Should I go talk to the school's research director?

[coralfangs]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Although I am a 4th year med student and have met all the requirement to graduate (including a MD thesis), I need some opinion on this matter.

So I have been working on a project on the side and I've never intended to use it for my MD thesis (which I used another publishable project).
Well, the PI wants my data for an upcoming grant submission.
And that's where the problem starts.

I have noticed over the past year that my portion of his project is just .... too wishywashy.
It doesn't lead anywhere and the design of the study is just soooooooo subjective.
Part of my task is to do initial surveys and follow-up surveys for two groups of underserved elderly homebound patients.
And the survey questions that the lab developed are not that specific and can give a lot of different interpretation (Do you need assistance with using the toilet? You mean standing up or down, wiping, using diapers?).
What is worse is that the patients don't even remember or give a damn about the survey question.

For example:
I called up Jane A. Doe (fake name of course) in June, conducted the survey, and I called her up again in Dec for a followup survey (using the same question set).
She responded to all the question.
At the end of the week, I accidentally called Jane A. Doe again with the intention of calling Jane C. Doe. Jane A. Doe gave me different responses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (I think she was just angry at something that day)
I talked to the PI and I started using the responses from the initial survey as a baseline (For example, "Mrs B, according to your last response, you said you feel depressed, 3/10, how do you feel now?"
Guess what, some of the patients would go, "Oh, did I say 3/10? I don't think I have ever felt depressed, maybe it was a bad day, can you change it back to 0/10?!"
Quite WTF
I also noticed that for the study group (not the control group) of patients who received "special services". They would tend to exaggerate or give wrong responses in hopes to receive more special services.....

I mean, this project is just a mess and definitely a dead-end. I don't know why I am still doing it........

Should I talk to the school's research director? I mean... I don't need it to graduate..... I am not getting any publication out of this.......

 

[loveoforganic]

Honestly, it sounds like someone else's problem. If the group writing him the grant thinks his project is worthy of the money or the journal he submits to think its worth publishing, that's their choice. Unless I'm missing something, and he's misrepresenting what the project is to them.