Last week (and until tomorrow) I experienced how to be a scientist as a single mother, as my husband was traveling all over Europe on an intense pre-Christmas meeting extravaganza.
The science definitely suffers. Or at least, advances much more slowly.
However, life as an expatriate in Europe took a pleasant turn as my children and I joined my husband in Madrid for the weekend, using low-cost transport with a little low-cost frustration thrown in, though of course all turned out well in the end. My thoughts on the jet-set experience are consigned here – they are not really science-related enough to bear much repeating on NN.
I thought I’d profit from my stump instead to quote the following editorial by Kai Simons from an October issue of Science:
“There are no numerical shortcuts for evaluating research quality. What counts is the quality of a scientist’s work wherever it is published. That quality is ultimately judged by scientists, raising the issue of the process by which scientists review each others’ research.”
What propositions do you have for objectively ranking one researcher above another, as value for money from an institutional perspective, when everyone has a unique topic and/or approach? When peers have a limited set of journals that they read regularly, and they may not be able to judge that a given journal is highly regarded in a different field from their own?
It’s a tough call, and while impact factor is meant to rank journals, it will naturally reflect to some extent on the people who publish in those journals. I think it is utopic to hope otherwise. I think the only measure of quality of a publication is in the notice it attracts – but even then, there are fashions and personalities that ensure that sometimes “quality” articles are “rediscovered” far after that new notoreity may have benefited their authors.
What about the position of an author in the line-up? Is a researcher who publishes as a middle co-author in ten articles in a year really worth so much less to the scientific enterprise than the researcher who is senior author on one? Certainly, the former would bring in less grant money, which is often a covert consideration for institutional ranking. But objectively? Do we all need to be leaders?
It makes me think of that phrase, “a nation of leaders”. If everyone leads, who actually does the hands-on work?
That brought me to this discussion of the possible role of managers of creative innovators. Like us scientists. I’d be very happy to outsource my management roles to someone more competent, but it’s a matter of trust, and I don’t see anyone in my hierarchy who is more qualified than I am to act in my interests. Scientists leading scientists is somewhat like the blind leading the blind.
To comment on my own post, one of the participants in that conference cited above and professor at Harvard Business School, Teresa Amabile, states in an interview,
“People will be most creative when they feel motivated primarily by the interest, enjoyment, satisfaction, and challenge of the work itself, and not by external pressures or inducements.”
Hear, hear!
Network/Graph theories could help weight someone’s contribution by that of their collaborators – if you’re in a highly successful network you can weigh that relative to someone who isn’t in a successful network.
Doesn’t really tell us why you might or might not be in a successful network though. Which is ultimately what these measures should be helping to tell us.
Failing that, height, weight and tarsus length are common eco-evolutionary measures of quality…
I think balancing creativity with robustness remains a crucial skill in science. Coming up with novel ideas is laudable, as long as they are sensible.
Mike – you are quite right in your pragmatic last sentence. I suppose I was waffling around the concept that perhaps we need a diversity of skill sets in even the direct execution of science. I don’t mean cell culture vs. PCR vs. mass spec, but rather engineer types and administrative types and teacher types and creative dreamer types and, probably, manager types. (Although why an administrative type would go through with a Ph.D. would be beyond me, as they are so valuable and better paid in other career paths.)
Would you compare my tarsus length (weighted by age) favorably or not to yours?
Ohhh, I see. Once the hubby’s away, it’s all “You show me your tarsus, I’ll show you mine”. Saucy! I should add that while not necessarily above average height, I do have surprisingly long arms, to help me brachiate amongst the evolutionary trees.
I really like the idea of specialising – or perhaps even just raising awareness of the different types of skills that are required for the best science.
We should ask whether it’s worth retraining people in areas that they’re not so good, or accepting that some people are very highly skilled in certain areas and should be allowed to invest all their effort there. Managers are then required to generate the most appropriate collaborative teams. Some high profile researchers already assume that sort of role (no names mentioned here), with decent success (measured in impact factor…)
My organization does try to retrain people to gain those skills they didn’t have naturally – it’s not until you try that you can find out if you are gifted or inclined to use them or neither. But once you’ve been through a set of training sessions like that – and these are probably best offered at the Ph.D. level, let’s say in an extra (funded) year if you’re in the very rapid British system – it would be idyllic to actually be enabled to best perform where your real skills and inclinations lie. A problem for Human Resource departments the world over.
Sorry not to have replied earlier, Heather, I have been too busy to visit NN for a few days (and too exhausted by the time I got home at night, which is my usual time for looking at it).
You ask highly pertinent questions, which have long been chewn over by journals like Nature and Science (these two journals are particularly interested in the questions you raise). Since I started our author blog, I have tagged many articles that raise various aspects of this question, a list is here.
Of course there are no easy, single answers, and there are many issues raised by your post. However, one simple approach that is easy to implement is to have “author contributions” statements, in which each author notes her or his contribution to a paper. Although this is not quantifiable in a metrics sense, it is in the published record and can therefore be used by the scientist to demonstrate unequivocally her or his role in the work. (More details at the link I provided).
There is lots to say on this worthy topic, but time is short!
Maxine – thanks for your input!
Given how I’ve seen such “author contributions” filled out, it rapidly becomes clear who was doing administration and fundraising and enabled the work, who contributed patients, who actually did benchwork (and with any luck, who had the ideas). It’s not bad to be upfront with this.
Unfortunately there are no categories for “the senior author pushed for this medical student to have first authorship so they could get a professorship even though the senior had all the ideas and the actual bench work was carried out by the technician in the middle, if they are lucky, or in the acknowledgements, if they are less so”. These power plays happen well out of the purview of editorial input, so stay invisible and endemic.