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As some of you might know, I have been engaged in research of the disease that killed my son in 1998. In 2007, I published a paper in a medical journal, detailing a new model of the disease pathology. Now, for some reason, I'm getting requests to evaluate research proposals for some really big research organizations in the field, as well as other requests to submit papers for journals, etc.
I am so totally out of my league here. I know only about the science; nothing about how any of this other stuff is done. And I'm NOT a doctor, but people write to me as one. It is so strange to be in this kind of position.
Sometimes, I feel like just jumping in, headfirst, and going with the flow. Other times, I feel like hiding out from everything in that world, as if I'm some sort of imposter. I know that honesty is the best policy, but in the scientific world, if you don't have credentials, you just aren't taken seriously, and damnit, I do good work, and it should be taken seriously. It IS being taken seriously, but they don't know I'm just a woman from Texas who has no degrees in the subject they are asking me to be an expert in. I spent 13 years researching that disease and I can add to the body of scientific knowledge. I just don't know how to do that, at this point, without pretending to be something that I'm not.
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