Zealots

One of my favorite thing about this blog, as you know Dear Reader, is the way it exposes me (and you) to the varied perspectives of academic scientists. Scientists that seemingly share a lot of workplace and career commonalities which, on examination, turn out to differ in both expected and unexpected ways. I think we all learn a lot about the conduct of science in the US and worldwide (to lesser extent) in this process.

Despite numerous pointed discussions about differences of experience and opinion for over a decade now, it still manages to surprise me that so many scientists cannot grasp a simple fact.

The way that you do science, the way the people around you do science and the way you think science should be done are always but one minor variant on a broad, broad distribution of behaviors and habits. Much of this is on clear display from public evidence. The journals that you read. The articles that you read. The ones that you don’t but can’t possible miss knowing that they exist. Grant funding agencies. Who gets funded. Universities. Med schools within Universities. Research Institutions or foundations. Your colleagues. Your mentors and trainees. Your grad school drinking buddies. Conference friends and academic society behaviors.

It is really hard to miss. IMO.

And yet.

We still have this species of dumbass on the internet that can’t get it through his* thick head that his experiences, opinions and, yes, those of his circle of reflecting room buddies and acolytes, is but a drop in the bucket.

And they almost invariable start bleating on about how their perspective is not only the right way to do things but that some other practice is unethical and immoral. Despite the evidence (again, often quite public evidence) that large swaths of scientists do their work in this totally other, and allegedly unethical, way.

The topic of the week is data leeching, aka the OpenAccessEleventy perspective that every data set you generate in your laboratory should be made available in easily understood, carefully curated format for anyone to download. These leeches then insist that anyone should be free to use these data in any way they choose with barely the slightest acknowledgment of the person who generated the data.

Nobody does this. Right? It’s a tiny minority of all academic scientific endeavor that meets this standard at present. Limited in the individuals, limited in the data types and limited in the scope even within most individuals who DO share data in this way. Maybe we are moving to a broader adoption of these practices. Maybe we will see significant advance. But we’re not there right now.

Pretending we are, with no apparent recognition of the relative proportions across academic science, verges on the insane. Yes, like literally delusional insanity**.

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*94.67% male

**I am not a psychiatristTM