Ending a Statement With a Question Mark?

Have you ever conciliated your way through a scientific discussions by ending negative statements or disagreements with an implied question mark? I do it a lot, and I'm not sure I like the reason why.

As a woman (and maybe as a man too, though I have not had direct personal experience with this, any insight would be welcome), I tend to walk the fine line between directness and conciliation. I am naturally emphatic, and used to state my opinions strongly-maybe too strongly-carried along by the force of my convictions and the absolute determination not to give in to anybody. Some of this crazy certainty faded with age and some wisdom, but I still am pretty definite in what I believe and inclined to be forceful in what I say.

One big reason why I stopped being loud and emphatic and thumping my metaphorical fist on the table is because I realized I hated being at the receiving end of such treatment. I hate being steamrollered, its uncomfortable and puts me off the discussion. I also found that not thumping table meant I could hear other people, a nice change. So politeness and a genuine curiosity to hear other people's thoughts started me off on my path of less declaiming and more questioning. As an added bonus, people warm to gentle conciliation more than they do to vocal steamrollers.

That there is the rub: within the reasonable demands of courtesy, how much should one conciliate? It's a reflex now, I always take the diplomatic path rather than just say what I think outright. I like to think that I stand by my convictions-I'm just more mellow about them-but is that really true? Have I gone too far down the road of conciliation? In lab meeting particularly, or during seminars, I ask questions and challenge people almost apologetically. In some cases, it makes the questioned feel more comfortable, and in some cases it makes them more dismissive of your question. Is a reputation for being thoughtful and a disinclination to put people on the spot worth being dismissed?

Why so I have this need to instinctively subdue my challenges? The saddest thing is that I think I do it because I am a woman. There are men in my group who are distinctly less indirect, often outright rude and in-your-face with their challenges and it doesn't affect the esteem in which they are held. And in the most bitter of stereotypes, when other women do the same they are called aggressive, bitchy and unpleasant. I used to be against overt feminism because I thought it was loud, exclusionary and exhaustingly unproductive, not to mention bound to get you laughed at. It galls me though that the natural instinct of intelligent ambitious women of my generation is to tone it down, to try and not become one of those women who became PIs in the 1970s and -80s. While I am certainly not a fan of rudeness or putting someone else down out of a sense of your own superiority, I am so tired and fed up of ending every sentence with an implied question mark.


This post is my 50th on this blog(I'm slow), and its also for my mother, the kind of feminist I would like to be.

Responsibility for Scientific Fraud

Who is responsible when a paper is declared to be the product of fraudulent research? This is a tough question to answer, and is becoming more relevant every day. Is it the first author? The PI? If you're the third author, or even the second on a paper that's found to be fraud, how responsible are you? Should it be allowed to negatively impact your career (it probably will)? Can you claim that you do not bear responsibility if you are not the "direct perpetrator" of the fraud?

Nature has an interesting proposal.

I'm not sure making one author sign such a declaration is necessarily the solution, but at least it has the advantage of holding the senior author truly accountable for the work that bears their name. I don't think one can force responsibility. I think that a really responsible PI will have checked the work in a paper, and one that is inclined to be less responsible will not be made more so easily. Perhaps enforcing accountability with a binding (although I don't know how binding this will be) signed document may lead to greater responsibility.

Thoughts?

Good Times Bad Times

Inspired by one of Sunil's posts, at balancing life.

The key question is whether one can put a value on all the research that isn't published. Anyone who does research knows that there are good times and bad times, and that one has very little control over when those times occur. Postdocs need hot papers to get academic jobs-assuming, for the moment that we are talking about postdocs who want academic positions. Grad students would also like to publish high, but its less critical at that stage in one's career. It's usually the quality of one's postdoctoral work that is evaluated for jobs.

So what happens if one's well designed, innovative and technically superb project has no results? No publishable, sexy, revolutionary results? That the null hypothesis is true? It is extraordinarily difficult to publish negative results, especially since one can always encounter the ultimately dismissive critique that one hadn't tried everything yet. Does that mean that the two years spent on the project are toast? One's thought, analysis and expertise are worthless because they cannot be proved in print? Five more years as a postdoc?

So how then can we quantify effort and ability if not by publications? If its an especially technically difficult field, years of experience should count for a lot. If the idea behind the project is not mainstream (as Sunil discusses) and doesn't have any of the fashionably fund-able keywords, should one get points for risk-taking? The willingness to take on challenges without guarantees, at least the guarantees implied in "current-hot-topics" research, is uncommon and to be prized. So should CVs include a paragraph briefly describing one's project and the ideas behind it? Or will that just be seen as an attempt to flesh out the CV in the face of the conspicuous absences in the publications section? Probably.

After all new fields are created by people who can think out of the box. And sometimes luck only shows up late, and it takes three failed attempts to come up with truly revolutionary ideas. Or, the three failed attempts could reflect the complete absence of any BS-detector. Which is it? Does one always need to have a publishable side project, which will generate small reliable papers, thus demonstrating that one can actually do publishable research as well as study risky and unusual subjects? That one's out-there ideas are the product of intelligent thought, hopefully as demonstrated by the stuff that did get published.

Seriously though, is this a workable solution? Most postdocs I know do have two projects, just in case and to keep oneself occupied, particularly in immunology, where some experiments just take so long. Isn't it somewhat ridiculous to require people to have two projects? Or more?

Or, should one just ascribe it to the nature of the game, and let it go if things don't work out? After all, there are just way too few academic positions, and luck may just be another way to filter people out. Just because some intelligent and qualified people get thrown out with the bathwater, that doesn't mean that other equally intelligent and qualified people don't get lucky, publish and get academic positions. This way of thinking goes against everything I personally believe, because it just is not fair.

But who said life would be fair?

What is and What Should Never Be

Will asking postdoc mentors to document their mentoring help the current mentoring-or-lack-thereof situation?

I don't know, seems like yet another opportunity to write things in a grant proposal that you don't necessarily mean to do. More verbal padding, more watchwords. On the other hand, writing the watchwords may start you think about them. Will it change what is, and what should never be, or have been for that matter?

Hm.

No Quarter

(Persevering with the Led Zeppelin theme)

Can you succeed in academia only if you are a shark?

This is something I started to think about when I came to the USA. In India, in my experience, academic scientists are idealistic, workaholic, fatalistic and gossipy. Money is always tight and you rarely get to publish in the good journals (and I'm not talking only about the big three or five) because of where you're from. The salaries for PI-level scientists are nowhere as high as they are here, and respect from the public and one's peers in other countries can be in short supply. The keen-edged aggression that one sees among scientists (specifically, biologists) here is not at all common. But, and this is crucial, once you enter the system of government science labs, you will have a career. Every X years you will be promoted, every Y years you will get a salary. You have tons of holidays, your kids have opportunities. Many post-postdoctoral scientists I know in India have jobs and some measure of security.

Many things are common between the scientific world in India and the United States, the most glaring absence in the latter is the absence of any prospects of security in academia until you have tenure. So the situation is then that you have really bright people who work and work and work, with limited pay and even more limited prospects. To make things more interesting, these people are often enormously motivated and justly ambitious: So where does all the energy go?

We all know there aren't enough PI positions. There aren't very many non-PI permanent researcher positions either. So the only thing to do then is to fight for the positions there are, right? To give no quarter, to your peers, to the possibility of failure, to your life, or to yourself. To be aggressive and up-to-date, to work harder, better and more successfully than everyone else. To know things and have connections that others don't have. Not that there is anything wrong with any of these things, I get a buzz out of the hunt just as much as anyone. My point is that it is not really sustainable.

Or not sustainable for the majority anyway. what happens to the people who cannot, do not want to or will not be sharks? The laws of luck and averages dictate that some such will succeed in academia, but in the balance I think the sharks don't succeed. Then you have a situation in which the system "selects" for the most aggressive people, and often does not encourage other more nurturing or considerate professional behaviour. The lack of consideration and sensitivity, coupled with a reluctance to show "mommy qualities" because that would invite professional ridicule, leads to bosses who demand and do not teach, who hector not mentor, and whose personal advancement is their primary goal.

Shark eat shark then. Which doesn't seem like much fun to me, and maybe to more people. Why is it that the system is ok with people who are excellent scientists but dreadful people? Why is that acceptable? I don't know. However I do see some incremental changes (not where I work at, but), and I think the key to any improvements in the system can only occur with recognition of these issues. I hope so, because the joy of research is being subsumed by the nastiness of its execution.

The Rights of Native Indigenous Peoples

The UN just passed a non-binding declaration supporting the rights of native indigenous peoples. 143 members of the general assembly voted for it, 11 abstained and 4 voted against: USA, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Wow.

More on Illegal Immigration

Something that concerns me a lot, as you can probably tell.

Today's Editorial in the New York Times


I could not agree more. Their basic thesis for those who may not be able to read it is that the US government's current policy about illegal immigrants is based on punishment and making people's lives miserable. I quote

Their one big idea is that harsh, unrelenting enforcement at the border, in the workplace and in homes and streets would dry up opportunities for illegal immigrants and eventually cause the human tide to flow backward. That would be true only if life for illegal immigrants in America could be made significantly more miserable than life in, say, rural Guatemala or the slums of Mexico City. That will take a lot of time and a lot of misery to pull that off in a country that has tolerated and profited from illegal labor for generations.

The American people cherish lawfulness but resist cruelty, and have supported reform that includes a reasonable path to earned citizenship. Their leaders have given them immigration reform as pest control.

The thing is that this article is such a great example of American generosity. How many countries would be so generous about this issue? Do I think that governmental policy should be more generous? Resoundingly, yes, partly due to a visceral and admittedly unfair feeling that this whole country is founded on immigration and therefore has more of a responsibility to immigrants now.

Its a nice article at any rate and a strong statement from an extremely influential media source.

edited to re-format link

"Illegal" Immigration

A thoughtful adn though-provoking post by my dear Mincat, its a point of view, check it out.

http://damelo.blogspot.com/2007/08/illegal-immigration.html

Informed Consent and Clinical Trials

This is an issue that has been bothering me for a long time, and I've decided to post about it after reading an article in Nature Medicine about a lawsuit the Nigerian government has brought against Pfizer.

There are a few main points that comprise the main issue, as I see it.

1. We need drugs for many diseases, and these drugs have to eventually undergo clinical trials in humans.

2. Many drugs being brought out now target diseases, such as HIV, that have a large number of sufferers in developing countries (the term Third World is a throwback to cold war terms and I think it is distinctly inappropriate in today's world).

3. Clinical trials need large cohorts of people, both those who have the disease and those who don't.

4. Drug companies want to save money on clinical trials.

All these parts of the problem are linked and interdependent and none can be cited alone as the reason for the increasingly popular practice of conduction clinical trials in developing countries.

I am not against the practice, in fact I am more or less in favour of it. For many years "developing country diseases" have been neglected in the drug development process largely because the countries that suffer the most often have the least resources to support the expensive process of drug development. As a consequence of that expense, many people in developing countries do not have access to many drugs. So, if clinical trials are actually held in these countries, it may make access to the drugs being tested easier in these countries. Also, the fact that the trials are conducted in these countries mean that drugmakers have to consider factors that they would not have otherwise, such as heat-stability of drugs in hot equatorial countries; cultural factors that may influence the taking of medicines with meals etc. That the drug companies are moving south and east purely in search of greater profits doesn't bother me so much, as long as the outcome is beneficial.

Anyway, I digress. The two core tenets of conducting clinical trials are informed consent and that no harm should be caused. Informed consent is obvious, the people making up the cohorts of the clinical trial should know what they are getting into. They should know that they face potentially lethal side effects, that the drug may not work, and that they may be in control groups where they receive only placebos. They should know all of these things, and should sign documents attesting that they know and understand these things and choose to participate in the trial willingly and with full awareness of possible consequences.

No harm gets a little more involved. Clearly, if the drug starts to show bad side effects during the trial, it should be stopped. All drugs have side effects, one has to weigh the relative benefits against the side effects, and call a halt when the the relative benefits are far outweighed by the negative effects. Also, if the drug works, then one cannot, by any ethical moral or human standard, continue to withhold the drug from ill people in the placebo group. Once you start to treat your control group, interpreting the results automatically become much harder to interpret. And how do you determine what has caused harm, the drug or the disease? Most people participating in clinical trials are very ill, its hard to say what makes them worse, diseases progression or treatment. Its a very tough call.

Informed consent is a much clearer issue. You just have to have it. Informed consent is valid when it is solicited from prosperous educated people who have resources and are willing and able to analyze the issue objectively. Is it valid when it is obtained from poor illiterate desperate people? Is it valid when sick, frightened people are offered the vague potential of a medicine that they would not be able to afford otherwise? Are they able to make the decision to participate in the clinical trial objectively and with a full appreciation of the consequences? Illness makes even the most coldly analytical personal more prone to emotional choices, what of people with no other recourse? Poor and desperate, the prospect of a cure is offered you, what would you do?

It is in these situations that drug companies should be especially vigilant about their practices regards obtaining informed consent. Sympathetic counselors, fluency in the local language and a clear unhurried explanation of all the consequences are absolutely vital. If there is any question at all as to how informed consent was sought and got, then the conductors of the clinical trial risk crossing the line between recruitment and outright exploitation. And that is what worries me about the conduct of clinical trials in developing countries. Huge numbers of sick people, less stringent regulations, less enforcement of what regulations exist: these are all the reasons that make developing countries such "desirable" places to conduct clinical trials, but these are all reasons that makes the conduct of the trials in these places prone to misconduct. Conductors of trials have to be extraordinarily vigilant to avoid abuse, my questions is are they always so?

I don't know and I don't pretend to know much about clinical trials and the ins and outs of the daily conduct of these trials. I am a lay person, but I am concerned. I want very much for my country and other developing countries to have access to valuable drugs and I can see the huge advantages of having drug trials conducted in these countries, as a scientist and a human being. I think that all of us who think about these things should be concerned and should ask the hard questions, so that drug companies and the governments of these countries feel the pressure of accountability.

On Race and Being a Scientist

Skookumchick over at Rants of a Feminist Engineer had posted on the subject of race in science. Taking my cue from her, here I go.

I have to say that because of my nationality, race and nationality are rather inextricably linked in my thinking, so I will declare right now that I use the two to refer to the same thing. Sorry.

I am Indian, as may have become obvious to those of you who read my blog and notice my stubborn use of -ou- spelling. I grew up in India and came to the US to do my Ph.D., now I am a post-doc. I've been a foreign student, a non-resident alien, then a resident alien and now am a temporary worker.

There are so many stereotypes associated with various races and their work ethic/abilities/social skills. I'm not trying to offend anyone, but here's a list of some I have heard: Indians are bright and lazy, lack social skills and speak English with a funny accent; Chinese people are incredibly hard-working, paranoid and competitive and do not speak English well at all; Japanese people are eternally polite to your face but do exactly whatever they please anyway, the French are clubby and snobbish, the Germans are correct, humorless and boring, Americans are crazy workaholics with an alien literal sense of humour.

My accent in English could easily be American, in fact I get judged for that quite a lot in the Indian community. One of the two most paranoid, competitive people I have met was indeed Chinese, the other was American. However, the single most helpful technician I have ever known is Chinese, she is a darling. Two of the most intelligent-and yes, sarcastic- people I know are American and I enjoy and respect their insights and judgment tremendously. One of my dearest mentors in grad school was Japanese and he was always communicative and sharing with me. Many of my friends and my best colleagues have been, and are, French. Based on friends again, I think Germans are the most modest, open-minded people I know and amazing friends in the bargain.

I think that it is important to discuss issues of race and representation but one always risks falling into the trap of letting stereotypes do the deciding. However hard one tries, if one makes race a central issue one will end up classifying people one meets based on one's perception of their countrymen's qualities. If one is lucky and honest, one may overcome these stereotypes and make real connections to people despite all, but how often is one lucky or honest?

I resist concentrating on race for many reasons, a big one, and possibly an ignoble one, is because I do not want to be associated with the stereotype. I have known incredibly lazy Indian people, I have also had Indian colleagues who shamelessly made use of a boss's niceness and took way too much advantage. I am not like that, and it galls me no end to have colleagues who "have given my countrymen a bad name". I have also met hard-working like-minded Indians whom it is a privilege to associate myself with. However, I do not speak to Indians at work in our native tongue, if it is the same, or the national language because I think it is wholly inappropriate to use a language that other people do not understand in a workplace. It makes people hostile, which is completely understandable. Over coffee, I'd love to gab in Hindi, but in lab? No. I won't do it.

I resist emphasizing my race for another reason: I have worked so hard to be thought of as "just" a scientist, not an "Indian scientist", or the "Indian girl in that lab". People have actually called me by another, very different, name because there was another Indian in our lab with that name. The foreign student, the foreign post-doc...I think I have managed to shed all these labels, not because I am not proud of being Indian or because I am embarrassed to be considered foreign, but because I want to be thought of primarily as a scientist. I don't want Indian to be my defining professional label, just like woman is not my primary label of choice, more on that later. I feel that as a foreign post-doc, race and nationality are such dominant issues in the rest of my life- getting fingerprinted upon entry into the US, needing authorization to travel, my boyfriend shaving off his beard because he is Indian and will probably have trouble flying with a beard because of what he looks like. I don't want my race or nationality to be a central issue in my professional life as well.

I am joyously Indian and fiercely proud to be so. I am also a scientist and proud of that. I am not necessarily an Indian scientist is all.