T.E. Lawrence: My friends, we have been foolish. Auda will not come to Aqaba. Not for money…
Auda abu Tayi: No.
T.E. Lawrence: …for Feisal…
Auda abu Tayi: No!
T.E. Lawrence: …nor to drive away the Turks. He will come… because it is his pleasure.
[pause]
Auda abu Tayi: Thy mother mated with a scorpion.
I love that movie. Lawrence of Arabia, with Peter O'Toole in the title role and Anthony Quinn as Auda abu Tayi. And Omar Sharif (although not in this scene). And here I am in Aqaba, of all things. Mole of the Desert, walking the dunes of Wadi Ram. As my dear mother says, “You have to be somewhere.” (And as Buckaroo Bonzai said, “Wherever you go, there you are.”)
What strikes me here is the dignity of the people I meet. A goat herd on a donkey on a mountain pass greeted me (via my Bedouin guide) and we chatted about life and respect. Which gets me to thinking about dignity and respect among we scientists, which, I fear, I find lacking. And here, over actual tea (in the desert, if not the Sahara, with you), I am thinking about why.
First, and perhaps foremost, is this true? Do we show a lack of respect for each other, for the fundamental dignity we should have for undertaking this frustrating, often futile enterprise, this biomedical science thing we do? Yes, I think. It is ingrained. We are drilled in lack of respect as young mole-lets, when we eviscerate classic papers in our classes, our ‘grades’ dependent on the extent to which we denigrate the data, the authors, the lack of ever-expanding controls (often extending through our imaginations into the Twilight Zone of imagined explanation). Of course, we must be critical, but we are taught to mix criticism with disregard.
More on this, because I think it is important. I received rigorous (even brutal) training in criticism along with other very smart mole-lets at the Mole Institute of Technology back in the day (long ago in a university far away), and as we gained this expertise I realized something with a bit of a shock. My peers, who were very, very good at dissecting problems with a publication, promptly forgot the underlying message of the paper. Why remember it, they told me in our study group (yes, we actually had a study group) when it was missing an arcane control? What if, I thought, the conclusions were actually correct? More importantly, what if the conclusions were actually useful? And, of course, they often are. I decided that I would not forget, even if I detected flaws, that a lot of work had been done to attempt to provide me with a message, and I would not forget it. Now, so many years later (okay, not that many years later) I still remember those papers, and the many, many more that followed. Maybe it gave me something I needed to be successful. (If I am successful, but yeh, I guess I am, since I'm still doing the science thing).
But now I see how this inherent critical outlook creates a lack of respect and a degradation of dignity. I watch as seasoned professors take ardent, young scientists apart after their brief presentations at meetings, pointing out flaws in their experiments with a dismissive statement. How we create the antagonistic interplay of reviewer and author in our reviews (“In this paper, the authors wish to conclude that…”). And how the ‘impact factor’ (or IMPACT FACTOR) of a journal dictates the importance of a scientific finding, and indeed, the importance of the contributing scientists.
“Come on, Mole,” I can hear you say (I'm listening), “it isn't so bad. It isn't personal – when we criticize, we are criticizing the science, and that is an essential part of what we do.” You're right, it is an essential part of being a scientist (Think. Test. Repeat.). We cannot simply believe everything we are told without carefully considering alternative explanations (including, “I think the researcher is fooling himself into thinking he saw this.” Or “I suspect that if she did the experiment again her result would not be the same.”). If we are going to use someone else's observations to direct our own work, we have to repeat it before incorporating it. This is all part of what we do. And it isn't personal. Except when it is.
I will often hear at meetings (and I go to a lot of meetings) something along the lines of, “I don't believe anything this guy shows us.” This can be because the scientist/subject previously presented conclusions that did not hold up. (Or more specifically, gained a great deal of prestige by publishing work in journals with very glossy pages or nice, soft ones, and the findings did not hold up). I point out that none of this means that the current findings are wrong, but no, the credibility is gone (at least for some). We are human, after all. More than that, we are primates: social animals who learn through interaction who we should or should not trust. It goes beyond training – it's evolution.
But more to the point (“You have a point, Mole?”), I think we can do much better than we do to separate the impersonal evaluation of the validity of a scientific finding from our evaluation of the individual or individuals who have made and presented it (collectively, ‘the lab’). Can we support the dignity of scientists who devote their time, often to the exclusion of other highly valued activities (e.g. sleep) irrespective of how we feel about the immediate value of what they do? Can we respect someone who we feel is not as smart, or rigorous, or critical, or breathtakingly creative as we are? Should we?
I think the answer is yes. Let me give you an example. Actually, three: Vole, Mouse, and Deer. All were trainees when I met them, many years ago, and for a variety of reasons their careers did not proceed as hoped. Each moved around to different laboratories, continuing to contribute to science without personal advancement, struggling every few years to find another place to work. And each continues to do this. Vole wrote to me recently, requesting yet another letter of endorsement, and lamented, “Why do I do this? I could find stable employment doing something else, I suppose, but this is what I do.” Mouse recently lost his position and is seeking another, and another letter, and asks the same question with the same answer. But he remains committed to exploring scientific questions with a unique (if unmarketable) skill set. Deer has a position with me (I wish I could support them all) and is a wonderful scientist, but feels a failure. But her value as a critical intellect with great research skills is, to me, greater than her admitted administrative deficiencies, and I remind her that what she does, and much more importantly, she herself, is deserving of respect (not only mine, which she has). These are people who are committed to scientific exploration. Should they be respected less because they do not have their own labs?
Okay, I know. Science is competitive, and sometimes it may seem that we have to measure ourselves against others. It is easy to show largesse to someone we feel is less successful than we are, and to pay respect to those we feel are truly established and have made great contributions. At our own ‘levels’ we have friends we can rely upon, and others we might view as, well, the competition, those who are trying to beat us to press (and sometimes they do). Are we supposed to show respect to everyone?
Yeh, I think we are.
The goat herd on his donkey on the mountain has dignity, and inspires respect. What is it about being a scientist that so often elicits the opposite, and from his or her colleagues and peers? What can we do to make dignity and respect part of what we do? Let's talk about that. But right now, I wonder if I can find some tea that is not actually tea…
