After a recent web seminar I hosted to help people write grants that are more likely to get funded, I got a note from a writer overseas that raised an interesting point about “fundability” and the progress of science (we’ll call him A to preserve anonymity).

He wrote:

THe major point I am raising though refers to the type of science. IN the western society model, incorporating science as one among other activities, the spiral has been closing down and down on the equation “potential applicative outcome=easy funding” Now I am not arguing against the need for new technology and new achievements, but basic science has been the foundation of every possible applicative science, while now the almost desperate need for immediate money leads the investors to neglect, or even worse, to design selection procedures that will specifically leave basic science out of most of the funding schemes.

If you have been working for a lifetime now (I am 53) in basic science and, very sadly, you are still strongly convinced of its value, it is very difficult to pretend to be a different type of scientist to adapt to the various funding strategies/topics.

BAsic science has never had “the brilliant idea that makes a project cool” at least not “a priori” though afterwards it gave us things such as DNA structure and fucntion or cyclin-cdk mechanism for cell cycel progression control, among others. Because it is felt as almost useless nowadays (as if we knew everything almost), it makes it really difficult to build a gap, a contrast, nothing.

Have you elaborated on this aspect? How would one get to the same strategy if the basical “why do we need it” is only very hardly fulfilled, especially considering the balance (money spent vs money income due to the results)?

At the risk of giving you the impression that Idaho is full of backwoods uneducated types, I’m going to mention a recent article about the “vaccination debate” here in Idaho.

The article tells the story of a group of anti-immunization crusaders in Northern Idaho through the lens of two contrasting women. One of these is the leader of the anti-immunization folks, Ingri Cassel. The other is state epidemiologist Christine Hahn.

I’m not going to wade into the depths of the vaccination debate except to say that the vast majority of research points to vaccines being effective, and as a scientist, I like to make decisions based on data, rather than just speculation (when data is available, at least).

But what I will wade into is the communication debate. The article says about Cassel that she’s a “heart-on-her-sleeve rabblerouser who takes on everyone.” It says about Hahn that she “has no desire to engage in a heated debate over vaccinations.”

And that, my friends, is why science is going to loose a battle, yet again.

If you’ve noticed the alarming trend towards science loosing battles against all manner of crazies, you’ve got your reason why in the two quotes above.

The non-science folks are passionate. They tell stories. They pound the pavement. They “market” their ideas.

And most of the scientists on the other side just sit there thinking that “the facts will speak for themselves.”

No, facts don’t speak. Not now, not ever.

The public doesn’t care about the subtle nuances of immunogenicity or fancy buzzwords like that. They listen to passion and stories (yes, anecdotal ones).

If you think this problem is isolated to just a few loonies in Northern Idaho, think again. This is a significant trend that we’ve seen happen in the climate change debates, in the evolution vs creationism, and many more.

If science is going to prevail, scientists are going to have to start being passionate communicators for the value of what they do. Otherwise, we may be doomed.

A friend just posted a message to me on Facebook: “How is it going with your new position?  BTW, when I read this article, I thought of you.”

The “this article” is in The Nation magazine, and is titled “The Crisis in Higher Education.”

Yes, it’s bad out there in many ways, and not getting better.

But….

I like to take the optimistic view of things.  Challenges and problems are there to help us learn lessons.  This “crisis in higher ed” is a major challenge.  But the system was broken, and needs fixing, and without a “crisis,” change would never happen.

Life’s status quo is too powerful a force to be torn down by anything but crisis.

This crisis presents an opportunity that wasn’t there before: to actually change the system for the better.

On the downside, I expect that this crisis will get worse before university administrators really wake up to what’s going on.

On the upside, when it happens, I expect there will be a significant phase change back towards some semblance of sanity in the system (or, maybe not… in which case, academia will collapse and something better will take its place, like internet-based universities and crowd sourced science).

In the meantime, if you’re already in academe and seeking to improve your odds, you can grab my “Backdoor to Funding Report” for free, without having to sign up for anything or even give out your email address.  It’s my way of saying “thank you for reading.”

My Father the scientist circa 1935

Originally I was going to post just about being thankful.

See, despite shrinking budgets and challenging times, we scientists are a lucky group – especially those of us who have benefitted from the budget largesse of the USA towards our endeavor.

When else in history has any society spent so much money on people simply exploring and figuring out who the world works?  Never.  It’s actually amazing if you think about it.

We are so lucky to be living in a time when society has had money to spare for such things.  I can only hope it will continue in the future.

So when lamenting about the challenges that we face, it is good to keep this in mind.  Just imagine if, instead, we were beholden to rich patrons to fund our work – ones whose tastes were fickle and craven?

We’ve got something to be thankful for!

But … (there’s always a but…)

I want to say “no thanks” to university bureaucracies.  I don’t know about you, but in my own case, I’ve seen so much sclerotic implementation of arcane and byzantine architectures of arbitrary rules that my head is ready to explode.

Seriously – if you think about it, almost half of all money that NIH, NSF, and other agencies give out as grants go to fund the university bureaucracies.

I don’t think anyone set out to make these for malevolent purposes.  Quite the opposite, they grew out of the desire to “protect” and “do good.”  But in the ones I’ve observed so far, they’re like trees whose branches have grown too big for the trunk.  They soon topple over by their own weight.

In other words, they are big money pits.

And that’s a real shame.  Given that we have had this tremendous opportunity to do great science, and to have a big part of the money and momentum sucked away by bureaucracy is simply a damn shame.

So, I give one thumbs up to being thankful for the opportunity to do great science

And I give one thumbs down (no thanks) to bloated university bureaucracy.

What about you? Thanks or no thanks?  I want to hear from you.

ps – have you grabbed your copy of the free report on the five keys to a successful science career yet?

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.

I was recently speaking to an entrepeneurial fellow, and he made a comment that stuck in my mind: “people like you and I are unemployable.”

It didn’t take me long to realize that he was right.

He was referring, overall, to the entrepeneur personality.

The “problem” with entrepreneurs is that they can’t just accept the way things are – they have to go around always trying to make things “better”.

That’s great if you’re starting a new business, or running a certain kind of science lab.

It’s not so great if you find yourself embedded in a stiff bureaucracy that is reticent to any kind of change.

The reference to being unemployable is that people like he – and myself – would drive most traditional managers/bosses crazy. Because we can’t leave well enough alone. We can’t let tradition stand. We can’t do something just because someone told us to do it – we have to understand “why” we are doing it – and then try to improve upon it.

It’s a sad statement about the stultification of most jobs.

Maybe that’s why I know of so many people who are giving up regular jobs to venture out on their own in business or consulting. It seems that more than just a few people realize that they can no longer stifle themselves enough to be “employable”.

One of my long-term goals is to figure out how to do science without having to do the bureaucracy. You may think it is wishful thinking, but I have a plan (kind of like the Cylons).

Maybe I’ll start an interdisciplinary research institute that is strucutred to be size and bureaucracy limited. Wouldn’t that be nice?

consulting, and

What is the cost of Open Source publishing?

Recently the International Society for Computational Biology put out a request for feedback on their draft Literature Open Public Access Policy Statement.

The goal is laudable: encourage all computational biology researchers to publish their work where it can be openly accessed by all.

This goal makes sense as long as the public is paying for the research being done. When the public pays, the work should be open access.

Right now, in the US and some European nations, the public pays well for science. The NIH alone doles out somewhere north of $10 billion per year in extramural, R01 style funding. And, the NIH has a public access policy in place, that mandates Open Access to the results supported by these monies.

I agree that federal granting agencies should mandate open access publishing, precisely because the funding comes from the public.

However, the ISCB’s policy seems to imply that, regardless of funding source, all results should be “open access” (which usually means the author has to pay to publish and share his/her results).

There’s a particular myopia among many scientists I know that our recent economic woes are just a little “blip” and that soon we’ll return to the good old days of solid, reliable public science funding.

If only it were so (I’d love nothing more than that).

But the reality is, every Western government (and some eastern ones, like Japan) are groaning under unprecedented debt loads. These are debt loads that range from 50%-200% or more of the GDP (note that these numbers don’t account for the massive US stimulus and bank bailouts, which by some estimates are on track to more than double the debt numbers).

Historically, countries carrying those kind of debt loads always run into economic troubles. Not of the minor kind, but of the major kind (depressions, currency collapses, bank panics, rampant inflationary bouts, etc).

Witness the recent turmoil in Greece. That turmoil is only the tip of the iceberg. Some argue that USA’s debt position is actually worse than Greece’s, as a percent of GDP (for a sobering look, have a read here).

Why should you, the scientist, care?

Because, when this debt comes calling, governments are going to be looking for things to cut. Lots of things to cut. (Either that and/or governments will inflate our way out of this, meaning that your grants won’t get cut, but your dollars will buy only a fraction of what they do now).

How does this relate to ISCB’s call?

Because it appears to reflect a line of thinking that is based on the present situation of relatively lavish public funding. It is projecting the recent past (30 years of great science funding) into the future (the next 30 years are unlikely to be like the last 30!).

However, if or when the funding becomes less lavish, who will pay for our science? And if someone besides the government is paying (e.g. companies, investors, crowdsourcing, etc), should we really be mandating “open access?”

That seems like an unfunded mandate.

I share the idealism of open access. My lab shares its software, and most of our publications are in Open Access journals (plus, now we have to, due to the NIH rules).

Yet that idealism doesn’t reflect that it costs money to do science, and that most scientists can’t fund it as a hobby out of their own pockets.

Until food and housing become Open Access, the economics of mandating Open Access publishing without identifying how it will be paid for it seems doomed to failure.

—

One quick note: if this is too doomerish and gets you into a depressive funk (like I was in for about two years when I learned how deep our economic doo doo is), don’t let it do that to you. Instead, take action to insulate yourself!

It is part of a natural cycle. There are great excesses in the systems. They will sort themselves out.

In the meantime, you need to be quick on your feet, adaptable, and entrepreneurial. Those attributes will get you through the coming challenges much better than if you’re ill prepared.

But, don’t expect to just sit by and have this leave you unscathed. It won’t.

And that is why I’m writing a book about “marketing your science” — to add entrepreneurial skills to the average scientist’s toolbox (the book is going well, I just finished another chapter).