That awkward line between tech and student

The day has come. You're all set up to do an experiment. You've spent days preparing. All of your pipets have been lined up the night before. Tip boxes are full, waiting. Media is warm, gloves are out...and your PI walks by your bench and demands that you attend a seminar with him (or her.)

(Alternate universe: Your PI emails you the week before alerting you of the talk and you're really thankful because you didn't have that much to do that day anyway.)

EITHER WAY--you attend dutifully.

On the way to the seminar (in which you lead the way because Techs Know Everything including all the shortcuts between buildings), your PI reveals to you that the seminar speaker is a moron, has submitted a moronic paper to a moronic high profile journal, in which your PI is in the middle of reviewing. But of course he doesn't want to affect your view (yeah right) but instead wants your thoughts on the talk afterwards. (No pressure!)

Tech-PI relationships are a funny beast. It's a fine line between employer-employee (which it is at face value) and mentor-mentee (which it may evolve into). Each has it's own unique sets of issues. I'm in the lucky situation where my PI knows that this job is just a step in the direction of a career for me. He knows that I'm probably going to be leaving soon to go off to grad school in...something, or try to move up and out into a new position...sometime. When your PI knows that, and better yet, respects that--that's when you can start pushing the boundaries of employer-employee into mentor-mentee territory.

However, a big thing to keep in mind is: Cave Canem...ma.

source

Or, for those not well versed in Latin/English (Lat-glish?), beware of dogma.

I think a lot of scientific disagreements, the higher up you get on the ladder, tend to be fueled by competition and ego more than anything, while the differences are more or less just differences in dogma. But vastly different ways to look at problems are more or less what fuels scientific discoveries. I mean, someone has to be thinking outside of the box. I guess if you're the tech you just hope it's your PI.

It's a funny thing...and I'm having trouble writing it now because I'm trying to say it as delicately as possible, but keeping an open mind is the most important thing you can do in this situation. (Apart from staying awake during the actual seminar. Obviously that is priority numero uno.) At this very very very early stage in my career, the most important thing I can be doing is looking for places to think critically. Both of my PI and of his competitors. It's not always easy, and it's obviously very important to keep in mind who's grant you're being paid off of, but it's also really important to remember that thinking critically about something is not synonymous with criticizing it. And dogma and broad generalizations and effective public speakers get funded, because sometimes making things seem black and white is the best way to make sure your research gets noticed...but that's not I as a tech or a student, or whatever weird limbo position I'm in now as I'm starting to have my own ideas and taking ownership over my own research...that's not necessarily the position I want to be stuck in.

I wonder how other people in my position deal with this kind of thing. Thoughts?