academic matters

Idly browsing the web (as usual), I came across Academic Matters, the open access Canadian magazine. The latest (May 2009) issue is devoted to Ethics in the Academy. Incidentally, this enjoyable article by Sergio Sismondo deals with issue of ghosts in some detail.

Academic authors are well versed in the art of multiplying papers and, also, with complaining about it. However, in the pharmaceutical industry each publication is part of a marketing campaign and has an expected return. The professionalization and commercialization of publishing makes a science out of the multiplication of papers.

guests, ghosts, gofers

Thanks to this paper by Peter R. Mason from Zimbabwe, I got acquainted with an interesting classification of the authorship of (scientific) papers.

Guest authors are those “important” persons who insist that their names appear on the papers of their juniors, even when they have made minimum contribution to the research. Ghost authors are those who make a significant contribution to the writing of a paper, but their names do not appear as an author on the publication. This is often a situation found in clinical trials sponsored by pharmaceutical companies. A “gofer” is a name given to someone who is regarded as very junior and so is sent to “go for” something and bring it back to the more important members of a team.

how many scientists fabricate and falsify research?

Well, this illuminating study by Daniele Fanelli suggests that quite a few (without giving us any exact numbers of course). It all depends on how you formulate your question. For instance,

scientists were less likely to reply affirmatively to questions using the words “fabrication” and “falsification” rather than “alteration” or “modification”. Moreover, three surveys found that scientists admitted more frequently to have “modified” or “altered” research to “improve the outcome” than to have reported results they “knew to be untrue”.

That does not surprise me at all, but it’s good to have something like that published in peer-reviewed journal. Speaking of peers,

The grey area between licit, questionable, and fraudulent practices is fertile ground for the “Mohammed Ali effect”, in which people perceive themselves as more honest than their peers.

The decrease in admission rates observed over the years in self-reports but not in non-self-reports could be explained by a combination of the Mohammed Ali effect and social expectations. The level and quality of research and training in scientific integrity has expanded in the last decades, raising awareness among scientists and the public. However, there is little evidence that researchers trained in recognizing and dealing with scientific misconduct have a lower propensity to commit it. Therefore, these trends might suggest that scientists are no less likely to commit misconduct or to report what they see their colleagues doing, but have become less likely to admit it for themselves.

And now, from the past to the future (misconduct):

There seems to be a large discrepancy between what researchers are willing to do and what they admit in a survey. In a sample of postdoctoral fellows at the University of California San Francisco, USA, only 3.4% said they had modified data in the past, but 17% said they were “willing to select or omit data to improve their results”. Among research trainees in biomedical sciences at the University of California San Diego, 4.9% said they had modified research results in the past, but 81% were “willing to select, omit or fabricate data to win a grant or publish a paper”.

Now, really difficult question. Are San Diego guys more fraudulent than their San Francisco colleagues? Or more honest because thay admit being more dishonest?

we are all Iranians

Sometimes (and quite often) I wonder whether the “international scientific community” can do anything useful at all. Useful and noble. The recent editorial in Nature suggest that it can, actually that it has to.

The international scientific community has been laggard and passive in responding to the current situation <in Iran>. But Iranian scientists say that the solidarity of the international academic and scientific community is needed now more than ever.

Research bodies and universities — and perhaps a few Nobel laureates — need to speak out louder. They should encourage, rather than discourage, collaboration, and replace past discrimination by welcoming Iranian researchers and students.

Iran is not the only country in the region where human rights and democracy are violated; and the West has hypocritically been relatively silent on similar abuses by several of its allies in the Middle East. But in Iran at least, the country’s long traditions of democracy, education and free thinking — suppressed for decades by the regime, and in particular the current hard-line leadership — are now out in the open.

seven deadly sins

Unfortunately, I was not around last year when Carole Goble delivered her lecture “The Seven Deadly Sins of Bioinformatics” at the EBI. So, what are they?

1. Parochialism and Insularity
2. Exceptionalism
3. Autonomy or death!
4. Vanity: Pride and Narcissism
   
5. Monolith Megalomania
   
6. Scientific Method Sloth
   
7. Instant Gratification

I think Carole is a bit harsh on bioinformatics, which, remember, is not even a science. Are these applicable to “Real Science™” though? Absolutely.

studying is not about what’s worth it

This is one of my favourite scenes from My Neighbors the Yamadas.

Noboru: “Dad, do you think all this studying is really worth my time?”
Takashi: “Listen up! Studying is not about what’s worth it. Classes that seem worth it may turn out to be not worth it and therefore not worthwhile. But, sometimes things that are worthless may actually be worthwhile, worthless or not. So, it’s not about whether or not something is worthless or not!”
Matsuko: “What in the world are you talking about?”
Noboru: “That was so not worth it.”

driven by a curiosity about nature

Here’s a portrait of a scientist I like — and envy. From H₂O: A Biography of Water by Philip Ball:

Born in 1731, Henry Cavendish was an eccentric millionaire and a grandson of a duke, a self-financed natural philosopher whose social peculiarities did not prevent him from becoming a distinguished member of the Royal Society in London. He seems to have been driven by a curiosity about nature, which he pursued methodically to the exclusion of any curiosity about his fellow people. Cavendish seemed to care very little for the high esteem in which he came to be held; indeed, he seems to have been positively embarrassed by it.

Can you imagine anyone doing as much as him, without a need to write grants or publish? According to Wikipedia,

At age 18 (in 1749) he entered the University of Cambridge in St Peter’s College, now known as Peterhouse, but left four years later without graduating.

Nice. Probably got bored or something.

science on Earth

About 15 years ago, I read the short sci-fi story entitled Mr. Tompkins and Candide Meet Their Ancestors. (It was written by Horace Drew, not by George Gamow.) I tried to find the full text on the web but without any success.

The arrogance of the human-Neanderthal hybrid was, to the Captain, its most amazing trait, after the sexual luster. Could the two be related? All of these big “science laboratories” were run by aggressive male primates in the same way that a gorilla kept his harem.

Visiting Caltech:

“Excuse me, is this place one of the great scientific labs, where Delbruck, Feynmann and Gell-Mann once worked?”
“Yes,” said the Professor, “but they are all gone now. Today we study astrophysics and cosmology, and string theory, and quantum chromodynamics, and many forms of mathematics.”
“But how do you know such studies are real,” asked the Captain, “if you can only look through a telescope and not go there, or if you do not really understand 4-D spacetime or the underlying structure of matter and energy, which are just two of your words for the same thing?”
“We are sure because we are sure, and certain because we are certain, even if there are no data. All of us agree, or we cut off the funding for the ones who don’t, because it would just be a waste of money if they have other views.” The Professor had written 100 papers in the most respected physics journals, on black holes, superluminal expansion, and cosmic strings, and now he was sure these were real things, and had convinced many others.

Learning about transcription:

He <Professor Dr. H.Q. Rotcaf> looked just like a male gorilla, as the Captain hoped. “Please ask my least-busy secretary to give you copies of my last 100 papers, from Science or Cell. I am a Leader in Transcription. I found many new factors, and factors upon factors. My grants total $10 million dollars a year. I write two papers a week. I lead the citation-indices in my field. I chaired six meetings and gave 22 lectures last year, in March alone. If a few in my group kill one another, that will just be Evolution of the Fittest, to make a stronger group. Now I must go to the airport, unless you are a newspaper reporter.”
Here the Captain had found what he wanted on Earth. What a classic example of the perversions that would result, from applying sexual-dominance principles to even an austere field such as science, which in all probability was the lowest of all Earth primate achievements, when measured against the existing knowledge and technologies on other civilized planets.
“Have you made any important medical advance or invention recently?”, asked Candide.
“I told you I published 123 papers last year in major journals, and led the nation in the Citation Index, and got the highest ratings in my Study Section. What more could you want?” said the great Professor Rotcaf. “Even the Boston transcription workers cannot match that, such as Professor Pool Ledom. I rule my group with an iron hand, when I see them between trips. I review 3 papers a day, and say what can and cannot be published about transcription. Here, look at how well I do that:”

“This paper presents important results, but is just not a Cell paper. I suggest the authors try some specialist journal such as Mol. Cell Biology which is really where they belong.”

“I have results in my lab which disagree with those proposed here, so their results cannot be correct, and I cannot recommend publication.”

“I have results in my lab which already precede those presented here, so they are not novel, and should in no way be published. Regrettably, my secretary mislaid this paper for several months, so the review is late.”

“These authors have never presented their results before in an American journal.”

“There are two kinds of paper from that group: results which have been done by others before and are not novel, and new results which have not yet been reproduced by others. I worry about both of them, and cannot recommend publication.”

you can’t push and write at the same time

In All the Great Writers, Charles Bukowski describes a conversation between a writer, James Burkett, and publisher, Henry Mason.

“look, Burkett, you’re a pusher. as a pusher, you’re great. why don’t you sell mops or insurance or something?”
“what’s wrong with my writing?”
“you can’t push and write at the same time. only Hemingway was able to do that, and then even he forgot how to write.”

(From The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories)

harmless, harmless

A couple of anecdotes from George Feher’s essay “The Development of ENDOR and other Reminiscences of 1950’s” (in Foundations of Modern EPR, pp. 548—556).

On visit of Wolfgang Pauli to Bell Labs in 1957:

The management of Bell Labs was always very proud and a bit self congratulatory on their fame and accomplishments. At the end of the day everybody connected with Pauli’s visit gathered in the conference room and formally said good bye to Pauli who, as usual, was nodding his head with closed eyes. “Professor Pauli, what do you think of our research?” asked the director, fully expecting a pat on the shoulder. The frequency of Pauli’s nods increased and after what seemed an interminably long time, he simply said: “Harmless, harmless”.

About Ernest Lawrence:

He considered labs and offices as sacred places in which strict standards (his) of behavior had to be followed. One day he entered an office and saw a young man with his feet on his desk munching a sandwich. Lawrence discretely closed the door to give the man a chance to shape up. Alas, when he reopened the door, the man had neither changed his position nor his activity. Lawrence became very irate, started shouting, and that’s when we students gathered in the corridor to witness the scene. During all this, the young man calmly continued to munch his sandwich with his feet on the desk. Finally, when Lawrence was close to apoplexy, the department chairman R.T. Birge arrived and quieted Lawrence. Upon which the young man calmly said: “I don’t know who you are, Sir, but I work for the telephone company”.