Science: It’s Really, Really Hard, And That’s Something To Celebrate

by Adam Frank

Enlarge Mike Powell/Getty Images

The climb may be difficult, but the view is worth it once you scale the heights of Mt. Science.

The climb may be difficult, but the view is worth it once you scale the heights of Mt. Science.

It was my high school physics class and I must have been 17, all gangly and goofy, with an embarrassingly ratty "trash stache" (though I recall thinking my black Springsteen concert T-shirt elevated me into the stratosphere of cool). We were doing an experiment designed to measure the wavelength of visible light. At the time I still didn’t get math. It always seemed really, really hard. I was never sure why, or what, I was doing with the calculations. On that day something shifted. All of a sudden I understood why math and science needed to be hard.

As the class wore on we took our readings and transcribed them into lab books. Then came the analysis section. First we had to climb a steep hill of trigonometry. Then came a long slog through the muddy ruts of algebra. I kept screwing the calculations up, losing my way. But then, with a bright burst of clarity, the math spoke loud and clear. It gave me the answer.

The blue light we were probing had a wavelength of 470 billionths of a meter.

I was stunned. For a moment the world stopped spinning. For a moment I forgot about that girl at the next lab table I’d been hot for since 9th grade. For a moment, I forgot everything but the fact that somehow, in spite of its difficulty, the strange language of math and physics had just given me entry into a world so small that a mere moment before I couldn’t not even imagine its dimensions. Now we were intimate enough for me to trace its contours across pages of exhausting calculations.

That day I saw that climbing Mt. Science would always be hard but that the view from the peak was life changing. Now, years later, I see that while my experience is pretty common somehow we have lost that key connection when teaching science to the next generation.

Much as the nation desperately needs young scientists, we are, it seems, losing some of our best and brightest to other fields. As Christopher Drew of The New York Times reported last year, 40 percent of the students beginning with majors in a STEM field (science, technology, engineering and math) will change to a non-STEM discipline. If you include pre-meds the number jumps to 60 percent. That’s more than two-times higher than the attrition rate for other fields.

Studies show the reasons for such attrition can be complex. It is clear, however, the sheer fact that "science is hard" plays an important role. Grades tend to be lower in science and math classes compared with other courses on campus. Research shows that STEM students get "pulled away" by better grades received in courses they take in other fields, as well as getting "pushed out" by lower grades in their majors.

In addition, the way science is taught in college tends to produces what David E. Goldberg, an emeritus engineering professor, calls "the math-science death march." New students must struggle through a first-year avalanche of calculus, physics and chemistry courses in giant lectures that feel more like concert halls than classrooms. This ancient model is almost guaranteed to lose all but the most motivated students.

Over the last decade universities have begun to understand the urgency of re-creating the science curriculum. Workshop models rather than lecture-only classes are one innovation where collaborative learning is done peer-to-peer. Project-based classes where students learn by making something, or carrying out their own research, also engage students in a way that lectures alone rarely do.

None of these reforms however can, or should, change a simple fact about science. It is hard. It’s really, really hard. That is not something we should attempt to paper over. It’s something we should celebrate.

How remarkable is it that we have found a method that allows us to speak directly with the world? In form and content, science is designed to take us past bias, prejudice and preconception to see at least some aspects of the True and the Real.

Given that promise, of course science is hard! What else would anyone expect?

I never let my students forget that pairing of difficulty with results, because I never forget it. I let them know they are engaged in a sacred task that connects them to millennia of human effort encoded in their genes. If they can fight their way to the truth, the truth will make them free, just as it did for me that day in high school physics.

What is true for science is also true for the other great human endeavors.

To engage with the world in search of any kind of Truth is an expression of the search for excellence. That, by its very nature, is desperately difficult. There will always be a price to be paid in time, sweat and tears. We should never sugarcoat that reality.

We want to teach students more than just how to get jobs, we also want to teach them how to live with depth and for purposes that stretch beyond their own immediate interests. We should never forget that connection. If we do, we are in danger of losing more than just the next generation of science majors.

Tags: education

Source: http://aidpittsburgh.wordpress.com/2012/02/18/inside-story-the-epic-route/

How science works?

I came across a student online who was wondering: What do scientists do? What is being a scientist like?

In pondering possible responses I started to think about what science and research is actually like, versus what it is portrayed as in popular culture. I actually find myself thinking about this topic quite a bit. I realize I am a scientist, but even when I am just trying to enjoy some TV shows or movies and I see a scene that involves a bit of science or technology needed to figure something out, my brain chimes in” “There’s no way that would work the first time, you’d have to go through all sorts of calibrations, find a standard sample… and then they would realize that they are using the wrong type of detector so they’d have to go build a new one… but first they’d have to figure out how to build a new one so that would take time… and in the end this whole research segment that takes about 30 seconds on the show should take about 10 weeks in real life”

Anyways, here’s my handy flowchart of the perception of science in popular culture versus actual science:

How science works?

Source: http://electroncafe.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/scientific-process-rage/

So you have a paper, eh?

How many publications do you have?

 

source: http://harmoniaphilosophica.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/peer-review-cartoon2.jpg

Science and You: A Marriage Made in Heaven?

For over a decade I have been head-over-heels in love with science, and it seemed the feeling was shared. But, as in many long-term relationships, things have gone a little stale. Although my affair with scientific research is yet to reach the crockery-hurling stage, we?re now to the point of terse grunts and painful silences. So what?s a girl to do in these circumstances? My self-help book Labcoats Are From Mars, Pipettes Are From Venus suggested compiling all the good and bad things about science as a way to objectively assess the situation. This seemed like a protocol even I could manage, so here goes.

Pro: The Clothes

Expensive power suits? Toe-crushing high heels? No way. For scientists, jeans and T-shirts are de rigueur. We may look somewhat scruffy, but our working wardrobe is blissfully affordable and incredibly comfortable. Slobbing about in sweaty sports kit after a lunchtime run is also perfectly acceptable. And the best thing about ?lab fashion? is that when I actually put on a nice frock and some greasepaint to go out, the transformation is quite startling.

Con: The Clothes

Sometimes, a girl can tire of modelling freebie biotech T-shirts and yearn for a more stylish look, even in a lab. It seems that only French scientists are allowed to be chic–a feat they achieve without apparently trying at all. You can guarantee that the day I wear my trendiest shirt is the day I spill silver staining solution down my front. And eyeliner is a no-no on days spent looking down a microscope, unless you consider the panda look to be the height of sophistication.

Pro: The Hours

We scientists have no concept of the 9-to-5 working day. We arrive at a time that is convenient for us, and we leave when our experiments are finished. Or when we?re fed up. Likewise, a scientist?s time is full of many useful gaps during experiments which are perfect for pub lunches (for discussing results, of course), Web-surfing (for scientific papers, naturally), and endless cups of coffee (for fuel).

Con: The Hours

I have lost count of the number of times the clock has crept close to midnight and I’ve cursed my poor time-management skills and overloaded to-do list. It doesn?t help that experiments do not adhere to the usual laws of space and time–it is a fact that everything always takes longer than you expect, especially if you?re in a hurry. Having a social life dictated by the whims of sluggish cells and misbehaving experiments can rapidly become very annoying. Unless, of course, you have no social life.

Pro: The People

I have been lucky enough to work in labs stocked with some of the nicest people on the planet. Contrary to popular belief, scientists are normal, warm, and funny human beings who bring in cakes just because it?s Thursday and agree to mind your experiments over the weekend.

Con: The People

As well as a cast of angels, I have also met characters who wouldn?t go amiss in a ?Colleagues from Hell? documentary. They know who they are, the sinners who finish up reagents or break equipment without confessing, and the paranoid types who are so worried about contamination they won?t even allow you to breathe in their presence. I also suspect that my rampant disorganisation, untidiness, and clumsiness doesn?t endear me to all of my colleagues. And although it seems churlish to complain, all that cake is playing havoc with my waistline.

Pro: The Bench Work

Sometimes, experiments can be really fun. Making gels and mixing coloured solutions are all activities with a definite Playskool feeling. Scientists get to play with great bits of kit like confocal microscopes and even get to take a peek right into the heart of nature. Trying new protocols can also be interesting and even exciting.

Con: The Bench Work

The feeling wears off when that protocol fails for the fourteenth time, though–at which point I am truly exasperated and ask others in the lab for help. ?You remembered to sacrifice a small goat in between steps 5 and 6, didn?t you?? and ?You can?t seriously expect it to work when Saturn is on the cusp of Scorpio!? are the least arcane suggestions they can offer. Lucky pipettes and secret rituals abound within the world of allegedly rational science, and I am learning to accept that sometimes experiments just don?t work. But I?ll keep on leaving offerings on the altar of the God of Science, just in case.

Pro: The Conferences

There?s something tremendously inspiring about spending entire days listening to people talking about their latest research with enthusiasm. I always get my best science ideas during conferences and love socialising with fellow attendees, swapping ideas, and setting up collaborations. I?m sure that getting free trips to beautiful cities, staying in posh hotels, and skiing on fresh powder also greatly enhance the scientific quality of these events. …

Con: The Seminars

Maybe I?m just too conscientious, but I?ve also wasted many hours of my life, hours that could have been better spent in the lab, or even the pub, listening to dull talks. Where I work it is sometimes possible to go to several seminars a day, and it could easily be misinterpreted as excellent opportunities for work avoidance or quick naps. Actually, perhaps this should be a ?pro??

Pro: The Beauty

During my undistinguished research career I have been privileged enough to work with mouse embryos. These tiny balls of cells are heart-stoppingly beautiful and an endless source of wonder and curiosity for me. I wouldn?t miss the test tubes and tissue culture plates, but a future without these miniature miracles would definitely look bleak.

Con: The Cruelty

Unfortunately, looking at mouse cells down a microscope means using mice that are alive and kicking to start with. Although I am satisfied that we adhere to the strictest Home Office guidelines and do our utmost to ?replace, reduce, and refine? our use of the little squeakers according to the law, sending them to the great Mousehole in the Sky on a regular basis is rather depressing.

Like any partner, science has its good and bad points. Unlike men, science doesn?t blow its nose on yesterday?s socks or leave the toilet seat up, but those quirky characteristics of lab life that were initially endearing can become grating and intolerable as time goes on. I suspect that my own relationship with academic science may be on the verge of a breakdown … so watch this space for further instalments in my quest for career fulfilment.

Kat Arney is currently seeking marriage guidance….

 

source: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2004_05_07/noDOI.17318387013014725308

Experimental Error: The Gray Pride Parade

Remember the good old post-Sputnik days, when we were losing the space race and the world approached nuclear annihilation? If you spent those days earning your Ph.D., congratulations, you’re probably a tenured professor.

The middle of the past century offered an abundance of tenure-track science jobs for eager, young up-and-comers. Not nearly as many tenure-track positions are available now. Why? Where did all the science jobs go?

“To China!” cry the people who blame China for everything. Or, “To India!” Or, “To robots!” Or sometimes, “To Chinese-Indian robots!” (Curse you, Mahatma Chang 3000!)

But the fact is, the jobs haven’t gone anywhere. They’ve stayed. They’ve stagnated as those who hold the jobs have squatted in spacious offices surrounded by yellowing stacks of journals, dusty lab equipment, and grad students they never see. If you want to blame somebody for the dearth of science employment, blame the very people who are responsible for making American science great. Because the scientists who took faculty jobs during the Sputnik era still have them — and they’re not giving them up.

These days, science departments often resemble convents, minus the architecture and the abundance of women. A 2009 study revealed that there are more nuns in the United States over age 90 than under age 60. Sound familiar?

(The comparison breaks down, of course, because, unlike professors, nuns typically do not need to compete for spots in their workplace. Granted, a few nuns are rejected from the sisterhood because of too much dancing on Austrian hilltops. But since the number of nun-related jobs is nearly limitless, there’s no real nun tenure review. i )

Walk through the corridors of many scientific institutions in 2011 and you’ll see the results of decisions made by the hiring committee of 1962, a veritable nation of elderly professors. A tenure-topia, if you will. The Emeritus Emirates. The Gray Pride Parade.

Like vacancies on the Supreme Court (which, like convents and science departments, also requires its employees to wear heavy black robes and pontificate near benches, often in Latin), tenure-track positions in academic departments crop up only when an existing professor finally decides to retire or dies or is caught doing something inappropriate, such as tweeting a lewd photo of his, uh, “assistant professor.” And this is why, for newly minted Ph.D.’s whose souls haven’t yet been crushed by a 6-year postdoctoral fellowship, vacancies are as scarce as tenured professors’ real teeth.

I say it’s time to chase the hangers-on into retirement. Not the hard workers who happen to be old, but the old people who don’t work hard. These professors thrive in departments that, much like their excretory systems, are hopelessly clogged. Even if their publication records are limited to angry letters to the editors of alumni magazines, even if they complain about their heavy teaching loads of zero classes per semester, even if they take multidecade “sabbaticals,” tenure ensures that they’ll keep their jobs as long as they want them. So let’s make them not want them.

Here’s how to drive them out:

• Hold seminars at an ungodly late hour — say, 4:00 or 5:00 p.m.

• Require the use of technology. Any technology. Calculators count as technology. Ballpoint pens count as technology.

• Turn the laboratory thermostat down to 27˚C.

• Place reagents on high shelves.

• Near the entrance to your building, post a sign reading, “YOUR PANTS MUST BE THIS LOW TO ENTER.”

• When they tell you the same story for the 50th time, respond with a story they won’t understand and will find sadly trivial:

Elderly professor: Did I ever tell you about the time I saved the Austro-Hungarian Empire from the Huns?

You: Yes. Did I ever tell you about the time I tweeted about The Bachelorette and called Bentley a n00b?

• Distract them from their research for days on end by saying, “Tell me again why your grandson isn’t married.”

• Cialis in the coffee = interesting faculty meetings. (But tell your doctor if your meeting lasts more than 4 hours.)

• Show them the quad outside the building, point at the undergrads, and say, “Look at all those kids playing Frisbee on your lawn.”

• Serve hard candy.

* * *

There are two main hazards of writing a humor column. The first is that someone will read the column, not know it’s meant as satire (despite the accompanying photo of me drinking foamy green stuff from a beaker through a Krazy Straw), and reply in the comments section of some blog with a quantity of vitriol inversely proportional to grammatical accuracy. “OMG, this guy’s crazzy!!!!” they’ll write, believing their comments have sufficiently warned the world of my crazziness.

CREDIT: Hal Mayforth

Click here to enlarge image

The second hazard is that as soon as one has selected a topic at which to poke fun, something distinctly unfunny happens. While preparing this modest proposal for ousting the Old Guard, I learned that one of my graduate school professors passed away. This was a man who still held his title in the department at age 90.

But he didn’t just occupy an office and collect paychecks. He worked in the lab, hands-on, until the end. He served on thesis committees and attended every department seminar (driving fear into the hearts of young visiting speakers when he’d announce, “I have three questions and two comments”).

When I’m 90, I want to be him. I want science to fascinate me at that advanced age as much as it does now. I want to come to the lab, put on gloves, and get to work figuring things out. I want to be the scientist about whom people say, “Oh, that guy? He’s been here forever. Still comes in to work every day. Oh yeah, and he’s won seven Nobel Prizes. Also helped avert the Chinese-Indian Robot Apocalypse of 2061.”

True, I’ll be holding on to a job that could otherwise go to some 30-year-old upstart whippersnapper, but nuts to him. His time will come. Until it does, I’ll be in the lab every day, running the centrifuge at very low speeds, always with the left blinker on.

_________________

i If there were, it would look like this:

Tenured nun: Describe to me the Copernican theory of heliocentrism.

Assistant nun: It’s false.

Tenured nun: Congratulations.

Adam Ruben, Ph.D., is a practicing scientist and the author of Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School.

10.1126/science.caredit.a1100071

Lost in publication: how measurement harms science

Peter A. Lawrence*

Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge CB2 3EJ, UK, and MRC Laboratory
of Molecular Biology, Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 0QH, UK

ABSTRACT: Measurement of scientific productivity is difficult. The measures used (impact factor of the journal, citations to the paper being measured) are crude. But these measures are now so universally adopted that they determine most things that matter: tenure or unemployment, a postdoctoral grant or none, success or failure. As a result, scientists have been forced to downgrade their primary aim from making discoveries to publishing as many papers as possible — and trying to work them into high impact factor journals. Consequently, scientific behaviour has become distorted and the utility, quality and objectivity of articles has deteriorated. Changes to the way scientists are assessed are urgently needed, and I suggest some here.

KEY WORDS: Impact factors · Citations · h-index · Measurement · Scientific careers

Resale or republication not permitted without written consent of the publisher

‘Are all thy conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils, Shrunk to this little measure’
William Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, Act III, scene I

‘What category? Minor writer? … Significant minority writer? Major minor writer? … never minor major writer? What did he say to you?’
Brian Friel, 1997: Give Me Your Answer, Do! (p. 48)

‘Every now and then I receive visits from earnest men and women armed with questionnaires and tape recorders who want to find out what made the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge so remarkably creative. They come from the social sciences to…seek their Holy Grail in interdisciplinary organisation. I feel tempted to draw their attention to 15th-century Florence with a population of less that 50,000, from which emerged Leonardo, Michelangelo, Ghiberti…and other great artists. Had my questioners investigated whether the rulers of Florence had created an interdisciplinary organisation of sculptors, architects, and poets to bring to life this flowering of great art?…My questions are not as absurd as they seem, because creativity in science, as in the arts, cannot be organised. It arises spontaneously from individual talent. Well-run laboratories can foster it, but hierarchical organisation, inflexible, bureaucratic rules, and mounds of futile paperwork can kill it. Discoveries cannot be planned; they pop up, like Puck, in unexpected places.’
Max Perutz: Preface to I Wish I’d Made You Angry Earlier: Essays on Science, Scientists, and Humanity

No matter what measures are devised to assess people, no matter how inadequate they are, it is human nature to try to meet them and to aim to excel. It should, therefore, be no surprise that attempts to quantify the quality of scientific publications have produced many behavioural and political changes in the world of science.

It has always been crucial for research scientists to publish their work. There have always been 3 purposes: first, to disseminate new information so that others can learn from it; second, so that other scientists may repeat the studies, or build on them with additional observations or experiments; and only third, so that the support, financial or otherwise, for the scientist
can be justified to interested parties. This third reason used to be subsidiary, but no longer; publication has become the main goal because it is the scientist’s life-line (Lawrence 2003). This enormous change in emphasis has damaged the practice of science, has transformed the motivation of researchers, changed the way results are presented and reduced the accuracy and accessibility of the scientific literature.

Let me explain: if you need to publish because you need a meal ticket, you must publish when you are hungry, not when the work is completed or when it is comprehensible or valuable. This explains, for example, why many PhD projects are published in an unsatisfactory way before the end of the PhD training: if the student is to stay in science after their degree is
awarded they will need a grant and most grant applications require publications. These publications take time to prepare and to be accepted by journals, and this has to be added to the delay from the initial grant application to when the money comes in — meaning that many students must start preparing papers so soon that they can hardly know what they are doing! Post-docs must publish in order to get a job, and senior scientists must steadily add to their list of papers in order to renew grants or get tenure. Time and again work is submitted prematurely to journals, or projects are urgently cobbled together, or specially constructed to ‘make papers’ before deadlines. Skilled career scientists are learning how to package up their work in parcels of the right size so that they can be fed first to the journals and then into the maws of the granting agencies.

Then there is the question of which journal to send the work to. Since scientists are now assessed, not so much by the validity, interest or quality of the work itself, but by the impact factor of the journal (Steele et al. 2006), many, if not most scientists, spend too much time and effort thinking and worrying about publication strategy. What should one do if the paper is
rejected by the journal of first choice? Is it worth having another go at the editor in the hope of changing their decision, or would it be more prudent to try another journal immediately? If another journal, then should one just send the paper off again unchanged, or should one try to put the results into a different kind of fancy dress? Maybe some other finding can be brought
into the paper to give it a more up-to-date buzz. Perhaps the paper needs a link to something trendy published recently, a ‘hook’ as journalists call it, or a connection to a current controversy: scientists have learnt that editors also have to maintain the impact factor of their journals, and controversies can generate citations. There are so many ploys that can be tried, but they all take time and if they fail, as they often do, months are wasted and priority can be lost.

These stratagems are aimed first at editors, as it is she or he who will be deciding whether the paper should be reviewed. However, once past that hurdle, the next obstacle is the review process, and reviewers present different dangers for the skilled paper writer. One must tread very carefully here. One must make sure to quote all the ‘leaders’ of the field. It may well be
safer to play down any results that do not fit with the perceptions of likely reviewers and may be unwise to confront contrasting results openly. The normal strategy nowadays is to ignore or hide conflicts, for bringing them into the open may be risky, as perhaps one of the reviewers may have some stake in these results (or even be responsible for them) and might be irritated.
This is especially pertinent with the high impact factor journals, as editors of these journals regularly insist that the paper be praised ‘enthusiastically’ by every one of the reviewers and, in consequence, one equivocal review can sink the paper. However, all of these stratagems have their downside, as they usually reduce the objectivity and clarity of the arguments. Politics enervates science.

In my opinion, the growing use of the h-index (Hirsch 2005) — which, based on numbers of citations, tries to quantify both the productivity and impact of a scientist — will lead to a dependence on, and an obsession with, citations. I predict that ‘citation-fishing and citation-bartering’ will become common practice (Lawrence 2007). Note that most journals are now limiting the number of references, either directly or by restricting the number of words in articles and including references in that count. Authors are thus encouraged to make inadequate or inappropriate citations. For example, it takes fewer words to refer to a single review than to several original papers that report a finding, and, since there is usually a choice of several different relevant reviews, the selection of which review to cite can easily become more political than scientific. However unjust citations may be, scientists will evaluate their own work by the citations they receive and this will lead to dubious practices. For example, scientists will claim superiority over others if they have more citations, and this will be endorsed by bean
counters everywhere. As a consequence, those practising in small fields (where papers tend to be cited less) will be discouraged.

David Colquhoun’s case study of Imperial College, London, analysed the consequences of embracing these measures (Colquhoun: www.dcscience.net). In that apparently benighted college each scientist is expected to produce at least 3 papers per year in which at least 1 should be in a journal with an impact factor above 5. Colquhoun persuasively argues that these
requirements make no sense, pointing out, for example, that if the current measures had been applied in the past, some of their very best scientists, including Nobel Laureates, would have failed from time to time in their careers.

There are consequences of the use of numerical measures: given that meeting them rewards aggressive, acquisitive and exploitative behavior, their use will select for scientists with these characteristics. I have argued elsewhere that creative discovery is not helped by measures that select for tough fighters and against more reflective modest people (Lawrence 2006).
For example, Ed Lewis, winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and throughout his life a dedicated and unassuming scientist, as well as a rare and irregular publisher, had a very low h-index and might not win grants in today’s world. Furthermore, on average, women are less aggressive than men (Baron-Cohen 2003, Babcock & Laschever 2004, Lawrence 2006, Symonds et al. 2006) and thus, although these measures discriminate against gentler scientists of both genders, more women are affected. Statistics leave no doubt that
women most frequently drop out of bioscience (ETAN 2000), and many of them are very talented. The most frequently voiced reasons are (1) ‘I don’t want to spend the rest of my life competing and showing off’, (2) ‘I don’t want to take up prize fighting to get grants’, and (3) ‘modern science has become a struggle for survival, and I would rather do something else’.

What should be done to improve things? In my opinion, grant agencies ought to use other ways of evaluating the quality of work, and declare that they are doing so. Those they support might then spend less time scheming to get their papers into vanity journals and more time researching and solving scientific problems (Keller 2007). In my limited experience, grant applications do not describe what you will actually do but are in reality an ingenuity and knowledge test in which honesty is little valued; they amount to an attempt to demonstrate that one knows what one is doing and can divine what the outcomes of experiments will be and assess what might be risky to reveal. One needs a shrewd idea of what might impress the assessment committees. I am not sure how well time or science is served by this rather weird process. To reduce the pressure on scientists who spend so much time concocting
grant applications and to reduce the number of screeds that have to be assessed and compared, I suggest offering an alternative means of grant application that would be based entirely on the quality of the last 5 years’ work as is the case in Canada (CNSRC). All the applicant would have to do, if they chose this option, would be to list say 3 of what they think are their best
papers from the last 5 years and describe briefly who was responsible for the work therein. An advantage of having a small number of papers to assess, apart from the obvious one of less to read, is that authors would be encouraged to write a smaller number of papers that mean and convey something important, rather than a large number of papers to be counted. It is encouraging that in the USA and specifically for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute assessment is limited to 5 papers from the last 5 years, chosen by the applicants. Perhaps this
is the first step in what I think would be a useful trend. But how should one evaluate these papers? Just by reading them: there is no better way. This method was used in the past; it is not ‘objective’, but should be an attempt to get at what matters, better I think than relying on a precise measurement of what does not matter. Research has to be evaluated for rigour, originality and significance, for the light it casts and for economic and heuristic value; these qualities may be difficult to assess, but we should try.

Editorial responsibility: Howard Browman, Storebø, Norway and Konstantinos Stergiou, Thessaloniki, Greece

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Submitted: August 29, 2007; Accepted: November 10, 2007
Proofs received from author(s): January 14, 2008

Vol. 8: 9–11, 2008 Vol. 8: 9–11, 2008 Printed June, 2008
doi: 10.3354/esep00079 Ethics Sci Environ Polit Published online January 31, 2008

Contribution to the Theme Section ‘The use and misuse of
bibliometric indices in evaluating scholalry performance’

To the citizens of the United States of America from Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

In light of your failure in recent years to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

(You should look up ‘revocation’ in the Oxford English Dictionary.)

Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy).

Your new Prime Minister, David Cameron , will appoint a Governor for America without the need for further elections.

Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour,’ ‘favour,’ ‘labour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix ‘-ize’ will be replaced by the suffix ‘-ise.’ Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up ‘vocabulary’).

2. Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as ”like’ and ‘you know’ is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take into account the reinstated letter ‘u” and the elimination of ‘-ize.’

3. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday.

4. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not quite ready to be independent. Guns should only be used for shooting grouse. If you can’t sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist, then you’re not ready to shoot grouse.

5. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. Although a permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

6. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left side with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

7. The former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline) of roughly $10/US gallon. Get used to it.

8. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

9. The cold, tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable, as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of the British Commonwealth – see what it did for them. American brands will be referred to as Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine, so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

10. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie Macdowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one’s ears removed with a cheese grater.

11. You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies).

12. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside ofAmerica. Since only 2.1% of you are aware there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

13. You must tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us mad.

14. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

15. Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 p.m. with proper cups, with saucers, and never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; plus strawberries (with cream) when in season.

God Save the Queen!

PS: Only share this with friends who have a good sense of humour (NOT humor)!

Link: Facebook-Anon

I’m Too Sexy for My Science

It’s a good bet that Einstein hair, binocular-like National Health Service specs, soiled lab coats, and acres of corduroy will not be gracing the pages of the glossy mags in this millennium. However, there is a world of difference between what makes a sexy scientist and what makes “sexy” science. You know the sort, I’m sure: the stories that get a whole conference buzzing, end up being published back to back in the big journals, and sometimes even make it into the newspapers. But what defines whether a topic can grip a whole academic field? What governs which stories hit the headlines? And is it really such a good idea to work in a hot area? Those seeking to spice up their bench life should consult the guide below.

First, Select Your Audience

Assess your objectives. Do you want the pleasure of endless free trips, speaking at conferences all over the world? Or perhaps you have dreams of being the next Steve Jones or Susan Greenfield, ready to throw out sound bites at the drop of a hat. Research that sets a meeting on fire or fills the pages of Science will not necessarily appear sexy to the media, so yearn as you might to triumph in both arenas, you’re probably going to have to choose.

What happens when you present your work to your colleagues? If a deathly hush descends after the words “Any questions?” choose another topic. As for gauging the likely level of public interest in your chosen field, try to explain your ideas to your mother. If she glazes over and says “That’s nice, dear,” it’s time to abandon your dreams of appearing on the 6 o’clock news.

I Want to Be King of the Nerds!

So you want to be the Tom Jones of the academic scene, with principal investigators congratulating you on your thrilling results and Ph.D. students throwing their knickers at you in the question-and-answer session? All you have to do is find the right ingredients and put the right spin on them. But how to choose your topic? Flip through the pages of any major journal over a few months and you will find that certain themes bunch together. A flurry of back-to-back publications is a major indicator of sexiness. Witness, for example, the recent explosion of papers about histone modification. For those of a more medical persuasion, you can’t go wrong with tried and tested fields such as stem cells or brain research. Certain techniques are also hot property at the moment: microarrays, RNAi, and groovy confocal microscopy, for example.

The key to spicing up your research is to work in as many of these hot topics and techniques as possible. To save the hassle of having to actually do any of it, set up a series of collaborations. Before you know it, you’ll be sending off your abstract entitled “Microarray and RNAi Profiling of Histone Modifications in Stem Cell Transplants in Parkinson’s Disease” and waiting for the conference invitations to come flooding in.

I Want to Be a Media Daahling

Although the finer points of transcriptional regulation may fail to excite the tabloid press, there are certain subjects almost guaranteed to raise the interest of the general public. Sadly, being the self-obsessed species that we are, media-friendly research is usually going to demand some kind of human spin. Health (or our lack of it), pets, and food are major obsessions in our society, so if your research can touch on any of those topics, you are in with a good chance of grabbing a bit of the limelight. Research on obese narcoleptic kittens is therefore guaranteed a headline, although perhaps not a grant renewal. Bizarre and slightly pointless research into the “battle of the sexes” always seems to make it into the press as well. When they finally map the Y-linked gene for leaving the toilet seat up, now that will be interesting.

The other key to making it big in media science is the look. Remember, if you are lucky enough to get a film crew around, to make sure all the lights are turned off for that mysterious “dark arts” feel. Peculiar red or green lighting is optional but helps. PIs should always be filmed at the bench. This is principally for the amusement of their postdocs and Ph.D. students, who know that the aforementioned PI has not lifted a pipette for at least 5 years. Lots of whizzy computer graphics or speeded-up stock film of multiplying bacteria score highly in the trendy stakes.

If television is to become your regular gig, appearance, too, is important and, sadly, sexism still reigns supreme here. The wild-eyed Einstein look seems to be fine for men but is unacceptable for female scientists, where skirts and heels peeping suggestively from under the lab coat are de rigueur.

How Do I Get Into It?

There are two ways to make sure your science is hotter than a phenol burn on a misplaced elbow. First, you can plug away at what you do, bring it up and spin it right at every opportunity, and hope that your day will eventually come. Or you can jump right on the bandwagon as it comes past.

The first option takes dedication, self-belief, and persistence. The second just takes a nose for sexy news. Keep an eye on what is getting published, in the journals or the press, and go straight for gaps within hot spots of research.

But Is It a Good Idea?

There are undoubtedly benefits to working in an exciting, trendy field, especially one that makes it into the mainstream press. There are opportunities for fame (if not fortune), good grant funding, rapid career advancement, and even groupies (if you go to the right conferences).

But consider the drawbacks as well. Can you cope with the fear of being scooped? Do you really want to have to keep your research secret in case someone pinches your ideas? It looks as though more and more people are now choosing to present only published data at meetings because of these fears. This seems contrary to what science should be: an exciting exchange of ideas and novel data.

The other problem with life on the cutting edge is that you can easily slip and hack your legs off. One day, your research may no longer be the stuff of headlines and top papers and your microarray robot will be rusting quietly in the corner. You could be back to publishing in the Annals of Bands on Gels or its equivalent.

Obviously, this doesn’t happen to everyone who manages to mine a current scientific vein. There are people in every field who manage to stay relevant year after year, and that’s something we can all aspire to. But in the meantime, it is always fun to think about how you can spice up your science a little bit. And if I were you, I’d get a haircut before even thinking about going on television.

Kat Arney is wearing a lab coat with nothing on underneath.

links: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2003_03_07/noDOI.5467150291337125858

The Top 10 Worst Things About Working in a Lab

I have found that, no matter what the context, I will click on nearly any article with a number and a superlative in the title. I don’t really need to know anything about cheeseburgers that I don’t already know, but call an article “The Eight Best Cheeseburgers You’ve Never Heard Of” or “The Five Largest Cheeseburgers That Appeared in Films,” and suddenly I’ve got a bit of required reading to do.

And now, so do you.

Maybe you’re an ordinary person, not a scientist (we call you “Non-scis” behind your backs), and you’ve just clicked here for some light lunchtime reading. But if you’re a scientist, perhaps you can relate as we identify … drumroll please …

The top 10 worst aspects of working in a lab.

10. Your non-scientist friends don’t understand what you do.

Even when talking about their jobs to outsiders, your friends in other professions can summarize their recent accomplishments in understandable ways. For example, they can say, “I built an object,” or “I pleased a client,” or, if your friend works on Wall Street, “I ate a peasant.” But what can you say? “I cured … um, well, I didn’t really cure it, but I discovered … well, ‘discovered’ is too strong a word, so let’s just say I tested … well, the tests are ongoing and are causing new questions to arise, so … yeah. Stop looking at me.” At least you’re doing better than your friends with Ph.D.s in the humanities, who would answer, “I put sheets on my mom’s basement couch.”

9. The scientist who is already the most successful gets credit for everything anyone does.

If you discover something, your principal investigator (PI) gets credit. If you write a paper, your PI gets credit. If you submit a successful grant proposal, your PI gets credit (and money). And what do you get? If you’re lucky, you get to write more papers and grant proposals to bolster your PI’s curriculum vitae.

8. Lab equipment is expensive and delicate. And you, you’re not so coordinated. Nope. Not so much.

Oops! You could pay to replace this one broken piece, or you could hire another postdoc.

7. Sometimes experiments fail for a reason. Sometimes experiments fail for no reason.

As anyone who works in a lab knows, things that work perfectly for months or years can suddenly stop working, offering no explanation for the change. (In this way, lab experiments are like Internet Explorer®.) This abrupt and inexplicable failure changes your work to meta-work, as you stop asking questions about science and start asking questions about the consistency of your technique. You can waste years saying things like, “When I created the sample that worked, I flared my nostril in a weird way. So this week, I’ll try to repeat what I did last week but with more nostrils flarin’!”

6. Your schedule is dictated by intangible things.

Freaking cell lines, needing to be tended on a regular basis regardless of your dinner plans. Freaking galaxies visible only in the middle of the night. If it weren’t for your lab work you’d have such a vivacious social life! Sure. That’s why you have no social life. It’s the lab work.

5. Science on television has conditioned you to expect daily or weekly breakthroughs.

Have you ever had a breakthrough in the lab? Yeah, me neither. Sure, I’ve had successful experiments, which usually means that the controls worked and no one was injured. But a real, eureka, run-down-the-hallway-carrying-a-printout, burst-into-a-room-full-of-military-personnel-and-call-the-President-even-though-it’s-three-in-the-morning breakthrough? Not yet. Unless you count the programmable coffee maker that, after much cajoling, made decent coffee at the appropriate time. Maybe I should publish that.

4. Your work is dangerous.

People say their jobs are killing them, but you work with things that could actually kill you — things like caustic chemicals, infectious agents, highly electrified instruments, and angry PIs.

CREDIT: Hal Mayforth

Click here to enlarge image

3. Labs are not conducive to sex.

Unless you work in a sex lab, which may or may not be a real thing, it’s unlikely you can convince anyone to crawl under your lab bench with you (“Just ignore the discarded pipette tips, baby”) and, as protein biophysicists say, put their zinc fingers in your leucine zipper. But hey, prove me wrong, people.

2. You have to dress like a scientist.

When I worked at an amusement park, I had to wear a purple polo shirt tucked into khaki shorts with giant white sneakers, so I suppose things could be worse. But some of our (scientists’) uniform choices are pretty unflattering. Disposable shoe covers look like you stepped in two shower caps. Safety goggles trap humidity as though you’re cultivating a rainforest on your face. And white lab coats with collars and lapels make men look like nerds and women look like men who look like nerds.

1. You can feel time creeping inexorably toward your own death.

If you think I’m being melodramatic, you were obviously never a grad student or postdoc. As a grad student or postdoc, you spend longer than you’ve planned working on something less interesting than you’d believed, all while earning less money than you assumed reasonable with an endpoint that’s less tangible and less probable than you thought possible.

If this was the kind of article with a “Comments” section, you’d scroll there and see people berating the spoiled scientist for complaining about his work when there are far worse jobs in the world. You’d also see anonymous nastiness, blatant ignorance, and a rant about Ron Paul.

Luckily, there is no “Comments” section (thanks, Science!), so I can preemptively tell you that yes, I know there are worse jobs than “scientist” — “baby thrower,” for example, or “cow exploder.” But this is Science, so if you want to read about the top 10 worst aspects of being a cow exploder, go borrow a copy of Cow Exploder Digest. And wash your hands after reading it.

And yes, I know that there are great aspects of working in a lab as well. You get to work with your hands. You experience the beauty of a well-designed experiment. You can even ask questions about the universe and, occasionally, answer them. But since these last points were neither in list format nor preceded by an overreaching superlative, I’ll understand if you’ve already stopped reading.

link: http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2012_01_27/caredit.a1200012