Gratitude

I’m grateful that:

1. I had a book in me that I thought was worth writing.
2. Pelagic Publishing gave me a chance to write it.
3. I made it through a pandemic to see it in print.
   

I hope people find it helpful.

Why “descriptive” science is downplayed

On Twitter, Rejji Kuruvilla asked:

I’m sorry, but WHY are descriptive studies a problem in grant or ms review? If you don’t provide the 1st description or visualization of a biological process, how do you provide the basis for hypothesis or mechanism-driven science?

Oh, I feel this. I complained about this since my grad school days. One of the biggest scientific endeavors that closed out the twentieth century, the human genome project, was pure description. I love this from Niko Tinbergen, in his most famous paper (1963):

Contempt for simple observation is a lethal trait in any science(.)

Here’s what I think is going on.

First, I suspect “descriptive” as a critique might mean any one of three things.

1. Not hypothesis driven.
2. Not investigated by controlled experiment.
3. Studies only a single level of organization.

The bias against description is a symptom of the fact that basic biological research is has been supported by medical agencies. In the United States, the budget for the National Institutes of Health dwarfs that of the National Science Foundation. (Interestingly, this isn’t the case in Canada.)

Medical agencies aren’t funding science for science’s sake. They are not interested in making discoveries that broaden our understanding of the natural world. They have sick people they want to make better. They want treatments. They want results.

To their credit, most medical funding agencies recognize that investing in basic science pays dividends. That’s why they support it at all. But their priorities are not those of curiosity-driven science.

So it is no surprise that such agencies would strongly favour hypothesis-driven research. Because as much as I love basic description and serendipitous discoveries, I absolutely recognize that hypothesis-driven research –  particularly strong inference of pitting competing hypotheses against each other – is ferociously efficient at generating new knowledge.

I don’t think hypothesis-driven research is enough. But even I have to say that I don’t think any other approach generates knowledge as quickly or as consistently.

If you get the “too descriptive” critique, you can’t fix it just by working in the word “hypothesis” into your proposal at every opportunity. The “descriptive” critique is not necessarily about whether you have a hypothesis at all, but whether you address a hypothesis that is actively investigated by your research community. 

You can have a perfectly hypothesis driven project, but is the hypothesis doesn’t addresses what the community cares about, it will still get called “descriptive.”

Another aspect of the critique is that “descriptive” studies are contrasted against “mechanistic” studies. Again, I think this is a symptom of the “medicalization” of research funding.

This semester, I was unexpected assigned to teach part of a course in human pathophysiology. This is way outside my expertise, and I’ve been forced to learn about medical topics more than I ever have before in my life. And after a few months of digging into bone, muscle, and hormonal disorders, it’s surprised me how often developing treatments drill down to understanding molecular interactions. 

A description like “There’s too much hormone” is necessary. But treatments are often based in, “This drug blocks the receptor to this hormone” and “This drug blocks synthesis of this hormone.” In other words, the research spans multiple levels of analysis. When people talk about “mechanism,” they usually mean that they are looking for a level of analysis that is at more finely grained, by at least one step. 

If you are studying an organism, they want an explanation at the level of organs. 

If you’re studying organs, they want an explanation at the level of tissue.

If you’re studying cells, they want an explanation at the level of molecules.

(At least in biology, we usually stop there and don’t require explanations at the quantum level. Thank goodness.)

So seeing the challenges of the problems and the successes gained from these these molecular approaches helps me see why funding agencies like them. They have a proven track record.

I’ve also found that many students struggle to articulate hypotheses. I wonder if early career researchers writing their grants might also be struggling with this.

References

Tinbergen, N. 1963. On aims and methods in ethology. Ethology 20(4): 410-433.

NSF GRFP award skew in 2021

Matthew Cover pulled numbers I was going to look for on this year’s graduate research fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF):

Congrats to the 13 current Cal State University students who were awarded NSF GRFPs!! For context, that is fewer awards to the largest 4-year system in the country (0.5million) than Stanford- 81, MIT- 76, Princeton- 34, Northwestern- 30, Yale- 26, Chicago- 22, Rice- 22, Duke- 20

I’ve been talking this a few years now, so why stop?

You know, there are some problems in academia that you recognize are going to be slow to fix because they rely on cultural changes.

This is not one of them. 

The NSF could dictate how awards are going to be distributed. But the agency seems unwilling to have that conversation.

Update, 5 April 2021: Megan Barkdull ran some numbers for this year’s awards. She focused on institutional “prestige” and found, unsurprisingly, that the Ivy league universities and their peers gobble up most of the awards. Her full analysis is here.

Related posts

The NSF GRFP problem, 2020 edition
Fewer shots, more diversity?
The NSF GRFP problem continues

External links

NSF Graduate Fellowships are a part of the problem

 

 

Tuesday Crustie: Cinnamon Toast Crustie

The scandal of the day on Twitter: Jensen Karp asking why there appear to be bits of shrimp in his cereal.

The company claims they couldn’t possibly be shrimp, but those sure look like a telson and uropods to me.

Australia’s CSIRO expends welfare guidelines to include decapod crustaceans

The Crustacean Compassion website is reporting that Australia’s major government research agency, CSIRO, will now be requiring ethics approval for research on decapod crustaceans.

I’m searching the CSIRO website, but can’t find the specific policy.

External links

Professor Culum Brown on protecting decapods in scientific research

Austin bats: A case study in successful science communication

Check out the bike rack on the right. It’s a picture I took in Austin, Texas. People in Austin love bats now.

They didn’t always.

The podcast 99 Percent Invisible just dropped a great episode that looks at how the bats under an Austin bridge went from being viewed as terrors that needed to be eradicated to a major tourist attraction.

Lessons for science communication?

The key advocate for bats, Merlin Tuttle, was no carpetbagger. He moved to Austin and became part of the community he wanted to change.

He built a team. It wasn’t just Merlin – he had started a whole conservation group.

He got the right visuals. He didn’t photograph bats while echolocating because their mouth was open and they were showing their sharp teeth. He photographed them so they looked like they smiling.

Perhaps most important, he was patient and never called people stupid.

This is an incredible success story for conservation. It should be a case study in classes on science communication.

External links

The batman and the bridge builder

It’s my birthday but you get the gift

Yes, I have successfully completed another trip around the sun. Rather than a birthday present, you can do me a favour: pre-order my book!

The Better Posters book is currently scheduled for release in mid-April, 2021. The exact date is hard to say, because the COVID-19 pandemic is still creating delays and uncertainty in the production and shipping process. It’s been a long journey, to say the least. 

Pre-orders help books tremendously, and I would like to sell enough copies to have to write a second edition. You can pre-order from the publisher here and get a big 30% discount by using the code “POSTERS30” at check-out.

You could also recommend your university librarian purchase this!

Thank you for your support!

External links

Pelagic Publishing site for Better Posters

Author jitters

I finished reading the latest proofs of the Better Posters book this week. Having just done that a couple of days ago, I appreciate this quote from Charles Darwin.

When I think of the many cases of men who have studied one subject for years, and have persuaded themselves of the truth of the foolishest doctrines, I feel sometimes a little frightened, whether I may not be one of these monomaniacs.

This was in a letter to one Dr. W.B. Carpenter in 1859, about none other than Darwin’s most famous work, On the Origin of Species. Darwin wrote the letter the same month the book was released and sold out in a day. I found the quote mentioned in this article. 

Re-reading my own book more than a year after finishing the manuscript and that nobody else has seen yet (besides the publisher’s staff) brings up “Did I just write something that nobody else will want to read?” thoughts.

Also: I love Darwin’s hat and think there should be a new version that evolutionary biologists can buy.

Eagles and Falcon

 I’ve mentioned before that the Eagle from Space: 1999 is my favourite spaceship.

What I didn’t know what its role in my favourite space move, the first Star Wars. 

I knew the Milleneum Falcon went through several redesigns. The shots inside of the Falcon don’t always make sense relative to the exterior, because the Falcon was originally the ship that became the rebel blackade runner.

What I didn’t know was that a good part of the reason the design changed was that it looked just a little too much like the Eagle transporter.

Which, side by side, I can see.

External links

FAB Facts: Star Wars’ Millenium Falcon almost looked like a Space:1999 Eagle

The complete history of the Millenium Falcon

The worm lizard that’s rather like a whale

May I introduce Bipes biporus, also known as the Mexican mole lizard or Belding’s mole lizard.

It’s an odd and fascinating beast, because it has arms (forelimbs) but no legs (hindlimbs). You can see its front legs very well in the picture above. They even look pretty chunky relative to the head.

But there are no obvious rear legs.

There are tiny remnants of leg bones in the back of the animal, but they are not visible just by looking at the animal.

Above is Figure 8 from Zangerl (1945).

A more recent paper (Kearney and Stuart 2004) says Blanus (another worm lizard genus) has forelimb skeletal elements but only vestiges of rear limbs. But pictures of Blanus don’t show obvious limbs like Bipes does.

Why do I say this worm lizard is like a whale? Because like whales, only the forelimbs are visible. The hindlimbs are all but lost. In some ways, the worm lizard is a more impressive specimen of evolution because its forelimbs are still obviously arms, unlike the flipper of a whale, which is so heavily modified that its relationship to out own arms is obscured.

References

Kearney M,  Stuart BL. 2004. Repeated evolution of limblessness and digging heads in worm lizards revealed by DNA from old bones. Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B. 271: 1677–1683. http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2004.2771

Zangerl R. 1945. Contributions to the Osteology of the Post-Cranial Skeleton of the Amphisbaenidae. American Midland Naturalist 33: 764–780.

Classes taught by the dead and copyright

I feel like this should be a bigger story.

HI EXCUSE ME, I just found out the the prof for this online course I’m taking died in 2019 and he’s technically still giving classes since he’s literally my prof for this course and I’m learning from lectures recorded before his passing

..........it’s a great class but WHAT

IDK SOMETHING ABOUT IT IS WEIRD

I mean, I guess I technically read texts written by people who’ve passed all the time, but it’s the fact that I looked up his email to send him a question and PULLED UP HIS MEMORIAM INSTEAD that just THREW ME OFF A LITTLE

...that feeling when a tenured professor is still giving classes from beyond the grave

There’s job security, then there’s this lmfao.

Also like, all dystopian “you can retire when you’re dead” jabs @ the institution aside—this is actually really sad and somebody should have realized that.

This prof is this sweet old French guy who’s just absolutely thrilled to talk paintings of snow and horses, and somehow he always manages to make it interesting, making you care about something you truly thought could not possibly be that interesting.

It’s fucking sad man wtf

Why would you not tell someone that? Do you think students just don’t give a shit about the people they spend months learning from?

And like, it’s shitty that won’t get to thank him for making all of this information so engaging and accessible

I tend to you know...actually talk to my teachers a lot?

Idk man it’s just a weird thing to find out when you’re looking for an email address.

I’m getting a little tired of people comparing teachers to reusable objects so I’m going to go ahead and mute this lmao.

It’s weird to romanticize labor the way some of you do, and it’s weird to act like it’s normal to just not tell students that their teachers dead, goodnight!

Emphasis added.

The last time I was in the faculty senate at UTRGV, a recurring argument was about who owned courses that were created for online teaching. At the time, I thought there was far too much time spent discussing the matter.

But this example shows exactly why that question of who controls course materials matters. It is a sharp and sad reminder that as far as many institutions are concerned, teaching does not require personal interaction if pure Skinner boxing will do. Professors do not even rise to the level of interchangeable cogs. Professors are a mere convenience once they have created content.

External links

Dead man teaching (Added 26 January 2021; The Chronicle of Higher Education caught up)

I’m in Abominable Science! (No, not like that)

A friend of mine sent me a screenshot of a page from Abominable Science: Origins of the Yeti, Nessie, and Other Famous Cryptids by Daniel Loxton and Donald Prothero.

It reads:

Invertebrate neuroethologist Zen Faulkes noted further that DeNovo lists no editor, no editorial board, no physical address—not even a telephone number: “The whole thing looks completely dodgy, with the lack of any identifiable names being the one screaming warning to stay away from this journal. Far, far away.”

The excerpt is from this blog post about the claim of sasquatch DNA being sequenced back in 2013. (Most scientists were deeply unconvinced by this.)

I’ve published enough stuff that getting cited is usually not worth a blog post. But having blog posts cited in real physical books still tickles me and is something a little unusual and wonderful.

And I think it speaks to something that makes the rounds now and then: the role of blogging in the 2020s. People occasionally pronounce blogs “dead.” While blogging isn’t a “scene” like it was in the late 2000s, a blog has a lifespan that social media just does not. Being cited in this book is one tiny little piece of evidence of that.

Related posts

Sasquatch DNA: new journal or vanity press?

External links

Abominable Science

Imagine a word ruled by scientists? No thanks

There’s a graphic on Instagram from August that started making the rounds on Twitter. It says, “imagine a world run by scientists instead of politicians.”

I do not like it.

I’m not showing the picture because I don’t think it deserves more eyeballs, but for the record, the people shown are: Lawrence Krauss, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sam Harris, Michiu Kaku, Richard Dawkins, and Leonard Susskind.

First, the image shows only men. That alone marks it as completely tone deaf.

Second, several of the people shown have amply demonstrated that they do not have leadership ability. Two were investigated for sexual misconduct. One was found guilty of sexual misconduct and took money from Jeffrey Epstein. Others are combative or flaky.

Third, the men (because yeah) chosen are mostly science communicators more than scientists. Sam Harris is a pop science author, not a active scientist. He’s done very little original science, ever. The others have stronger academic bona fides, but most are better known for being on television than publishing original research.

It’s so bad, I wonder if this image is supposed to be an ironic warning of the perils of science politicians. “Meet the new old men, same as the old old men, but with less experience.”

Pick where you publish wisely

Saw a complaint about how PLOS had created predatory journals and made publication inaccessible through its article processing charge (APC) business model.

When PLOS ONE started, there was no guarantee the APC  model would work. It works because scientists choose to publish there, fully well aware of the costs.

It’s not a journal’s fault that scientists use them. Scientists have options. If you don't like a business model, don’t submit there. Then, convince colleagues.

My resolve not to shoot the hostage is tested

I’ve written before about how refusing to review a paper because you don’t like a journal hurts authors more than editors or publishers. I called refusing to review “shooting the hostage.”

I am being sorely tested in my resolve not to shoot the hostage.

MDPI is a publisher already short of good will for their amateurish practices. Their president last week seems intend in burning any remaining good will by spouting pretty fascist-sounding rhetoric.

When I got an invitation to review yesterday, I legitimately couldn’t do it because I’m moving. But it was a lot easier to say “No” than it would have been otherwise.

Lessons from bad movie makers

Ed Wood, Jr. is frequently described as “incompetent.”

He made films that are usually regarded as some of the worst ever made, like Glen or Glenda, Bride of the Monster, and Plan 9 from Outer Space.

But he shipped.

He finished movies. He got them out so that people could see them.

In doing so, he accomplished more than people who say, “Maybe one day...”

People will still die rather than change their minds

Six months ago, I wrote about how American patients dying of COVID-19 would fight with physicians who were trying to save them because they didn’t believe the virus was real.

Six months and 154,293 deaths later, and people... People. Still. Don’t. Think. This. Is. Real.

 New Day reports:

A South Dakota ER nurse @JodiDoering says her Covid-19 patients often “don’t want to believe that Covid is real.”

“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real.’ And when they should be... Facetiming their families, they’re filled with anger and hatred.”

It’s sad and depressing. Particularly when we have promising news that COVID-19 vaccines look like they will work.

Update, 17 November 2020: I’m heartened to hear of at least one person who changed his mind.

He mentions hating “fake news”. He says, “I don’t think covids is really more than a flu.“ I clarified, “Now you think differently though?”

He replies, “No the same. I should just take vitamins for my immune system. They (news) are making it a big deal.”

I’m shocked.

I’m at a loss for words. Here I am basically wrapped in tarp, here he is in a Covid ICU. How can you deny the validity of covid? How is this possible? Misinformation is literally killing people in mass, I think to myself.

Typically as a nurse we usually put on a face. We don’t tell our patients another patient just died. We don’t tell them what we just saw. We walk in to care for that patient as they are. We give them our full unbiased care.

I make a choice. Something I’ve never done. I say, “To be honest this is my last shift. You’re the only patient of 25 that has been able to speak to me today or is even aware I’m here.”

He’s surprised but doubtful and asks if other people are doing as well as him. I tell him I’ve never seen so many people SO very sick.

“Really?” He asks if a lot of people have died.

I’m brutally honest. I tell him in 10 years of being a nurse I’ve done more CPR and seen more people die in the last 2 weeks than I have in my entire career combined.

His tone changes, he seems to have understood the gravity of what I’m saying. He apologizes.

Thank you, Ashley.

Related posts

Some people will literally die rather than change their minds

 

Student cheating does not justify every step taken to stop it

Consider the following scenario.

You are a young person. Let’s say a woman, for the sake of argument. Like many others, you are mostly working at home. You may not have a lot of your own space at home, if you’re living with family or roommates.

As part of your professional obligations, you are working with a more senior person. Let’s say a man, for the sake of argument.

Your supervisor informs you that you have to install software on your computer that allows him to turn on the camera so he can watch you.

If you are interrupted by anyone, there will be serious professional repercussions. So you may have to do this work someplace private, like your bedroom.

You’re informed that the room has to be well lit and you have to dress a certain way while you’re doing the work.

If you don’t do this, there will be serious professional repercussions.

So you have older man demanding a young woman let him take video of her in her home or he’ll retaliate.

Tell me that’s not creepy.  

Yet that’s exactly what is happening at universities all over North America. Professors are requiring students install some sort of “proctoring software” for exams and tests.

Of course, unlike my hypothetical scenario above, either the student or professor could be a different gender than the one I described. I picked the genders I did because I think it makes the potential for creepiness clearer. 

But the intrusiveness is a problem regardless. 

I wasn’t exaggerating about dictating what you can wear. This example shows professors dictating what students can have on their heads. That’s religious issue for some students, is it not?

That’s on top of issues like this one making the rounds on Twitter. A student got a zero on an exam because she read questions out loud. The software flagged this. 

It’s not clear if the software or the instructor decided that this constituted cheating, but someone, somewhere decided that the only possible reason a student might talk during an exam was to speak to a confederate to cheat. That’s stupid.

There seems to be only one counter to pointing out these concerns.

“But they’ll cheat.”

And many professors will be quick to detail all the times they caught students cheating in one way or another.

Academic integrity is important. I get that. The degree has value because people trust that it represents a fair assessment of a student’s internalized knowledge and abilities.

But the presence of cheating alone doe not justify any and all actions that professors might take in the name of “academic integrity.”

There is such a thing as “proportionate response.”

If you are worried about someone walking on your property, you put up a sign and put locks on your doors. You do not install a minefield to blow up people. Because that would not be a proportionate response to the problem.

Trusting students is hard. Some students will abuse that trust. But there is a line between thoughtful use of measures designed to say, “Cheating is not okay, so don’t do it” and an overblown invasion of students’ lives.

Anyone more worried about students cheating than they are about how to get students excited about the material and learn has already lost the battle. - Amelia Lindsay

Related posts

The academic equivalent of “voter fraud”

9 circles of hell of a scientific paper publishing

In this YouTube video, “9 circles of hell of a scientific paper publishing, or the world is full of non-elephants,” one of my less pleasant publication stories come up as an example of less than ideal publication processes.

Excerpt from video:

It took almost 3 years to publish an article compared to two years of doing the research in sand crabs. Unfortunately, I am even not able to to check out this article, as it is pay walled for ten dollars. Of course this case is extreme but sometimes even two, three, four months are crucial not only for scientists’ career but also for the impact and relevance of this research for the society that actually paid for it.

The video also features Björn Brembs, who’s consistently been one of the best commentators of academic publishing.

External links

9 circles of hell of a scientific paper publishing, or the world is full of non-elephants

Related posts

1,017 days: when publishing the paper takes longer than the project

Konrad Lorenz was a Nazi and a Nobel laureate

(This was written for a behaviour class I am teaching this semester.)

Konrad Lorenz was an important figure in the development of the science of animal behaviour. But I also want to acknowledge that he was a member of the German National Socialist party in the 1930s (Kalikow 2020). Which is to say, Konrad Lorenz was a literal Nazi.

Munz described his party affiliation as “an ugly mix of careerism and genuine enthusiasm for the Nazi regime.” Some of his writing (not necessarily his scientific articles, but his letters and the like) showed many anti-Semitic attitudes and arguments for eugenics.

Lorenz was never in the military during World War II. (Correction, 7 October 2020: Lorenz served as a military physician in Poland near the end of the war. Kalikow 2020.) He was not personally pushing people to their deaths. After the war, he said that he was never a party member. It’s not clear to me whether his attitudes ever changed.

I bring this up because there’s a tendency to talk only about scientists’ research contributions, and gloss over or ignore other things they’ve done, particularly when those actions are distasteful or horrible. We like it when people are consistent. We like it when people who create work that is useful, powerful, or enjoyable are also decent human beings.

That is, unfortunately, not always the case.

An author who created a world you love might be racist, homophobic, or transphobic. An actor you enjoy watching might end up doing a perp walk for some crime or misdemeanor. A song you love might be sung by someone who was abusive. And it can makes it hard to sing that song that you love.

But we do ourselves no favours by acting as though only the science matters. It matters when someone was a bigot or a bully or whatever. Real people suffer real hurt because of those attitudes. We have to grapple with the fact that terrible people can do good science.

Part of that is owning up to the dark corners of scientific history. That’s one small part of how we treat people in science better now and in the future.

Reference

Kalikow TJ. 2020. Konrad Lorenz on human degeneration and social decline: a chronic preoccupation. Animal Behaviour 164: 267-272. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2020.01.007

Munz T. 2011. “My goose child Martina”:The multiple uses of geese in the writings of Konrad Lorenz. Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 41(4): 405–446. https://doi.org/10.1525/hsns.2011.41.4.405 

Sax B. 1997. What is a "Jewish Dog"? Konrad Lorenz and the cult of wildness. Society & Animals 5(1): 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1163/156853097X00196