Letters

"There's a fine tradition of passing the bad apple around, but that doesn't do anybody any good." -- Toxicologist Resha Putzrath One of the constants of a scientist's professional life is the annual tradition of writing letters of recommendation as students and colleagues seek fellowships, jobs, and advancement to tenure. But the act of writing or requesting such a letter may not be so simple. Letter-writers must make their missives honest yet sufficiently enthusiastic that they help rather than harm. They must avoid defamatory statements that might invite a lawsuit as well as unconscious gender bias in their language. People requesting recommendations, on the other hand, are faced with the task of selecting the best people to write the letters and providing them with enough information for a letter of sufficient specificity. All this for a tradition that some believe has outlived its usefulness. "There's an over-reliance on letters," maintains David G. Jensen, managing director of Search Masters International, a Sedona, Ariz.-based biotech recruiting firm. "It's ridiculous, because letters of reference can be so easily written about anyone, regardless of whether you like and respect their work, regardless of whether they were genuinely the kind of person you would hire again." Perhaps because of that, recently a phenomenon analogous to grade inflation has befallen letters of recommendation. "Over the years people have gotten very leery of saying anyone is incompetent or can't do the job or is bad at certain things," explains Resha M. Putzrath, a toxicologist and specialist in risk assessment who runs a consulting firm in Washington, D.C. "People have tended to use neutral words as less than flattering. So 'competent,' which sounds like a good thing, is what I get from people who don't want to say anything bad but don't want to say anything good." For this reason, notes Putzrath, "anything less than a superlative tends to be a negative." And Catherine J. Didion, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Association for Women in Science (AWIS), cautions letter-writers, "We forget that that letter is going to go against [other letters recommending] about 400 or 500 other applicants. And in that context, very small differences become enormous criteria that weigh differently." Some letter-writers may not even recognize that their letters might hurt an applicant. "One professor of mine was so pleased with the reference he'd written me that he showed it to me," recalls Putzrath. "After I read it I thanked him very much, but never used him again. He thought he was being complimentary, but it didn't read complimentary to me, and I assumed anyone reading it would have the same problem. It included too much about my personality and not enough about my professional qualifications," a characteristic she attributes to the fact that she and the professor were friends, and perhaps to a tendency among some letter-writers to emphasize a woman's personal characteristics and a man's professional accomplishments. TIMELY REQUESTS: Caltech's Sally Asmundson suggests asking for a letter two months before it's needed. The manner in which a student asks for a reference can make a difference in the strength of the recommendation. Sally J. Asmundson, director of the career development center at the California Institute of Technology, suggests that a student requesting a letter make a formal appointment with his or her professor to discuss it. "If a person asking can give them a way to politely decline [and the professor nonetheless agrees], then it gives the person confidence that this [professor] is going to write a generally positive and complete letter." Asmundson says it is prudent for letters to be requested two months before they're actually needed. "But when you ask, ask if they can have it ready in two weeks. I think two weeks is a reasonable amount of time, but unless you know their schedule, you don't really know if two weeks is reasonable." She suggests approaching the recommender again if the letter hasn't been received within a few days of when it was promised. "Things do get lost, but the person may also want to reconfirm that [the recommender] really did want to write the letter." "If anyone gives you any excuse at all about why they'd rather not write you a letter of recommendation," advises Putzrath, "thank them very nicely and go find someone even if what they say is, 'Gee, I'm really busy right now.'" That excuse might mask a person's inability or unwillingness to provide a good reference. BOTH SIDES, NOW: The most valuable letters mention strengths and weaknesses, says biotech recruiter David Jensen. The best possible reference is one that's tailored to a specific situation, says Jensen. Scientists are asked to write letters of recommendation in a number of different circumstances. The person requesting a letter may be applying for admission to a graduate program, for a fellowship, or for a job in industry or academia. When writing a letter, it's important to keep the requester's goal in mind, Jensen notes, since general, all-purpose letters have much less force. But it's the responsibility of the person requesting the letter to ensure that the writer has all the relevant facts, maintains Jensen. "They're selling their mentor on why they're going to do a great job for that company, and reminding the mentor about all of the experience they've had that's appropriate for this position." "If a person were applying for a fellowship, they may want to bring a copy of the completed application," suggests Asmundson. Additionally, most letter-writers appreciate having copies of the applicant's résumé. NOT JUST ACADEMICS: Illinois microbiologist Stanley Maloy tries to say "personal things" in letters he is asked to write. Stanley Maloy, a professor of microbiology at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, agrees. In the absence of the additional information often found in a résumé, writing an informed letter can sometimes be challenging, he notes. Maloy says he writes about 50 letters per year for undergraduates applying for jobs or to graduate schools. His only acquaintance with some of these students comes from their attendance in his classes. "You don't want to say, 'The student was in my class and got an A, and they seemed to do well in the test.' That's not much help for anyone who wants to employ someone. "I try to spend a fair amount of time and say some personal things . . . that relate to both their academic ability and their ability to get along with other people," Maloy continues. He also tries to evaluate a person's drive and desire to succeed. "The main things I try to do are to summarize what I think is important about that person's work and what impact it has had, rather than just giving general adjectives praising the person," explains Patrick O. Brown, an associate professor of biochemistry at Stanford University Medical Center and an associate investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "This has two advantages. One is that it makes it clear that the person's work is familiar to you. And that grounds the appraisal in concrete evidence instead of generalities." Despite the need to write letters specific to the requester's goal, Maloy finds more similarities than differences in the various types of letters. "When it comes right down to it, the things you're evaluating in all these cases are very, very similar," he observes. In addition to mentioning someone's accomplishments, letters should include "an evaluation of their potential for future growth-that is, their independence, their creativity, things of that sort-and their ability to interact with other people." Letters written when a junior faculty member is being considered for tenure may constitute a special case, however. These letters typically are requested by the tenure committee, not the scientist being considered for promotion, and he or she usually has little say in who is asked to write them, although sometimes the committee will consider suggestions. Writing tenure letters is "a very important part of the tenure process and a very important responsibility," remarks Brown, who says he has written about a half-dozen of these letters. "It's definitely more work to write the tenure letters. For students and postdocs it's very easy for me to write a letter from stream of consciousness because it's someone I see every day, and I know their work intimately. For tenure letters, what I typically need to do is check to make sure I'm up to date on what they published, which often involves some additional reading. Often, when you're asked to write a tenure letter, part of the package is a set of reprints of what the person has published recently." No matter how excellent the subject of the letter is, and no matter whether his or her goal is admission to graduate school or tenure, Jensen maintains that letters that are uniformly positive can sometimes be self-defeating. "I think when you're faced with writing a letter of recommendation you have to remember that a reference letter is supposed to have information about both strengths and weaknesses. Those are the reference letters that are truly believed, the ones that have meaning. . . . If it only has strengths, it's actually a less valuable letter of reference than one that has weaknesses." LANGUAGE MATTERS: AWIS's Catherine Didion notes a case of unconscious gender bias in letters. "The hard part is to be fair," notes Maloy. "You don't do anyone a service if you say glowing things about someone who has a lot of faults. If somebody has good points and bad points, I try to point out both of these issues with the idea in mind that the person who's hiring gets a fair shake in knowing what they're like." "There's a fine tradition of passing the bad apple around, but that doesn't do anybody any good," agrees Putzrath. And it's quite possible to mention a person's weaknesses while at the same time keeping the recommendation highly positive, adds Jensen. He suggests that when mentioning a weakness, letter-writers also discuss how the person has worked to overcome that weakness. For example, if someone arrived in the lab lacking critical technical skills, a letter-writer could mention how that person worked to gain those skills. Some reference writers resort to what Jensen likes to call "L.I.A.R. letters" to avoid saying anything unpleasant about an applicant. The acronym, which he says was coined by an acquaintance, stands for "letters of inconspicuously ambiguous reference." "It's a letter that looks on the surface like a letter of reference," explains Jensen. "In fact, it can go into great detail about a person's graduate work, and [how] they were involved in studying XYZ technology. And then they include little innocuous comments that tell you, if you read between the lines, exactly what this person is saying. But they're so ambiguous as to require telephone communications to clarify it." As an example, Jensen describes a letter he once saw that stated that the applicant was "a continual influence on those around him." "That begged for a telephone call," relates Jensen, "and when I checked into it further, it was an individual who had such poor interpersonal skills that he would drive everyone around him out of the laboratory." "More people are more willing to give negatives over the phone than in writing [because] there's deniability," notes Putzrath. But giving a bad reference orally rather than in writing is actually no defense against allegations of defamation, says Rochelle Kaplan, general counsel of the Bethlehem, Pa.-based National Association of Colleges and Employers, an association of career-services practitioners on college campuses and human-resources people who hire college graduates. The person requesting the oral reference might well be taking notes, which could be used as evidence in a defamation case, she points out. In this litigious age, lawsuits over letters of recommendation are an ever-present possibility. "I like to tell people that anyone can be sued at any time for any reason," explains Kaplan. "If people want to be absolutely, positively sure that they'll never be sued for defamation, don't be a reference . . . or give what is known as a name, rank, and serial number reference." Such a reference would only confirm, for example, that an individual had been employed in the organization between certain dates, held a certain title, and earned a certain salary. Suing a person who gave a negative reference may be easy, but actually winning such a suit is quite something says Kaplan, especially if there's no false information in the recommendation letter. "It depends on all the facts and circumstances," she points out. "The truth shall set you free. The truth is a defense to defamation. Just because people say negative things about you, and therefore you don't get a job, if those negative things are documentable and truthful, and they're written and transmitted to a person that had a reasonable need to know, like a tenure committee or an employer, you're protected." For More Information The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) has published a legal brief entitled "How to Write Reference Letters Right," which is available for purchase. For information, contact NACE at 62 Highland Ave., Bethlehem, Pa. 18017; (800) 544-5272, Ext. 10. Fax: (610) 868-0208. But beyond the legal issues are questions of fairness and bias. AWIS uncovered an instructive case of unconscious gender bias in an analysis of four letters written by a single scientist (AWIS, AWIS Magazine, 21[1]:7-12, 1992; C.J. Didion, AWIS Magazine, 24[1]:9-10, 1993). Two of the letters were written for men, and two for women. The anonymous author of the letters tended to describe women as passive participants, using phrases such as "she assisted with" or "she along with others." Of the men, on the other hand, he used phrases such as "was instrumental in" and "he alone was able." He described one of the men as having won a fellowship, "reserved for the top few applicants to our graduate school." One of women happened to have won the same fellowship, but the letter written for her did not mention that fact. And the letter for that woman, who was seeking another fellowship, included the damning sentence, "Financial support is an important psychological boost that can propel someone into a higher orbit of self-confidence and productivity." Several of the AWIS members who reviewed the letters noted that this sentence implies the writer believes his student to be in need of a psychological boost, since she is apparently insufficiently productive and lacks self-confidence. Didion is convinced that the author of the letters was not aware that he was describing the women differently from the men. "We like to think that all we do in science is objective, and we somehow have the ability not to be biased," she points out. "While we may be able to do that in terms of experiments within the laboratory, when we're working with our colleagues, whether we like it or not, we always bring biases to the table. Anything we do of a scientific nature has a social content to it. In terms of how we express opinions of one another's work, we have to realize that that language has a direct bearing on how they're being viewed by their scientific colleagues." Didion's bottom-line advice to people requesting letters is to be clear about their expectations. "In the context of reference letters," she notes, "women tend to be shy about being explicit about what they want." And her advice to recommenders is to "reread [letters] with a careful appraisal of your use of language and style," and to be honest to the person requesting a letter. "If you can't write the superlative letter the person wants, let them know. It's a difficult thing to say, but I think you owe the honesty to that person in terms of whether you think you can do what they're asking." Robert Finn, a freelance science writer based in Long Beach, Calif., can be reached online at finn@nasw.org.

Letters

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