I’ve long thought that university administrations had difficulty with the concept of running their “business” efficiently. Now I have proof.

Someone that I know very well (snicker) has had some funding for a few years to develop software infrastructure for next-gen sequencing data. This is important work, since next-gen data poses quite a challenge. The work was done through NC State funds for cancer research.

After spending a lot of time and money building a great team, and getting the project seriously underway… the person just received an email from an administrator. The administrator said:

“We just got paperwork to transfer all your people off this account. Please let me know what account to transfer them to.”

Haha. Like this investigator has another pool of $200k/year lying around.

Unless the person(s) behind this unexpected move change their minds, it’s going to be interesting times in the affected lab.

Nobody talked to the PI about the status of the project. Nobody gave any warning. Instead, they did the most cowardly thing possible in sending paperwork to a departmental administrator, so she could let the PI know the bad news (with zero notice).

Hello?

Let’s look at this from only one angle: good use of taxpayer funds. Let’s consider how useful it was to spend nearly $400k to build a team and get the project going – and then cancel it without warning.

Bye bye $400k.

Now that I’ve finished my book on grant writing, I think the book I’m planning to write about dysfunctional bureaucracy at universities just moved up in priority.

How dare you to “speculate” about what your results might mean?

That’s the attitude I’ve received twice now, from two different reviewers, on two different papers.

In the latest case, we did some work related to antibiotic resistance, and we found interesting new pathways activated in one resistant strain.

At the end of the paper, we speculated about what these pathways might be doing. We even came up with a model for it.

We didn’t claim that this was “the correct answer” – we just said, “hey, here’s our model, it’s the best we can come up with given what we know so far.”

The important thing about a model is that then you have something to test.

Science always proceeds in two stages:

1. Start with a model (e.g. a hypothesis)
2. Test that hypothesis, attempting to falsify it

For some reason, certain people seem to think that science solely consists of step number 2 – falsifying.

But, actually, step 1 is just as important, if not more. Step 1 is what leads to the real innovative leaps (and things like Nobel prizes).

But, because it involves “creativity,” and because nobody really understands what “creativity” is (a topic for a future book of mine), it gets swept under the rug.

Hence, when we use our creativity to speculate and build a model of what our results might mean, we get reviewers who say: OMG, hey, that’s way too speculative! You shouldn’t put that in your paper!

Let’s consider two scenarios:

1. We publish a paper with just the results, giving no interpretation/speculation.

2. We publish a paper with the results plus our speculative model of what they mean.

Which one of those two papers is more likely to lead someone to follow up to actually figure out what is going on?

In case number 2, where we provide the model, it is easy. We’ve provided a model, and all someone has to do is to test it (or prove it wrong).

In case number 1, we’ve only provided some data. Someone else can go test it to make sure that their data produces the same results – but if they also refuse to speculate about what it means, their paper will be even more boring than ours (unless it is a conflicting result).

Speculation is the cornerstone of science. It is what pushes things forward. I don’t like reading papers that leave me without any speculation as to what the results mean – they are dry and boring. And I certainly don’t like writing such papers because they are dry and boring.

As long as speculation is labeled for what it is, nobody is being misled. Any reader can choose to agree with it or disagree with it. In fact, that goes for any model of anything – they are just models, and they’re all speculative.

This comes back to my core motto: don’t be afraid to be proven wrong. You may be wrong. But if the fear of being wrong prevents you from speaking out and arguing a concept to the best of your ability, you’ll go forever unnoticed, into obscurity. I’ve decided that obscurity is not for me. What about you?

———

ps – The paper was accepted with only minor revisions, despite the objections of the reviewer over our speculative model.

Over at The Scientist, there’s a fruitful discussion about women in science.

I have very mixed feelings about wading into this, because it is fraught with issues.

But I’m not the timid sort, so I’m going to – in order to help you.

I get a bit tired of the rehashing of “its harder for women,” because, frankly, that conversation is not going to help you in your career.

Yes, it is harder for us women in science. My own life experiences have indicated that there are more barriers in front of us than in front of men. And I hope we can keep making progress on tearing those barriers down. But if there is progress, it is going to be slow – very slow.

Hence, this falls in the category of “out of your control.”

Spending mental energy on things out of your control is never productive.

For example, let’s say you’re only 6′ tall but you want to be an NBA basketball player. Which of the following approaches is the best one to take?

1. Lobby the NBA to incorporate some kind of handicapping for “short” folks into the rules, so that you are on “fair ground” with the 7′ and up crowd.

2. Work your hiney off to be an invaluable player, taking advantage of flying “under the radar” of taller players? Use your unique strengths – being compact and fast – to your advantage.

I don’t think #1 is going to get you very far.

But I happen to know of real-life cases of #2, such as championship basketball player John Stockton (who used to play for the Utah Jazz).

This discussion about “women being disadvantaged” allows us to point the blame at the outside world. Yes, the outside world is unfair. Just think of all those people living in poverty around the globe. That’s not fair. But is pointing that out and discussing it going to change it? Not much.

Pointing the blame at the outside world prevents us from being the very best that we can be – by doing the one thing that we can: changing ourselves.

For the open minded woman who wants to achieve greater success levels, she could learn a thing or two from men. Such as:

1. To be bold and take risks. Most Nobel prizes come from “bold” new avenues being opened up in science. A lot of us are timid about this. I think it comes from growing up in an environment where peer approval is the #1 priority (e.g. Junior high school). People who are looking for peer approval are unlikely to really take the bold risks. And so they’re unlikely to reap the rewards (because, reward is generally proportional to risk, to within some arbitrary coefficient).

2. Learn to promote yourself. A lot of us are really bad about this. We can’t promote ourselves, without feeling like we are violating some social taboo. But you won’t get anywhere in science (or life) without effectively promoting yourself. I’m not talking about standing up and saying “look at me, I’m great, I need to be appreciated.” That doesn’t work (I’ve tried, and that was a miserable failure). I’m talking about more subtle aspects of persuasion. Take, for example, my willingness to write on this blog, and take a stand on some issues here. That gets me recognized for some thought leadership. Ask yourself: is doing that an effective promotion of Morgan? If you answered “yes,” then find ways to do things like that. It is not by accident that I’m here writing a blog. I am here to help you, but helping you also helps me get recognized. So, become a thought leader in your field. For example, organize a conference… write review articles … start a blog … or whatever.

3. Be confident. Sociological studies have shown that something is different about men and women time and again: men are over confident about their abilities, and women are under-confident about their abilities. And that has major ramifications. If you are under-confident, you are far less likely to jump into something, getting yourself “in above your head.” Yet, most truly accomplished people that I know got to be accomplished by jumping in “above their heads,” then rising to meet the occasion. Once you’re in sink-or-swim mode, you’ll find untapped resources inside of yourself. Men do that all the time, simply because of their over confidence. We women do this much less often – and our careers suffer as a result. WIthout diving in, few of us will get the chance to force ourselves to “take it to the next level”. We quit before we start. I used to think that overconfidence was a bad thing, but now I realize it has its upsides. So, work on your confidence.

4. Play to your strengths. For example, writing seems to flow more easily for some women than for some men (please, no comments complaining about the stereotype, I use this only as an example). Once you identify a strength like that: use it! If you are a fast writer – use it to write more than your peers! It is as simple as that.

If we want to make a societal change in this situation, trying to effect structural change in academia will be slow and only moderately effective. It may happen, eventually, but structural change is the slowest kind there is. Individual change is very fast – once you decide to change (but, making the decision to change can be slow).

If we want to effect real societal change, a more effective approach would be going into high schools and colleges to give young women training in the above vital skills, before their habits get set in stone. We should be teaching young women the life skills of: self confidence, boldness, reasonable risk taking, and self promotion.

This would go far beyond just making better and more women scientists.

The headlines are in: “Craig Venter creates synthetic life form” (from the Guardian)

One would look at the comments and think that humans are playing “God”.

Sorry folks, we’re not there yet.

The genome is just a blueprint.

The genome itself isn’t “life”.

If you happen to think that a genome = life, try this experiment (it is simple): extract DNA from a cell, and go put it in a test tube, and see what happens.

Does it create cells that grow?

Nope. It does nothing.

What Venter’s group did (which includes my friend Clyde Hutchison) is simple: they transplanted a new blueprint into an already living cell.

Why is this such a big deal to people? Why do people blow this up into hyperbole, claiming this is “playing God?”

It is a marvelous technical accomplishment, but let’s be a little realistic. The method would not have worked without an already functioning/intact cell to transplant the blueprint into.

Furthermore, from my discussions with Clyde, they are far from the point of being able to actually “design” the blueprint from scratch.

In fact, on his recent visit to my campus, we mused about the idea of “genome designer” software – that would allow a person to pick out the attributes desired in a genome, then have the software design the DNA that will make that into being.

The conclusion? That software is probably decades away. (I’d love to be a part of creating that software, but the chance of getting a funding agency to pay for it is close to nil – they don’t like long term, creative ventures like that).

The genome that Venter’s group synthesized is based on an existing genome, already designed by nature and evolved over billions of years. They just copied its code, and added a few extras.

That’s like finding a blueprint, making a Xerox copy of it, and then putting your signature on it, then handing it to the architect. The resulting building may look much like the original, but that doesn’t mean that you are playing “the great architect in the sky”.

I don’t want to sound like a party pooper – this accomplishment is an important first step towards “designing life”. But it is only a first step.

Much akin to the first step towards building an automobile that consisted of strapping an engine to a buggy. Someone had to show that it was feasible, long before people like Henry T Ford figured out how to produce them efficiently.

This is like that – it is quite important in that it shows that it is possible.

But in terms of “Playing God”, this one falls short.