On showing the data

If I could boil things down to my most fundamental criticism of the highly competitive chase for the “get” of a very high Impact Factor journal acceptance in science, it is the inefficiency.

GlamourDouchery of this type is an inefficient way to do science.

This is because of several factors related to the fundamental fact that if the science you conduct isn’t published it may as well never have happened.

Science is an incremental business, ever built upon the foundations and structures created by those who came before. And built in sometimes friendly, sometimes uneasy collaboration with peers. No science stands alone.

Science these days is also a very large enterprise with many, many thousands of people beavering away at various topics. It is nearly impossible to think of a research program or project that doesn’t benefit by the existence of peer labs doing somewhat-related work.

Consequently, it is a near truism that all science benefits from the quickest and comprehensive knowledge of what other folks are doing.

The “get” of an extremely high Impact Factor Journal article acceptance requires that the authors, editors and reviewers temporarily suspend disbelief and engage in the mass fantasy that this is not the case. The participants engage in the fantasy that this work under consideration is the first and best and highly original. That it builds so fundamentally different an edifice that the vast majority of the credit adheres to the authors and not to any part of the edifice of science upon which they are building.

This means that the prospective GlamourArticle authors are highly motivated to keep a enormous amount of their progress under wraps until they are ready to reveal this new fine stand-alone structure.

Otherwise, someone else might copy them. Leverage their clever advances. Build a competing tower right next door and overshadow any neighboring accomplishments. Which, of course, builds the city faster….but it sure doesn’t give the original team as much credit.

The average Glamour Article is also an ENORMOUS amount of work. Many, many person years go into creating one. Many people who would otherwise get a decent amount of credit for laying a straight and true foundation will now be entirely overlooked in the aura of the completed master work. They will never become architects themselves, of course. How could they? Even if they travel to Society Journal Burg, there is no record of them being the one to detail the windows or come up with a brilliant new way to mix the mortar. That was just scut work for throwaway labor, don’t you know.

But the real problem is that the collaborative process between builders is hindered. Slowed for years. The dissemination of tools and approaches has to wait until the entire tower is revealed.

Inefficiency. Slowness. These are the concerns.

Sure, it is also a problem that the builders of the average Glamour Article tower may not share all their work even after the shroud has been removed. It would be nice to let everyone know just where the granite was found, how it was quarried and something about the brand new amazing mortar that (who was that anonymous laborer again? shrug) created. But there isn’t really any pay for that and the original team has moved on. Good luck. So yes, it would be good to require them to show their work at the end.

Much, much more important, however, is that they show each part of the tower as it is being created. I mean, no, I don’t think people need to work with a hundred eyes tracking their every move. I don’t think every little mistake has to be revealed, nor do I think we necessarily need to know how each laborer holds her trowel. But it would be nice to show off the foundation when it is built. To reveal the clever staircase and the detailing around the windows once they are installed. Then each sub-team can get their day in the sun. Get the recognition they deserve.

[And if they are feeling a little oppressed, screw it, they can leave and take their credit with them. And their advances in knowledge can be spread to another town who will be happy to hire this credentialed foundation builder instead of some grumpy nobody who only claims to have built a foundation.]

The competition for Glamour Article building can’t really catch up directly, after all it takes a good bit of work to lay a foundation or create a new window design. They can copy techniques and leverage them, but there is less chance of an out and out scoop of the full project.

So if the real problem is inefficiency, Dear Reader, the solution is most assuredly the incremental reveal of progress made. We don’t need to watch the stirring and the endless recipes for mortar that have been attempted, we just need to know how the successful one was made. And to see the sections of the tower as they are completed.

Ironically enough, this is how it is done outside of GlamourCity. In Normalville, the builders do show their work. Not all of it in nauseating detail but incrementally. Sections are shown as they are completed. It is not necessary to wait for the roof to be laid to show the novel floorplan or for the paint to be on to show the craft that went into the floor joists.

This is a much more efficient way to advance.

It has to be, since resources are scarce and people in Society Burgh kind of give a shit if one of their neighbors is crushed under a block of limestone. And care if an improperly supported beam cracks and they have to get a new one.

This is unlike the approach of Glamour City where they just curse the laborer and draft three new ones to lift the block into place. And pull another beam out of their unending pile of lumber.

Discussion

It’s been a bit since I pontificated on discourse. (I know PhysioProffe really misses these types of blather.) I do recommend you read those prior comments.

For today though, a more conciliatory note.

While we might ferociously stick to our position, talking points and arguments in certain scenarios, if we really genuinely want to advance a discussion this can be unwise.

It is essential to drop your position and pugnacity for a second or two and really, genuinely consider where the other person is coming from.

To walk the proverbial mile in their shoes.

And above all else, to think hard about how your stance and opinions appear to other people. This requires including how they perceive you instead of how you perceive yourself.

It can also help to credit the other person’s concerns as if they were as important to them as your concerns are to you. Because chances are this is indeed the case.

I find myself in yet another knock down argument with a guy who, I am pretty sure, I share a lot of fundamental concerns with. On the face of it.

Yet I am convinced this guy is almost pathologically unable to genuinely recognize and consider the viewpoint and circumstances of other people.

There are generally two reasons for this.

First, a sort of overweening personal arrogance that, I am sad to report, is endemic to academics. This is the sort of arrogance born of a lifetime of being smarter than most other people, burnished by happening into a position of (modest, this is academics, mind) power in which many people do not challenge you. Underscored by a profession in which, despite the credit being supposed to come from the work you have done, obsessively views accomplishments as the subsidiary outcome of personal worth.

I don’t think, after a few go-rounds with this fine chap, that this is the problem.

This leaves me with the second problem. Wherein the inability to budge off talking points, the refusal to see complexity of human trajectories and the blindness to others’ lived experience comes from a theological adherence to a higher calling.

Religion, in essence.

It does funny things to people.

I do my fair share of preaching around this blog. And I do my fair share of sticking to my talking points.

But anyone who has been around long knows that what I’m really addicted to is the differential lived experiences of those of you more or less in the broader envelopes of academics, academic science and particularly the subfields that fall under the broad scope of Biology.

I am addicted to walking the mile in your smelly-arsed shoes folks.