I am a graduate student who has just submitted by doctoral thesis in Molecular Oncology. As someone who has spent 5 years in science, I have come to understand that just like in any other field, in academics too, politics has a big role to play. This is a fact that I have come to accept with great disappointment because one of the primary reasons for my wanting to come to academia was the absence of socio-political machinations where attitude seemed to influence more than aptitude. Research always seemed to be the field where aptitude and merit would solely determine one's success or failure. Now, that was inexperience talking! Today after 5 years in a premier research institute in India, I realize that life in academics too, is plagued with problems and is a place where social skills and contacts can make or break you!
Research in science has come to a stage where "Publish or Perish" seems to be mantra as people are now willing to resort to any means to publish their work. The quality of science has been overtaken by the desire for quantity.
Ever so often these days, one comes across leading scientists from some of the best institutions in the world resorting to fraud, deception, mis-conduct, cover ups and cook ups in their attempt to publish!!! The latest in the league of scientific fraud is of course the Harvard Professor - Mark Hauser, a well known psychologist, scientist and the author of the book "Moral minds" (the irony is inescapable eh ?). After a thorough review of his work by an internal review board at Harvard, Hauser was "found solely responsible... for eight instances of scientific misconduct." He is taking a year's "leave", and his future is uncertain. The current understanding of the nature of the misconduct is also alarming by its sheer magnitude and scale. Unfortunately, there was no official news on what exactly the misconduct was, and how much of Hauser's work is suspect. According to Harvard, only three publications were affected: a 2002 paper in Cognition, which has been retracted; a 2007 paper which has been "corrected" and another 2007 Science paper, which is still under discussion. Cognition editor Gerry Altmann with access to some of the Harvard internal investigation, concludes that Hauser simply invented some of the crucial data in the retracted 2002 paper. Basically, some monkeys were supposed to have been tested on two conditions, X and Y, and their responses were videotaped. The difference in the monkey's behavior between the two conditions was the scientifically interesting outcome. The videos of the experiment however showed them being tested only on condition X. There was no video evidence that condition Y was even tested. The "data" from condition Y, and by extension the differences, were, apparently, simply made up. If this is true, it is, in Altmann's words, "the worst form of academic misconduct." So it seems that either Hauser never tested the monkeys on condition B at all, and just made up the data, or he did test them, saw that they weren't behaving the "right" way, deleted the videos... and just made up the data. Either way it amounts to scientific fraud!!!
Now this is not an isolated incident. Every couple of years there are such major instances of grave scientific misconduct which are caught in action but there are probably also many more which are never discovered. All this is of course happening in the developed countries where scientific expenditure and the quality of infrastructure are several fold higher than in the developing countries like India.... If researchers in the world's top academic establishment like Harvard are culpable to such fraud and misconduct, it really makes me wonder if the entire academic system is rotting from inside ?
The problems plaguing science in developing countries like India are many and of a very different nature. A large body of the scientific work here is peripheral in nature aiming to address some of the more mundane problems in science. The fundamentals are still largely being ignored. The focus in these countries is on the most efficient utilization of the public money towards research. But what determines the most efficient utilization? Publications in peer-reviewed journals? With this aim, government agencies and the authorities use "publications" as "the" criteria to dispense funds. Thus, a scientist who intends to be financially competent for carrying out experiments is under immense pressure to maximize his publications. While quality of the publication (as is roughly inferred from the impact factor of the journal) is a criteria, the number of publications does seem to carry more weight with the funding agencies. What is happening thus is a great urgency to publish whatever results that can be put together in a reasonable period of time. The problems addressed are also extensions of previous work and not really fundamental in nature because the risk incurred by the investigators in these fields in much less. The chances of failure are much higher in a more fundamental, untouched problem than in the the usual run-off-the-mill stuff... To compound matters further, the government is increasingly focusing on applied science because that gives them the best excuse for spending the hard earned public money!! And so the researchers are increasingly under pressure to find new and fancy applications for their work. No matter how distant they may be from actual application, scientists are expected to provide possible utilities of their research !! And so basic research in the more fundamental problems takes a back seat as scientists strive for funds to compete internationally. Another question that comes up is about the scientific priorities of countries like India. Should they only focus on problems with an immediate application ? Is fundamental research a drain on the tax payers' money ? I was shocked to realize that a lot of people in the academic community also shared this view that we as a country should focus on application / goal driven research. I would beg to differ. As someone once rightly said, research is only of two types - applied and not yet applied. We as researchers must not work with blinders on and ignore the immense potential of tackling fundamental queries. If India aims to emerge as a superpower, it needs to develop as a knowledge producing economy, not just a services driven economy. We must encourage basic research and then try and look for applications for them in due course. As for the drain on the tax payers money, we all know that as a country plagued with bureaucracy, corruption and inefficiency, there are plenty of other sources for wastage and fundamental research is the last of these. Thus, in developing countries like India, under such competitive environments, quality is likely to be compromised. At the thresholds of being a part of the same establishment and the social structure, I wonder how to combat these problems.
The easiest alternative is of course to give more freedom to researchers and to not judge their contributions to the field in terms of their publications. Publications are after all only "an index" (and not "the index") of the work carried out and there are often long dry periods when one is addressing the more fundamental problems in science. But then giving a free reign to researchers is also not the way forward because taking off all pressure could also inspire lethargy and inefficiency.... Thus, what is seemingly required is periodic monitoring of the scientific progress by a board of competent researchers who are familiar with the nitty-gritties of academic research and are capable to evaluating the scientific work done in an unbiased and effective way.... Now, this sounds good on paper but this is exactly what could lead to the structuring of science and research into a social network.... people would then end up relying on building contacts and inter-personal contacts to navigate through these boards and commissions instead of tackling scientific problems. "You scratch my back and I scratch yours" becomes an unsaid rule!!
So what is the solution ?
Well, I, for now, am clueless !!!
The entire situation for now seems to me like a vicious cycle. Scientists need finances and infrastructure to work. Science is a field where an inspired and active mind is more productive than than an active body. And thus, the scientists need to be given a certain degree of freedom to pursue their work. At the same time, funding either comes from the government or from private companies. While private companies can give one freedom of approach and plenty of money, the stakes are high because the companies expect rapid returns from the research, thus prompting more applied and run-off-the-mill research. The government sponsored research though a tad more restrictive can also be more liberating because immediate applications are not the goal. However, the government is also under immense pressure to justify the ever increasing expenditure of the tax payers money with no clear benefits in sight !!!
At this time I can't but think of a time, not oo long ago, when researchers used to share the credit for any discovery with an open heart and where publication was a means to increase the accessibility of a finding in order to remove redundancy in research. After all every new discovery is made standing on the shoulder of giants and access to all the research happening in a field is vital for future developments. I was amazed when I read of a time in quantum physics when scientists like Carl Anderson were tempted to withdraw their article from Science (detailing the discovery of positrons) because in his mind he didn't have sufficient documentation to claim for the discovery of positrons !!
And a few decades down the line, today we are faced with a situation where top scientists are submitting cooked up results to premier journals in a desperate attempt to get published!!! The problem becomes more severe when additional theories and experiments are based on these fraudulent reports and then when young researchers start to question the veracity of every published result !!! That is indeed a sorry state of affairs in one of the fields where integrity was exemplary and the aptitude of a person was solely determinant of future success than his/her social skills.
I don't know where life takes me and I don't know what the future holds for the field of research which has charmed me since childhood, but, I do hope that these cases are only a few rotten apples who have been removed before greater damage has been inflicted. I hope that science, academics and research remain for a very long time untouched by the vile market forces that push researchers towards committing scientific fraud and misconduct. I hope that students today stop viewing science and research as just another career option but enter the field with a sense of passion and purpose. Because, for as long as I can see, science is driven forward by ingenuity and passion than by diplomacy and sycophancy.
For now, I seem to agree with Piet Hein when he talked of The Paradox of Life:
Research in science has come to a stage where "Publish or Perish" seems to be mantra as people are now willing to resort to any means to publish their work. The quality of science has been overtaken by the desire for quantity.
Ever so often these days, one comes across leading scientists from some of the best institutions in the world resorting to fraud, deception, mis-conduct, cover ups and cook ups in their attempt to publish!!! The latest in the league of scientific fraud is of course the Harvard Professor - Mark Hauser, a well known psychologist, scientist and the author of the book "Moral minds" (the irony is inescapable eh ?). After a thorough review of his work by an internal review board at Harvard, Hauser was "found solely responsible... for eight instances of scientific misconduct." He is taking a year's "leave", and his future is uncertain. The current understanding of the nature of the misconduct is also alarming by its sheer magnitude and scale. Unfortunately, there was no official news on what exactly the misconduct was, and how much of Hauser's work is suspect. According to Harvard, only three publications were affected: a 2002 paper in Cognition, which has been retracted; a 2007 paper which has been "corrected" and another 2007 Science paper, which is still under discussion. Cognition editor Gerry Altmann with access to some of the Harvard internal investigation, concludes that Hauser simply invented some of the crucial data in the retracted 2002 paper. Basically, some monkeys were supposed to have been tested on two conditions, X and Y, and their responses were videotaped. The difference in the monkey's behavior between the two conditions was the scientifically interesting outcome. The videos of the experiment however showed them being tested only on condition X. There was no video evidence that condition Y was even tested. The "data" from condition Y, and by extension the differences, were, apparently, simply made up. If this is true, it is, in Altmann's words, "the worst form of academic misconduct." So it seems that either Hauser never tested the monkeys on condition B at all, and just made up the data, or he did test them, saw that they weren't behaving the "right" way, deleted the videos... and just made up the data. Either way it amounts to scientific fraud!!!
Now this is not an isolated incident. Every couple of years there are such major instances of grave scientific misconduct which are caught in action but there are probably also many more which are never discovered. All this is of course happening in the developed countries where scientific expenditure and the quality of infrastructure are several fold higher than in the developing countries like India.... If researchers in the world's top academic establishment like Harvard are culpable to such fraud and misconduct, it really makes me wonder if the entire academic system is rotting from inside ?
The problems plaguing science in developing countries like India are many and of a very different nature. A large body of the scientific work here is peripheral in nature aiming to address some of the more mundane problems in science. The fundamentals are still largely being ignored. The focus in these countries is on the most efficient utilization of the public money towards research. But what determines the most efficient utilization? Publications in peer-reviewed journals? With this aim, government agencies and the authorities use "publications" as "the" criteria to dispense funds. Thus, a scientist who intends to be financially competent for carrying out experiments is under immense pressure to maximize his publications. While quality of the publication (as is roughly inferred from the impact factor of the journal) is a criteria, the number of publications does seem to carry more weight with the funding agencies. What is happening thus is a great urgency to publish whatever results that can be put together in a reasonable period of time. The problems addressed are also extensions of previous work and not really fundamental in nature because the risk incurred by the investigators in these fields in much less. The chances of failure are much higher in a more fundamental, untouched problem than in the the usual run-off-the-mill stuff... To compound matters further, the government is increasingly focusing on applied science because that gives them the best excuse for spending the hard earned public money!! And so the researchers are increasingly under pressure to find new and fancy applications for their work. No matter how distant they may be from actual application, scientists are expected to provide possible utilities of their research !! And so basic research in the more fundamental problems takes a back seat as scientists strive for funds to compete internationally. Another question that comes up is about the scientific priorities of countries like India. Should they only focus on problems with an immediate application ? Is fundamental research a drain on the tax payers' money ? I was shocked to realize that a lot of people in the academic community also shared this view that we as a country should focus on application / goal driven research. I would beg to differ. As someone once rightly said, research is only of two types - applied and not yet applied. We as researchers must not work with blinders on and ignore the immense potential of tackling fundamental queries. If India aims to emerge as a superpower, it needs to develop as a knowledge producing economy, not just a services driven economy. We must encourage basic research and then try and look for applications for them in due course. As for the drain on the tax payers money, we all know that as a country plagued with bureaucracy, corruption and inefficiency, there are plenty of other sources for wastage and fundamental research is the last of these. Thus, in developing countries like India, under such competitive environments, quality is likely to be compromised. At the thresholds of being a part of the same establishment and the social structure, I wonder how to combat these problems.
The easiest alternative is of course to give more freedom to researchers and to not judge their contributions to the field in terms of their publications. Publications are after all only "an index" (and not "the index") of the work carried out and there are often long dry periods when one is addressing the more fundamental problems in science. But then giving a free reign to researchers is also not the way forward because taking off all pressure could also inspire lethargy and inefficiency.... Thus, what is seemingly required is periodic monitoring of the scientific progress by a board of competent researchers who are familiar with the nitty-gritties of academic research and are capable to evaluating the scientific work done in an unbiased and effective way.... Now, this sounds good on paper but this is exactly what could lead to the structuring of science and research into a social network.... people would then end up relying on building contacts and inter-personal contacts to navigate through these boards and commissions instead of tackling scientific problems. "You scratch my back and I scratch yours" becomes an unsaid rule!!
So what is the solution ?
Well, I, for now, am clueless !!!
The entire situation for now seems to me like a vicious cycle. Scientists need finances and infrastructure to work. Science is a field where an inspired and active mind is more productive than than an active body. And thus, the scientists need to be given a certain degree of freedom to pursue their work. At the same time, funding either comes from the government or from private companies. While private companies can give one freedom of approach and plenty of money, the stakes are high because the companies expect rapid returns from the research, thus prompting more applied and run-off-the-mill research. The government sponsored research though a tad more restrictive can also be more liberating because immediate applications are not the goal. However, the government is also under immense pressure to justify the ever increasing expenditure of the tax payers money with no clear benefits in sight !!!
At this time I can't but think of a time, not oo long ago, when researchers used to share the credit for any discovery with an open heart and where publication was a means to increase the accessibility of a finding in order to remove redundancy in research. After all every new discovery is made standing on the shoulder of giants and access to all the research happening in a field is vital for future developments. I was amazed when I read of a time in quantum physics when scientists like Carl Anderson were tempted to withdraw their article from Science (detailing the discovery of positrons) because in his mind he didn't have sufficient documentation to claim for the discovery of positrons !!
And a few decades down the line, today we are faced with a situation where top scientists are submitting cooked up results to premier journals in a desperate attempt to get published!!! The problem becomes more severe when additional theories and experiments are based on these fraudulent reports and then when young researchers start to question the veracity of every published result !!! That is indeed a sorry state of affairs in one of the fields where integrity was exemplary and the aptitude of a person was solely determinant of future success than his/her social skills.
I don't know where life takes me and I don't know what the future holds for the field of research which has charmed me since childhood, but, I do hope that these cases are only a few rotten apples who have been removed before greater damage has been inflicted. I hope that science, academics and research remain for a very long time untouched by the vile market forces that push researchers towards committing scientific fraud and misconduct. I hope that students today stop viewing science and research as just another career option but enter the field with a sense of passion and purpose. Because, for as long as I can see, science is driven forward by ingenuity and passion than by diplomacy and sycophancy.
For now, I seem to agree with Piet Hein when he talked of The Paradox of Life:
A bit beyond perception's reach
I sometimes believe I see
that Life is two locked boxes, each
containing the other's key.- Piet Hein, Danish mathematician, physicist, philosopher, writer and creator of puzzles and games.
Nicely written. The solution lies within each one of us I guess; one should not look for quick-fixes for any problem. Right now, I am a masters student and will do ANYTHING for a publication, just so that I can get into a top class PhD program. I don't even mind doing low quality, trivial and peripheral work, as long as it will lead to a publication. I do agree that publishing is secondary to doing good work, but I crave the approval of people who probably think otherwise, right now at least.
ReplyDeleteThere are two things I can do - lament and curse the people who think that way and align myself to please them, OR, not bother about them and just concentrate on doing good work, which implies readiness to get admitted to a not-so-top-class PhD program. The road ahead is not unknown, it just takes strength to take the correct one.
Because, for as long as i can see, science is driven forward by ingenuity and passion than by diplomacy and sycophancy. - IMHO, not a fair statement to make. Even a fashion-designer has passion for clothes and dressing people up. I don't see any reason why being passionate about clothes is less noble than being passionate about atoms and molecules and mathematics or whatever...
ReplyDeleteThanks! Abhiram. Glad you liked the post.
ReplyDeleteWell, I agree with you that the choice is ours to make but i also think that in this case, the change must perpetuate "top-down"... If the selectors for your PhD program, for example, decided to interview you and see your aptitude and not just your publications, then... you will not have to hanker after a publication.. right ? You can choose to do path-breaking research because what counts is what you are capable of... And, so I completely understand your predicament and have faced it too... The only thing is that we should be able to bring this change into the system tomorrow when we have the change...
As for my statement, I should just like to clarify the intent behind the statement i made. All i am attempting so say is that science is driven forward by ingenuity and passion and not by diplomacy and sycophancy... This only derides the role of diplomacy and sycophancy in science and is in no way intended to belittle any other profession. In fact, passion is a vital ingredient for any endeavor, be it designing clothes, research, teaching, learning or writing. So to clarify, I am not attempting to deride any profession or career, only extolling the importance of passion and ingenuity in research.
only extolling the importance of passion and ingenuity in research - Fair enough... :)
ReplyDeleteVery prompt response indeed... Glad to have you on the same page... ;)
ReplyDelete:). You write wonderfully. Do keep writing.
ReplyDeleteWell.. thank you... Coming from someone I don't really know, it really means a lot... so, yeah, will try and keep writing... They are mostly my ramblings when things go a little beyond me... a vent like this helps... ;)
ReplyDeleteI blog for the same reason too. Thank you google I guess :)
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely... Push button publishing is one miracle... so much power in one tool
ReplyDeleteand quite a wonder drug too... !!!
What is your blog Id though ?
abhiramn.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteNice talking to you. Look forward to more posts from you :)
Same here... :-)
ReplyDeletePS - I do like your VISA post... its something that has struck me since i saw the ad the first time...