[LTER-mcm-pi] Fwd: Re: Collaboration on Lake Fryxell and Bonney

Thu Mar 10 18:52:40 MST 2016

Peter, I totally agree. Collegiality is one thing but this person is
behaving in a way that would make me very reluctant to work with.
On Mar 10, 2016 7:06 PM, "Peter Doran" <pdoran at lsu.edu> wrote:

> Diane suggests I talk to Paul tomorrow which is a good idea. He may have a
> take he hasn't let on through email.
>
> Over the last hour I've kind of flipped on the approach. I have samples
> (maybe) and a new young colleague who wants to do the work and is quite
> capable of the doing the analysis. We agreed to collaborate long before
> Huang got into this and we only haven't started yet because my colleague is
> finishing building his lab. I think there is justification to ask for e.g.
> a year to work with the samples in hand. Why should a young assistant
> professor be denied this work because this more senior guy is pushing the
> system?
>
> Peter T. Doran
> Professor and John Franks Chair
> Geology and Geophysics
> Louisiana State University
> E235 Howe Russell Geosciences Complex, Baton Rouge, LA  70803
> office 2255783955 | fax 2255782302
> www.lsu.edu/science/geology/
>
>
> On 3/10/16 5:52 PM, Michael Gooseff wrote:
>
> After you are done setting up his next big paper and career, I have some
> data you could crunch…
>
>
>
> From: mcm-pi <mcm-pi-bounces at lists.lternet.edu> on behalf of Peter Doran <
> pdoran at lsu.edu>
> Date: Thursday, March 10, 2016 at 3:24 PM
> To: "mcm-pi at lists.lternet.edu" <mcm-pi at lists.lternet.edu>
> Subject: [LTER-mcm-pi] Fwd: Re: Collaboration on Lake Fryxell and Bonney
>
> This guy is really pushy. Here's a draft (not sending until tomorrow) of
> my response to him in case you want to follow the saga. I'd also like input
> since he's now involved Paul. This is much more wordy than my initial idea
> for a response which just involved a few colorful words...
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Re: Collaboration on Lake Fryxell and Bonney
> Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2016 16:17:40 -0600
> From: Peter Doran <pdoran at lsu.edu> <pdoran at lsu.edu>
> To: Huang, Yongsong <yongsong_huang at brown.edu> <yongsong_huang at brown.edu>
> CC: Cutler, Paul M <pcutler at nsf.gov> <pcutler at nsf.gov>
>
> Hi Huang,
>
> As I said, I'm always open to collaboration, but I am also trying to keep
> a promise to a young career scientist to collaborate with him on similar
> work. But having just talked to Guangsheng, we can try to do complimentary
> work and more process type stuff. He is quite confident in his ability to
> do the alkenone paleothermometry work after his two year Postdoc at Yale
> with Mark Pagani who he still collaborates with.  So we will work in
> parallel once his lab is established in a month or so.
>
> More to the point though is the complete unknown state of the sediment
> "archive". I really have no idea what is left. It's been a long time since
> I laid eyes on any of these samples and there's been a move across the
> country in the mean time, a few freezer failures and some cleaning house
> during the move (NSF does not have rules on archiving samples, but also
> sometimes the reality of long term sample storage with no budget for it, is
> not a good reality). I'll have to get someone to check on what we have. The
> Bonney sediment cores were not really sediment cores at all, but dirty salt
> cores. I know we do not have anything from West Lobe Bonney and East Lobe
> Bonney is probably scarce and patchy since we had to use a lot of it to do
> the analysis we have already done. There is also no real chronological
> control on those sediments - my guess is they are a few thousand years old
> at best (and that's what we published in Wagner et al. 2010) so do not meet
> your needs. Fryxell holds the most promise and we will check on those
> sediments, but I can give no promises that we still have samples spanning
> the full record. Plus, even with Fryxell, with the radiocarbon reservoir
> issues, I view the chronology with a grain of salt.
>
> All the best
> -Peter
>
> Peter T. Doran
> Professor and John Franks Chair
> Geology and Geophysics
> Louisiana State University
> E235 Howe Russell Geosciences Complex, Baton Rouge, LA  70803
> office 2255783955 | fax 2255782302
> www.lsu.edu/science/geology/
>
>
> On 3/10/16 2:25 PM, Huang, Yongsong wrote:
>
> Dear Peter:
>
> I had a nice conversation with Paul this morning. He told me about his
> recent contact with you regarding our sample requests for Lake Fryxell.
>
> As I mentioned repeatedly, I am very interested in collaborating with you
> on Fryxell and Bonney, and we have been working on generating preliminary
> data from the lakes.
>
> Paul assured me that it is NSF policy that samples sponsored by federal
> grants should be utilized to the maximum to get new science discoveries.
>
> To test a set of novel alkenone based proxies that we discovered, Lake
> Fryxell core sediments provide irreplaceable opportunities for our
> investigation. We need ~ a dozen samples that go through the glacial to
> interglacial periods. Your existing samples as you mentioned are just fine
> for our purpose.
>
> We will be happy to have you as a co-author on our papers from these
> samples.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Yongsong
>
>
> On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 8:05 PM, Huang, Yongsong <yongsong_huang at brown.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> Peter:
>>
>> I also do have a specific scientific reason to use the sediment cores
>> from Fryxell and Bonney for calibration a new alkenone based proxy we
>> discovered. No other lakes have the special features like Fryxell and
>> Bonney that meet our need. We do not need super clear history for the
>> sediments, all we need is that they span the long history for the past
>> 40,000 years. A dozen samples from different stratigraphic horizons will
>> meet our needs.
>>
>> Storage in freezer will not affect our analyses at all.
>>
>> It will be great if we talk on the phone. I think collaboration will be
>> mutually beneficial.
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Yongsong
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 9, 2016 at 6:02 PM, Peter Doran <pdoran at lsu.edu> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Yongsong,
>>>
>>> Sorry for the delay in replying. It's been a very very busy period and
>>> your email got buried deep. I had intended to reply. I also had to do a
>>> search for Nora's email. I missed that one all together I'm afraid.
>>>
>>> We collected sediment cores over 10 years ago which have been heavily
>>> used for analysis in published papers. What's left of the cores have been
>>> in a freezer with a questionable history for a very long time. The Jaraula
>>> work you are probably familiar with was done under the supervision of her
>>> adviser at UIC, Fabien Kenig. They worked from box cores of the surface
>>> mats and I think he still has some of that, but not sure.
>>>
>>> We have a new young faculty here  who discussed with me doing alkenone
>>> and paleothermometry work well over a year ago when first interviewing. He
>>> is still building his lab which apparently he is almost finished (if you
>>> are ever finished building a lab). We have not yet gotten to the point of
>>> assessing what the quality of my samples are after so long. I'm obviously
>>> interested in supporting a young faculty in my own department as a
>>> priority. I'm also open to other collaborations if they are complimentary
>>> to our efforts. The new faculty is Guangsheng Zhuang, and I'm sure he would
>>> be too. I will talk to him about this. I hope this helps.
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>> -Peter
>>>
>>> Peter T. Doran
>>> Professor and John Franks Chair
>>> Geology and Geophysics
>>> Louisiana State University
>>> E235 Howe Russell Geosciences Complex, Baton Rouge, LA  70803
>>> office 2255783955 | fax 2255782302
>>> www.lsu.edu/science/geology/
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2/24/16 10:11 AM, Huang, Yongsong wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear Peter:
>>>
>>> My graduate student Nora Richter contacted you a while ago about the
>>> collaborations on Lake Fryxell and Bonney.
>>>
>>> I would like to provide some background about my research group and why
>>> we are so interested in Dry Valley lakes.
>>>
>>> My research group has been very active in studying cold norther
>>> hemisphere lakes including those from Greenland, Arctic Alaska and Tibetan
>>> Plateau. Here is the abstract for my NSF Alaska grant:
>>> https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1503846&HistoricalAwards=false
>>> .
>>>
>>> We have been actively publishing alkenones in lakes for the past decade
>>> and I would not be ashamed to say, currently, my group is the best in the
>>> world in terms of our understanding of lacustrine alkenones and their
>>> application for paleoclimate and paleoecological applications. We also
>>> developed major technical expertise on studying these compounds and have
>>> ability to unambiguously identify alkenone double bond positions - there
>>> were major problems with old methodologies and hence many papers publish
>>> only tentative identification of double bond positions (such as Caroline
>>> Jaraula paper in organic geochemistry on tentative identification of penta
>>> unsaturated alkenones). I also work with Linda Amaral at Marine Biological
>>> Lab closely (she is expert on DNA sequencing, and has state of the art
>>> facilities). My lab is a full scale organic geochemistry lab with all gas
>>> and liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry and isotope ratio mass
>>> spectrometry (I have four mass spectrometers): few organic geochemistry
>>> labs in the U.S. have the scale of analytical capability as in my lab.
>>>
>>> Here is our in press paper on lake alkenones:
>>> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016703716300576. We
>>> will publish a cluster of papers this year since we have made major
>>> multiple breakthrough discoveries in the area.
>>>
>>> If you are interested, you can find my full paper list in my google
>>> citation page:
>>> https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xel8cGsAAAAJ&hl=en
>>>
>>> Sorry these may look like I am bragging. However, it has been really
>>> difficult to convince experts like you on Antarctic lakes that we can
>>> really contribute to the science in ways no other research group can.
>>>
>>> We have already carried out initial work on Lake Fryxell and Lake Bonney
>>> sediment and water column samples, and found fascinating new things - we
>>> can publish a paper, even just based on our data now.
>>>
>>> I will be really keen to talk to you on the phone. I really would like
>>> to work on sediment cores from Fryxell and Bonney, and can assure you we
>>> will make major new discoveries in collaboration with you.
>>>
>>> Thanks a lot,
>>>
>>>
>>> Yongsong
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Dr. Yongsong Huang
>>> Professor
>>> Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences
>>> Brown University
>>> Providence , Rhode Island 02912
>>> U.S.A.
>>>
>>> Tel: 401-863-3822
>>> Email: Yongsong_Huang at brown.edu
>>> http://brown.edu/Departments/Geology/people/facultypage.php?id=1106969965
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr. Yongsong Huang
>> Professor
>> Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences
>> Brown University
>> Providence , Rhode Island 02912
>> U.S.A.
>>
>> Tel: 401-863-3822
>> Email: Yongsong_Huang at brown.edu
>> http://brown.edu/Departments/Geology/people/facultypage.php?id=1106969965
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Dr. Yongsong Huang
> Professor
> Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences
> Brown University
> Providence , Rhode Island 02912
> U.S.A.
>
> Tel: 401-863-3822
> Email: Yongsong_Huang at brown.edu
> http://brown.edu/Departments/Geology/people/facultypage.php?id=1106969965
>
>
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>
>
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