I’ve just had an email from a student of a kind I get quite regularly. The genre involves someone asking me to do their schoolwork for them.
Although I’m afraid I never do give much more help that ‘go and read the books’, I have to slightly celebrate the cheek of writing to an author asking them to do your work for you – it’s certainly showing a bit more initiative than just copying a chunk of text straight from the web.
For your enlightenment, here’s a section from the email:
I am one year away from presenting my “Directed Research Project”, and I have chosen “Quantum Entanglement” as the source for my paper which will discuss Quantum Networks. Bear in mind I am a very simple minded guy who is fascinated by this whole Quantum theory thing and I am just beginning to try and understand what’s it all about. I recently got your book The God Effect and I was wondering if you can direct me to where should I look? What to look for? I know you are a very very very busy man, but I hope you can show me the way to be able to write a good research project.
… a hint, by the way for anyone wanting to try this technique. He almost, but not quite got the bit right about my book. To make me pathetically grateful he should have said ‘I recently bought your book’, not just that he ‘got it’.
When people ask me to do this I ask them whether they want me in my role as a Nature editor or as a private citizen. Mostly I’m pleased to help out — but to emails such as the above, and to TV researchers who are plainly just fishing for contacts, I direct them to my agent. The thought that they might actually have to pay money for my expertise and contacts nearly always puts them off.
“I direct them to my agent” I must remember that next time I get one of those requests, Henry, which I do frequently. The other day, I got one about the nitty gritty of a Nature paper published in 1936 — the person enquiring wanted to know the details of some of the finer points of physics in the paper as he wanted to file a patent.
I now realise I should have referred him to my agent!
A well-known palaeontologist of my acquaintance is regularly plagued by dinomaniacs in search of advice. Before the call gets under way he always reminds people that he charges $100 per consultation … that usually does the trick.