Mistress of the Animals

From Wikipedia:

The No Religious Test Clause of the United States Constitution is found in Article VI, paragraph 3, and states that:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.^[

Sorry, Ben, you views about Muslims are not constitutional. Perhaps you should re-read the document. Here are a couple of  links to get your own pocket copy.

Frustrating aside: the .gov link to the constitution is broken. The Wikipedia link works.

The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.  — W. H. Auden

Unless of course you are a child demanding another reading of The Paperbag Princess.

Over at Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman Sweetscience put up a post titled “I’ve made a huge mistake” that includes:

Over time, I’ve been exposed more to the side of research I really detest – the cutthroat, competitive, nepotistic, money squandering, high-impact-chasing side of science. Or rather, scientists. I’m pretty sure I could play the game my way and maybe even change some things for the better, but I don’t even want to be a part of a world like that.

This follows on the heels of Jean-François Gariépy’s post on leaving science (my responses here and here), where he talked about the “highly-competitive environment… [with] scientists to be more preoccupied by their own survival in a very competitive research environment than by the development of a true understanding of the world”,  scientists who do pretty much what Sweetscience says above.

I wrote  at length that my world isn’t Gariépy’s world. He was skeptical of my response, but that’s his right and his perspective. I’m not going to try and persuade Sweetscience of anything. Her post is well-reasoned and she, as did Gariépy, is making a hard choice. The quote above comes from her third point, the first 2 (really 4) points are very much about who she is and what she wants. Her post differs from Gariépy’s in that she believes she has made a mistake. I’m not sure it’s her mistake, but I wish her well in moving on.

What strikes me is that I think, no, I know that it is possible to be in a different world. Not all parts of science are cutthroat. There are subdisciplines and labs that not competitive, nepotistic and glamour-chasing. There are mentors who believe in promoting, protecting, and cultivating their mentees. There are mentors who support not just students and postdocs, but junior faculty, not just the glamourous ones, but the solid ones doing good work in the trenches. And, it’s not just one or two, here and there. There is a  reason the journal Cell gets lumped with Science/Nature. But there is lots of biology that is not cell biology, or molecular biology or optogenetics. There are whole fields where people are not pushed the way they are in the “cutting-edge” labs.

I do not deny that the exciting pathological world of glam-chasing exists. Its why I left MRU. It’s why lots of folks I respected left my Old-MRU. But if one doesn’t wish to live in that world, one doesn’t have to. There is some choice in the matter. It’s not always easy, and often it involves compromise. But how does that make it different from any other decision in life?  It’s different only if you believe that that either the world owes you an R01 or that your snowflake-ness will mean you glide through the problems. And, hey, stop looking at that person at the other bench who, to your eyes, had a cakewalk through life. She’s just making different decisions and choices than you.

Sweetscience seems to be making the right choice for her. But for the rest of you out there nodding your head in agreement with the assessment that it’s a totally ugly world out there… there are alternatives, you just have to find them. As my grandmother said “if ya’ lay down wit da’ dawgs, ya’ gonna git up with da fleas”.

Dr Wrasse, a very thoughtful person (and if you’re not following him, you’re missing), tweeted this in the middle of a convo about Ben Carson:

@pottytheron @drisis true. I guess I’m just saying I’m privileged to live my life pretty much the way I want to and I wish others could too

— Dr. Wrasse (@labroides) September 18, 2015

Aside: The convo started with Carson’s view on student debt, the short version of which is (including my reasons for not being able to watch the man talk):

@pottytheron He wants unis to subsidize student loan interest — Dr. Isis (@drisis) September 18, 2015

Lots of other discussion followed this, but Dr. Wrasse stayed with me this morning, as I heard this bit on NPR about a new museum in LA. The Broads who made a fortune, invested a lot in art (and yeah, yeah, lots of it went to the 1% of the art world, not to struggling artists, and their money is dirty, etc etc), but they decided to build a building, put the art in it, and make it free to everyone. Its not my taste in art. But I do understand the impulse. I’m not rich, but I did buy art when I lived in Australia. I’m not buying things for value, but because they speak to me. My dear friends, the farmers who have a more precarious existence than a postdoc, once said to me when I hesitated to spend money on art for very first world reasons: “Potnia, if you buy this painting, you will be supporting a whole family. The artist is an aborigine, and her family has a very different sense of money and worth than you do.”

But I also try to give away money. Here are things you can do:

DonorsChoose.org is long-standing favorite of Scientopia. Pick a classroom that appeals to you. Lots of science to support. I’ve often tried to find more local groups, and given directly to them. There are many groups to support women, TG people, other marginalized types. Remember to check in with Charity Navigator to learn about where your money is going.

For the refugee crisis, one of my Jewish friends pointed me to this group:  HIAS, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. They’ve got a top rating from CN, and are the world’s oldest organization to protect refugees. They are working hard on the Syrian Refugee issue, and here is a list of things you can do to help. Not all of them are giving money.

So, I can hear you saying (because I have): but Potnia, I am a grad student/postdoc/junior faculty who earns nothing. Well, actually you don’t earn “nothing”. You earn less than you would like to earn. I have to pay daycare/commuting/health benefits. Yes, you do. But look at what you earn, and ask yourself, what is 5% of my monthly net income? And how many people in the world live on that? Or less? Are you in grad school or are you in a refugee camp? Do you worry about your thesis or whether your child will be sleeping in the open tonight?

Make what you give a percentage of your income, and if you start now, you will make a difference. On one hand there are lots of rich assholes donors who try to use their money to determine the direction of this country and the world. They give huge amounts of money to idiots who, among other things, don’t believe in science and think Dred Scott is the law of the land. We all spend lots of time bitching and moaning about them. But there are also rich (perhaps not so idiotic) people who collect art and donate it and subsidize a museum so everyone can see something different. The Broads are worth billions (plural) and perhaps they will do other things with their money. Perhaps not. But you cannot base your life on what other people do or do not do. You can chose right now to be better than you have been. To acknowledge that if you are doing science, you are in a privileged position. Not every, and probably not most, Malala’s get to have an education, get to make the choice to be a scientist.

Dr. Wrasse knows this. Now, you do too.

Can I haz sum data, pleeze?

When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice.  —  Otto von Bismarck

and as a small side thought from Herr Bismarck:

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

This morning I mused that:

moving to almost-MRU was a lot harder than I thought it would be. I’m trying to give myself credit for a hard job, done reasonably well.

—  (@pottytheron) September 15, 2015

I am not sure what prompted the musing, but muse it did. I’ve been at almost-MRU for a while, but maybe its the start of the new teaching year.

I moved as a full professor (yes, I’m old). I took my R01 with me, but no trainees (I offered, they didn’t want to move).  Almost-MRU wanted me to come, they gave me what I needed to get going here. I have superlative colleagues, one of the main reasons for moving.

But there a bunch of signs that it wasn’t the cakewalk I thought it was going to be. Or even now, looking back, as easy as I felt it was whilst in process. Signs? I’ve gained a bunch of weight. Various parts of my aging body hurt. From time to time I indulge my abstemious  side – either no caffeine or no alcohol for a couple of weeks, it’s hard for about 36 hours and then its okay. Except, now its not. You don’t have to approve or even understand, what’s important here is the delta.

I’ve done this before, but I thought this time I was old enough, senior enough, wise enough that it wouldn’t be a problem. Oh there would be the inevitable little problems, but it would be easy for me. Maybe it is only now, comfortable in where I am and what I’m doing that I can look at that view and say: bullshit. Moving is fucking hard. With or without family. Making friends, real friends, is hard. With or without the time to invest in other people. Setting up a lab, with or without a tech, with or without knowledge of the equipment, is fucking hard.

So, I’m here and Things Are Good. What’s the problem? Well, I am in danger of slipping back into “that was easy” and not giving myself credit. Because I am doing well here. I am happy here. I have made friends, some very very good friends (and some of you are reading this, and you may not even know how much I love you), found a new almost-maybe-partner, have my lab up and running well. Oh, and have a gorgeous apartment filled with the challenging artwork that says home to me.

I need to say to myself: Potnia, you have worked your fucking ass off, and dammit, you’ve done a good job. And that, dear readers, is a hard thing to do.

It’s not quite imposter syndrome. It’s being able look dispassionately at your accomplishments and sort out what is good and what is not. The poles, the extremes are tempting. One can’t be a snowflake and think all one’s works are gifts of genius. But one also can’t look at accomplishments and think that if it is good, it must have been easy.  To acknowledge what was hard to do (jumping off the edge of the earth, leaving a top MRU for the almost-variety) and not only say “yup, did it” but “yup, did it and it was fucking hard” is tough, but in the end, satisfying.

“When someone reaches middle age, people he knows begin to get put in charge of things, and knowing what he knows about the people who are being put in charge of things scares the hell out of him.”  — Calvin Trillin

I must say that I very much appreciate Jean-François Gariépy’s politeness in disagreeing with me. Props to you, Jean-Francois. Further, he posted a long response, so I wanted to put it in a post, so I could address specific points in his response. As always, I welcome his further responses, as well as other people’s comments. I’ve put the whole thing here, again, so that I am not cherry-picking his words.

Hi Potty,

I do not know what to think about your post, on the one hand it seems like you are confirming most of my complaints, but on the other hand you seem to not want to admit it. First, thank you for recognizing the possibility that all of what I say is true (sic).

I agree that being interested in one’s survival is not a defect in and of itself.

Not so much my point as that everyone is interested in survival. And that the big wide world is full of jackasses. Leaving academic research is no guarantee that you won’t end up facing the same mindset in other areas. In fact, I suspect you will.  You were giving reasons for leaving; I am saying that you won’t get beyond this by leaving.

In the process of doing good law defenses, a lawyer may be interested in his own survival. In the process of saving a life, a doctor may be interested in his own economic well-being. The problem would come when this desire to survive impedes on the expected mission of the professional, and the point of my post is not so much that caring for one’s survival is a problem in and of itself, but that it has now impeded upon our search for truth in many ways, including fraudulent data (and one only needs to look at the numbers to show this, my own perception and experience is barely relevant in face of the statistics on scientific misconduct).

More on fraudulent a little bit further down, but you mention statistics vs. perception. This is important. I don’t think the statistics I’ve seen (retraction watch, etc) suggest that fraud is that prevelant.

Concerning #2, your argument seems to be that it’s “the state of the world.” This does not make it immune to critique. You also write that it causes anxiety and stress, so somehow you agree with me that it can be a problem (although stress and anxiety was not my focus, I was mostly worried about the amount of time lost on written products that are not part of the contribution of a researcher to society).

Yes, its  a problem. But its a problem for just about every and any professional. Again, this was one of your reasons for leaving. Again, I do not think that leaving will get you away from this problem. And, none of my non-academic friends feel that they spend less time on this than do the academic ones.

I do not claim that #1 and #3 are universal truths, but they are common enough that my little Facebook post has gathered an unprecedented (unprecedented for my Facebook) wave of support and comments indicating that many others have experienced these problems.

I am glad you are getting support. We live in a hard world, with little support for lots of things. BUT… you’re getting lots of support and other people seeing the similar issues  is not at all the same as it being widespread. In the end science is not about who gets to vote, but about what is true.

Your comments on fraudulent data, with all respect, made me genuinely laugh:

Always glad to provide amusement and entertainment.

“I have seen almost nothing in my field that makes me think fraud.”

Of course no one ever sees anything about fraud, but there is a lot of self-deception in a lot of fields. The main question here is, when you are a reviewer, are you viewing and requesting the entirety of the data set in a format that could not have possibly be altered or not? If not, then the fact that you have not seen anything is expected and irrelevant.

But you’re claiming that you’ve seen lots of fraud? Why is your experience more valid than mine? I’m not arguing from age (though I have been in the game for longer than you), but from being a person who reviews, with their eyes open. I’ve seen enough folks go to toe to toe over variation in results, and done enough confirmation/replication to perceive the world differently from you. No, I don’t think that there is widespread, frequent and pervasive fraud. Its hard to prove a negative, but when things can be replicated or subsequent results confirm the earlier… then yes, I think that there is honest reporting of results.

But… an important part of my point is that I know one corner of the world. I am not in the sexy, headline-making, BSD-multi-grant world. Maybe in that world the pressure is such that everyone cheats. Maybe your experiences are a statement about that corner of the science-sphere. But you can’t possibly know enough of the entire scientific world to make sweeping statements about fraud everywhere.

The other problems of misconduct you point out may not be fraud, but they have the same effect in the end: they bring false data and put them under the limelight. I don’t really care if fraud is intentional or if it operates through sub-conscious self-deception, the problem from outside is pretty much the same; perhaps with slightly different solutions.

Again, I disagree. My experience is different. I think attempts at replication would answer some of this, but one thing is true of the BSD/Glam world: there is no time for replication. And again, in my world this does happen, and it does get published. Thinking about this is important. Working on it is important. But your larger statements just don’t hold water with my part of the world.

I am sorry to hear that you were insulted by the chicken without a head comment.

Apology accepted.

In my comment is intended as “if the hat fits, put it on.” Of course I haven’t said that the entire library of research ever performed in the history of mankind is useless. I commented simply on an attitude that I perceive, in some individuals I interact with, which leads to my intellectual dissatisfaction. I certainly do not include my PI in this comment, to the contrary, I have the greatest respect for him and I would include him among the exceptions.

Your caveats here are important. Your perceptions. Your interactions. They are entirely valid. But I read in your post  much more sweeping generalizations. How big was the lab you were in? How much did you interact with your PI? Is it interesting that the mentor you know the best is excluded? What if you knew others better? Your post implied nearly all. I don’t think you know nearly all.

One of the things  I remember from when I was a grad  student was we all (and it was a fairly large program) thought: all the grad students are by and large good, or at least OK people; about half of the postdocs were, there were 2-3 junior faculty that wouldn’t stab you in the back and all the senior faculty, with one exception were political animals who would gladly eat students for lunch if offered the opportunity. True from my perspective then? Yes. In retrospect, perhaps not. None of us is in a fixed perspective in our observations of the world. Its very tough to take that step back and try to see how who we are influences what we perceive.

I get to multiple of the most important (in size and in specialty) meetings in my field, and in fact in a broad array of fields. I pride myself with reading every single title of every single poster at any scientific meeting I attend,

You say you are a neuroscientist. I’ve gone to SfN  a couple of times (my work is on the boundary btwn neuro & physio), but I don’t think you came up to me or read my poster ( I would have remembered). Do you really read every poster at SfN? I do know folks who try to “read every poster”, but one can’t, one simply can’t attend every talk and see every poster. One has to pick and choose and how that picking and choosing is done is part of the problem.

I have read tens of thousands, and I have stopped to discuss with the researcher at hundreds of them throughout the years. I’ve been doing so for about 9 years. I am acutely aware of the research that is undergoing in pretty much every area of neuroscience.

Really, really, really? What about evolution of CPGs in mammals? What about motor leaning in cerebellar recovery from pediatric TBI? Those are not my areas, but because I have history or friends in them, I follow them. But I am always amazed at what I don’t know about addiction research, neuropeptides in birds and all sorts of other things. What about the physiology of digestion? Or developmental control of growth in spiders?

I do not think I need to be sold on the wideness of the world.

Maybe not sold on, but if you think cheating/falsification is widespread and rampant, maybe you need to dig into those fields where its not. My experience is that glam sub-fields, the stuff that is Hot! Right! Now! gets a lot of attention, and has a much higher level of pressure than other fields. People who have no desire to or expectation of publishing in Science/Nature/Cell (again, IME) have a much different training experience than those who do.

It is totally valid to say “I am quitting this field because of my experiences in this field”. What I object to is the sweeping generalizations about Science and  Biomedical Research and Knowledge. Come work in my lab for a while. I can certainly show you something different.

Jean-François Gariépy has written a facebook post about leaving his research position at Duke University. The main reason, he says, is that he is going to be a father, and wishes to devote more time to his child. I do wish Dr. Gariepy well. He has made a choice that is hard to make, and seems to be doing so with clear eyes.

He has a set of secondary reasons:

Other reasons have to do with research academia itself. … I found scientists to be more preoccupied by their own survival in a very competitive research environment than by the development of a true understanding of the world.

and

By creating a highly-competitive environment that relies on the selection of researchers based on their “scientific productivity,” as it is referred to, we have populated the scientific community with what I like to call “chickens with no head,” that is, researchers who can produce multiple scientific articles per year, none of which having any significant impact on our understanding of the world.

Some of the problems he cites are:

[1] a high number of scientific articles with fraudulent data, due to the pressures of the “publish or perish” system, makes it impossible to know if a recent discovery is true or not; [2] a large portion of the time of a scientist is spent just writing grants so that they can be submitted to 5-10 agencies in the hope that one of them will accept; and [3] our scientific publication system has become so corrupted that it is almost impossible to get a scientific article published in an important journal without talking one-on-one with the editor before submitting the article.

These are long excerpts, but I wanted to make sure I was not inadvertently slanting his words.

I do not doubt that all of this is true, or seems true, to him. But this is not everyone’s experience, although the discouragement is too frequent amongst human beings of all stripes and professions.

Everyone is preoccupied with their survival. Sorry, is this is any different from trying to be an ethical, honorable lawyer or a doctor (yes, they do exist)? Or being a part-time single-parent worker in the service industry with three children in danger of being laid off? The world of scientific research is competitive, but most of the western world is, too.

The list of three problems is certainly a function of the lab one chooses. That #2 plagues nearly everyone in my current and past departments, tenured and untenured, is the state of the world. But not everyone feels this way. I have a friend, untenured, but near. She just got a 5 year r01. She has a grad student, a postdoc and a good collaborator. She is not chasing funding now. In 3.5 years, will she be back in the same position? Probably, but for now she can do her research and work at what she loves. People do get funded. Some people do not run big labs and one grant is enough to make their operation go. I do not deny that its hard. I do not deny that it provokes anxiety and unhappiness and stress. But my friends who are in business for themselves, as graphic designers or pub owners, look at this day in and day out.  They still have to put food on the table for their kids, but say its the price for independence.

#1 (fraudulent research)  and #3 (needing to know the editor) are not universal truths. In fact, I have seen almost nothing in my field that makes me think fraud. I do not think that I am naive. I review (although I try to avoid it) for the major journals in my subdiscipline. I’ve had a number of collaborators over the years. There is a lot of schlock that gets published. I know who rushes to get something off, and hasn’t quite done the right analyses, or pushes the results further than they warrant. Or doesn’t bother to find the right context (ie my work) for their results. But its not fraud. As for knowing the editor, I publish regularly, and the only editor I know is an old friend in another field in a journal quite distant. Perhaps the difference is that I don’t publish in SNC.

Which brings us to the chicken without a head syndrome. Don’t insult me that way. Your PI may be chicken-heading it, but that’s not the world I live in, nor many of my colleagues. I know people doing clinical work that may not be as flash as gene-therapy, but it is making a difference for how people with a stroke learn to use their hands again.  I know ecologists who are understanding the interactions among bacteria and health in mammals living in the field. It may be bunny-hopping, but understanding how rabbit locomotor skills, not just speed, but agility, relate to survival across a boreal winter is adding something important to our knowledge. How fucking dare you say that this work being done’t doesn’t add to knowledge.

Do you only read the science in your field? Do you only see the posters/talks at meetings that are in your corner of the field? If you are a neuroscientist, go to ExBio or SICB or Ecology/Evolution meetings. Yeah, they are expensive, but get a bit of your work, and think of its bigger implications and submit it elsewhere. Go talk to someone else. The world is wide, minnow, and there are oceans you haven’t swum in yet.