[Combat Ingrid]

I suppose you can see the picture now.
Anyway, your first post obviously gave the impression that you were the responsible one in the team: "My research team", "I have them conduct the interviews", "I had to pay for all of this crap" etc etc.
Next time you need to whine, spare the drama and just make it clear to everyone that the real issue is that you are being dominated by an incompetent Chinese girl