The arena of citizen science and bioethics is the gift that keeps on giving. For background on my views please see this post and this post.

I am disturbed to see the recent article by Laura Bonetta in Cell, titled New Citizens for the Life Sciences (Cell, Volume 138, Issue 6, 1043-1045, 18 September 2009). This article is a relative puff-piece for the merits of citizen science with respect to biology, and in my opinion, a perfect example of the problems inherent in science journalism.

The author does a horrible job of living up to the section head which is called “Leading Edge Analysis.” In fact, Laura Bonetta does no analysis at all-other than some hand waving in this, the only analytical sentence of the piece, “It is too early to say whether such engagement will speed discoveries…”

This author basically wrote a two page advertisement for sites like 23andMe and National Geographic. However, there was no space in the article given to the possibilities for misuse of personal genomic information, or any of the issues with safety and citizen bioscience. Furthermore, Bonetta stuck to covering citizen science that really just involved participating in surveys or counting things (which I discuss in my first article on the subject), but really did not address things like DIYBio or biohacking.

For Cell’s editorial board to call this section “Leading Edge Analysis” and then proceed to allow the author to only provide one viewpoint in the context of the article suggests to me that:

1) Cell has some monetary interest in writing these type of articles, and thus should rename the section “advertisement,” or

2) the editors of Cell should just stick to publishing original research papers, and leave the journalism to those who have the ability to do it with competence.

The particular issue of bioscience and citizen science, as I have previously written, is a very special topic. What works for citizen science in other fields is not necessarily safe when it comes to biology. We should take this topic much more seriously. Unlike Nature, Cell does not have letters to the editor, so I must post my response here.

On the eve of SFN, 2009, I thought I would pose a question that you may not see on the sanctioned blogs for the event. Usually when I write my blog posts, I have a general sense of how I feel about a topic and I like to make an argument for or against a position and let my readers come to their own conclusions based on my argument, their own research, and my comment section. In this case, I don’t have a strong opinion about this-but think it is an interesting question to ask, and I will be curious to see my readers’ thoughts.

Of course the idea that scientific meetings may be harmful to the environment is not new, and I am not the first to bring this up.

In fact, an article by Simon Young in the September Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience (Rethinking scientific meetings: an imperative in an era of climate change. J Psychiatry Neurosci. 2009 September; 34(5): 341–342) addresses this question in an eloquent way.

Young writes, “A recent analysis of CO2 emissions of the employees of an atmospheric research institute in Norway is instructive. More than 90% of the emissions from their work-related travel were from air travel, with only 3% from ground travel and 5% from hotel use. The annual travel-related emissions for scientists from that institute was 3.9–5.5 metric tons of CO2 per capita, which, as the authors point out is more than the global average per capita emission and greater than that of many countries such as China (3.8 metric tons) and India (1.2 metric tons).”

These numbers are disturbing, considering that the pace of neuroscience research is expected to double within the next 10 years-and with increased research output will come increased attendance at meetings. Furthermore, as neuroscience research centers become more global and less regional, the requirement for increased air travel to attend meetings is surely going to become more widespread.

Are scientific meetings really necessary anyway? Most neuroscience pre-docs will tell you that preparing a SfN is a rite of passage and a way to prepare for the publication of their results.

Again, Young writes, “Nature has recently published a series on meetings that had world-changing consequences, but also suggests in an editorial that “scientists these days rarely expect to hear much new science at a conference” and that the proliferation of meetings is sometimes driven “by researchers wanting to pad out their CVs, and by the prestige conferred on an institution by hosting such an event.” Assessments of researchers for tenure and promotion often include consideration of presentations given internationally, but this attitude has to change.”

Would it make more sense for SfN to have more regional symposia that focus on poster presentations, and save national meetings for major research initiatives and speakers? In that case SfN could utilize technology-based solutions like web-conferencing like GoTo Meeting and Skype.

What about “networking”? To quote Young again, “Of course networking at a meeting can be as important as listening to talks, but not every presenter has to be present in person. The logical extension of this, the virtual conference that occurs in cyberspace, has been around for long enough…The bottom line is that those organizing meetings need to experiment with modern technologies and to assess how they impact those attending both in person and virtually.”

With the advent of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Friendfeed-I see no reason why networking should falter in the absence of a large meeting. In fact, the use of these technologies may actually increase networking and productivity, because scientists can expose themselves to many more people in a faster time-frame than they would be able to at a scientific meeting. When connections are made, scientists may then be able to set up smaller, more focused meetings in order to design focused collaborations.

However, there is one alternative that I am strongly against and that is use of “carbon offsets”, and this is where I disagree with the recommendations given by Young as alternatives to large scientific meetings.

Young writes, “An article in Science, “Greening the Meeting,” mentions that when the Ecological Society of America added an optional fee for carbon offsets to their meeting registration fee only 6 members paid in 2006, but 500 paid in 2007…I would like to think that eventually researchers will accept this as a compulsory part of every meeting registration.”

By creating a compulsory “meeting tax” with no clear understanding where that money goes, or for what purpose, we will be setting up a roadblock for all meetings, large or small, and this may stifle innovation.

With all the current alternative technologies available, there is no need for any added carbon tax or the bureaucracies that would grow up around it. We can find a better way and still stay green.

To SfN’s credit-they are addressing their carbon footprint, and you can read about that here. However, this focus has only been tangentially applied to the annual SfN meeting and I have not observed any serious discussion anywhere.

SfN meetings are scientific meetings-no doubt-but I do question the influence of large biomedical corporations and medium-sized vendors on the absence of a serious consideration of downsizing and regionalizing the meetings in favor of reducing the waste of both productivity and fossil fuels.

References:

1. Young, SM (2009). Rethinking scientific meetings: an imperative in an era of climate change. J Psychiatry Neurosci. 2009 September; 34(5): 341–342.

2. Meeting expectations. Nature. 2008;455:836.

3. Lester B. (2007) Greening the meeting. Science. ;318:36–8.

In my March 23rd article on the perils of the citizen scientist in the realm of biological science, I pointed out that biohacking was a particular troubling practice for the amateur scientist. I was lambasted by some critics for taking an ivory tower approach to the citizen scientist. What was lost in my article was my particular focus on biohacking. It seems that editors from The Economist and The New Scientist must have read my blog, because two articles, here and here, appeared in August and September and focused on biohacking.

Both articles take a favorable view of biohacking, and suggest that to limit biohacking is to limit scientific progress. The authors of both articles discuss the group DIY Bio and use that organization as a model for how biohacking can educate interested citizens about science. I do not disagree with this premise on the surface-this is the DIY Bio mission statement:

“DIYbio is an organization that aims to help make biology a worthwhile pursuit for citizen scientists, amateur biologists, and DIY biological engineers who value openness and safety. This will require mechanisms for amateurs to increase their knowledge and skills, access to a community of experts, the development of a code of ethics, responsible oversight, and leadership on issues that are unique to doing biology outside of traditional professional settings.”

I do not doubt that DIY Bio values “openness and safety”, but both The Economist and The New Scientist overlook the law of unintended consequences in their zeal for promoting their narrow definition of scientific progress.
What is lacking in these articles, and I believe in the scientific community in general, when evaluating the usefulness of biohacking is the concept of pensée en creux, or “implicit thought”.

In their chapter of “The Handbook Of Psycholinguistics”, Glenberg et al. (1994) suggest that implicit thought is the act of comprehending the absence of immediate consequence, as if observing not the figure, but the ground. Implicit thought is what American liberal arts education strives to instill in students during college. Lack of implicit thought leads to adopting methods and behaviors that on the surface seem positive, but may have largely negative unintended consequences.

Biological systems are complex and highly variable, and thus we have a limited understanding of the variables needed to predict the outcome of manipulating such systems. This lack of knowledge necessitates that there will be unforeseen consequences to the integration of biohacking into the mainstream, however positive the intentions of the biohackers.

Let me give an example, borrowed from Professor Butler Schaffer (2003), “A deadly accident is implicit in a drunken man driving his car on a highway. This does not mean that his actions will result in such a mishap: indeed, knowing that one is so incapacitated has doubtless led many to be extra cautious in their driving and to arrive home without incident. It does mean, however, that one ought to recognize the enhanced likelihood of such harm that inheres in such a state.” (my italics).

Thus, by promoting biohacking without any regulation, the scientific community will undermine its own credibility as a forward-thinking, socially responsible institution. This will further erode the influence of science in the long-term, although biohacking provides excitement about science in the short term. Biohacking does not guarantee a negative outcome-but because there is a at least a 50% probability that a negative outcome can occur, the scientific community should take a progressive stance and put tighter regulations on where and when and how this activity should be done.

Regulating biohacking will not stop organizations like DIY Bio from doing the type of scientific outreach that I presume they think is beneficial, nor will it stifle innovation. For instance, my work using biological agents at the NIH is tightly regulated, yet I am able to do the work I need within that framework to advance science with no hindrance. Thus, arguments against regulation in this realm, I believe, are not applicable. (That is not to say that in other areas of science regulation is always a good thing).

In fact, here are three lines from the AAAS mission statement “…Provide a voice for science on societal issues; Promote the responsible use of science in public policy; Increase public engagement with science and technology…”

These excerpts from the AAAS mission statement clearly show that AAAS should put together a commission to observe, report and regulate the biohacking community. I believe that by doing this, AAAS can fulfill these points in its mission. Furthermore, by placing some guidelines on the biohacking community, AAAS could foster a very vibrant, innovative, and healthy community of citizen biologists and biohackers that act in tandem with the scientific community rather than work in its shadows.

As a scientific community, if we get out ahead of this problem now, we won’t have to react to a crisis later, relying on the bureaucrats in Washington. Again, the financial crisis of the past two years teaches science a valuable lesson.
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Refs:

Glenberg, A. M., Kruley, P., & Langston, W. E. (1994). Analogical processes in comprehension: Simulation of a mental model. In M. A. Gernsbacher (Ed.), Handbook of psycholinguistics. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.

Shaffer B (2003) The unintended consequences of good intentions., Lewrockwell.com

When I was on tour with the band, I was fortunate enough to play a show in Boston, MA where I have a good friend who is a post-doc at Harvard. After the show, in the sweaty confines of the club we played at-his wife (also a post-doc) and I launched into a pretty interesting conversation about the nature of our experiences in labs since graduating. (This much to the chagrin of the punk-rockers downing Pabst Blue Ribbons behind us).

After exchanging the obligatory list of “this is what I am working on now” we began to share our worries about the future of scientific progress and our own funding opportunities.

The discussion whittled down to how society sees science as being done. As in my earlier posts (an ongoing thesis of mine), I told them that I was frustrated with the romantic idea that has been pushed by the main stream science media. Namely that science progresses through massive “paradigm shifts” and in between these paradigm shifts, which are often attached to some great thinker, there is not much done. This “little science” as I refer to it is often dismissed as unimportant.

My friend challenged me on this point, asking me to remember before and after the discovery of DNA. His point was well taken, but I think that the biological sciences are special in that the discovery of DNA really depended on the “little science” that preceded it. I do believe that physics and biology are two different sciences operating at different levels of complexity, and that the typical paradigm shift model is more suited to physics than biology. Thus, my hypothesis is that great discoveries depend on thousands of “little science” papers that may not make the front page of Science or Nature or Neuron.

We began to wonder out loud, how can we speed up the rate of scientific progress on diseases like bladder cancer, or Alzheimer’s disease? Increased productivity means longer hours for us, and we discussed how there is an inverse relationship at a certain threshold between hours and the bench and productivity. There are only a limited number of post-docs, but we agreed that progress in scientific discovery really comes down to man-hours at the bench.

On the ride out of Boston, through rural Connecticut on my way to the hotel, I began to think about why progress in the sciences seems so stagnant. I began to formulate another hypothesis-that is-the progress of scientific discovery follows closely with the fertility rate of a given country. In other words, if you want man-hours at the bench, then you have to put men and women at the bench in large numbers to do the “little science” that yields great discoveries.

A new report in the Economist suggests to me that I may be on to something.* Not only would increased fertility rates lead to increased possible researchers, but also increase the tax/revenue base from which most public and private research is funded. Given this, it seems odd to me that being educated enough to look for the cure for cancer also results in less numbers of people who are around to look for it. (Read: more educated western countries have lower fertility rates).

There is one country that stands out, and that is the United States, which is the only western country with a fertility rate that is at replacement rate. What is different between the U.S. and the European nations cited in the Economist article? The U.S. is a much more religious country (although that is now in decline), and these religions put more emphasis on the creation and maintenance of the family.

I know this sounds quite orthodox coming from a scientist, but maybe it is high time we team up with some of the religious and cultural organizations in the U.S. to encourage them to support families that can have their own religious beliefs, but also have a fundamental trust in the scientific method.

I know it seems logically impossible-but if we suggest that raising a family is the fastest way to cure cancer, which by the way may be part of God’s plan anyway, we may just help science and the scientific method in the long run. This is one suggestion I have for buffering what I see is a long, slow decline in the science output of the U.S.

*And yes, I realize that correlation is not causation. But this topic should be discussed in the open nonetheless.

This is sort of a clean-up post. I have had some death in my family, so I have been gone and I need to clean my slate before getting back into it again.

First topic:

I am starting to get angry at my fellow scientists. I try and try to fight what I see as a coming perfect storm leading us into a societal regression into the dark ages.

Most of my colleagues wave this off or simply ignore it. And I can understand that. It is easy, because you are surrounded by “educated people” all day, to get hoodwinked into thinking that “no one could possibly think that the earth is flat these days”. We have to combat this, we have to become activist, because I think we are loosing the cultural war.

Why? We allow too much loose talk when it comes to science, and we don’t correct the record at the local level (at parties, in polite conversation etc)…by the time we do correct things, they have already disseminated into the mass-consciousness as misinformation. And believe me, the misinformation propaganda is good.

I had a HUGE fight over email with my extended family this weekend. Keep in mind, these people are Americans with B.A., B.S. and M.A. degrees from American Universities. They claim to be “educated” and their peers look up to them as contributors to the community. Here is how part of the exchange went after I responded to a chain email I was sent.

Family: “Pfizer is buying a smaller drug company called Wyeth. They are borrowing money from US Banks who took TARP money. Meanwhile Pfizer has all the cash in the world (enough to buy Wyeth) stashed in foreign countries because they don’t want to bring the cash into this country for risk of paying 35% in federal income tax. The Wyeth purchase is going to cost thousands of US jobs. It’s the Pfizers of the world that is giving the country to China. And where do you think Pfizer gets the money to do all its research and pay for people’s continuing education who don’t even work for them – by charging exorbitant amounts of money for its drugs – that people on social security or people working at McDonald’s can’t afford…An interesting article about NIMH and the funding I’m giving it over the next two years (All to tack on another 5 years on to an already 85 year-old with a diminished quality of life there’s already a quite effective way to avoid 99% of the chance of contracting HIV, or to cure Autism – which is known to already be treatable through therapy). "

If you read through that who quote, some things should send chills up your spine:

1) Drug companies are evil.
2) Autism is curable through some treatment.
3) Who cares about adding a few years to an old person’s life.
4) What we see as collaborations with China in science, the population sees as “selling out” to them.

Do you remember my post from a few months ago?

It is not the specifics here that I am afraid of, it is the general sense that anyone with a computer can be propagandized into these conceptual orthodoxies. That is not new, and not surprising. I am just afraid that our propaganda is not as good as their propaganda, particularly when it comes to the biological sciences.
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Second topic:

The awesome and talented Eva Amsen did an interview with me about being a musician and a scientist. I see that the wonderful Henry Gee is interviewed as well. I am really looking forward to what she does with this, because I think what she is doing is really good for science. We need more of this and I am thankful and proud to be part of it! Please enjoy!

I know that in the United States we believe we have free exchange of information in the sciences, and with open source publication, we are being lulled into thinking the job is done and the zenith reached. Furthermore, with institutes such as the NIH, we feel as though we have a national system for dealing with science.

Though I think the NIH does a really good job of trying to “nationalize” science in the US, I think that we could have a better system and one that is less tied to bureaucratic bottlenecks (and as an NIH postdoc, let me tell you, they are many and often).

The future of science, in my opinion, is going to rely less on the merits of individuals (although each individual has to have high achievement) and more on large hubs of people, all working towards common goals. Why? Because the questions that we are asking have much more technically and theoretically challenging answers.

Readers of my blog know that I do not feel that any governmental institution or large body can enhance innovation in science. It is my opinion that these large bureaucratic institutions only hamper innovation and slow progress. I based my opinion on direct experience inside one such institution.

One answer to my worry is to develop a “national science policy” outlining the major initiatives for science research over 5-10 year periods. The NIH does this quite well, although we don’t call the NIH funding biases for grants “national science policy” they certainly guide the pace of science.

I think we should leave this system in place. However, I think that NIH funding severely limits research not deemed “important” by a board of policy-makers who seem to forget that most fundamental science discoveries were made searching for something else, or something outside of what we would consider mainstream translational research.

I believe that in order to accelerate the rate of R&D innovation in the US, we need to treat our universities as parallel distributed processors, and use some connectionist philosophy to guide the dissemination of information between institutes. Let me explain with an example.

Let’s take three universities: A, B, C. University A is in an urban setting with a medical institution and hospital. This university has strengths in clinical research and genetics. University B is a liberal arts institution in the suburbs with a surplus of undergraduates, a few science departments and strength in computing. University C is in a rural setting with a strong agriculture and veterinary program.

A discovers a gene of interest that is related to a rare disease. This disease is not deemed “important” enough OR there is not enough pilot data for the researcher in A can to get an NIH grant. Normally, without any external funding, the project would die and the researcher would move to a different gene of interest.

However, what if a framework were in place for basic research where A could send the gene to B where it could be modeled and mapped and animal experiments designed. Those experiments could be done at C and then the results sent back to A for possible development of a treatment to be tried at the clinical ward in A.

The process theoretically would go extremely fast, because each institution would be playing from their strengths instead of trying to make up for weaknesses. Furthermore, the gene of interest would see the light of day faster then if it had sit in a freezer for 5 years until enough data was produced to obtain the NIH grant.

A national consortium of science would supplement NIH programs by creating a framework that allows the US university system to operate as both individuals and groups. Individually, the traditional university could have small teaching departments that cover all areas of science (genetics, physics, biology etc), but under the national consortium, the university would also play a role as specialized information hub in a large web of hubs each with their own specialty.

I know it seems like we have this now, but in my experience we do not. In a traditional medical school research physiology department we have neuroscientists, geneticists, cell biologists etc.

In my national consortium model the entire department would only specialize in flavors of one thing. For example, all geneticists with some people working on DNA and some on RNA, but no cell biologists or neuroscientists at that institute. The cell biologists specializing in the endoplasmic reticulum only, would be concentrated at a separate university.

The role of the national consortium would be to centralize and facilitate this arrangement though organizing universities into these hubs and helping shift faculties into concentration areas. However, the national consortium would set no policy and deem no science important or unimportant. Those areas deemed important by the scientists themselves would have the most processors working on them. This would happen by the natural exchange of information and not what national policy is. Technologies like twitter could be integrated into the framework to allow rapid exchange of real-time information between these hubs of expertise.

What would be in it for the universities? 1) They would save money by closing down needless facilities and by removing extra overhead in terms of labor and materials costs, 2) Universities “think of them as processors in my example” that are all engaged in the same problem would be able to pool resources and money for only periods of time in which they are engaged in the problem, thus eliminating long term-expensive “tenure” faculty, 3) as innovation speeds up, the universities could monetize some of the discoveries as intellectual property to use for revenue.

What would be in it for the scientists? 1) specialized, high level interaction and training, 2) a focus on research only pursuits with no administrative overhead, 3) more freedom to explore questions of interest and high academic importance without fear of losing fiscal support, 4) acceleration of bench to paper turnover.

President Obama, would you consider my humble proposal? I am free for lunch any time, just email me or give me a call.

Why?

I changed labs, and I have been working on a new record and a new tour to support the record, which I will do this summer while working in my new lab.

I have re-written a post like 5 times over the past few months about how being a nice person and a successful scientist don’t seem to mix. But I realize that blogging is different than, say a phone conversation or a lunch conversation… your words can be held against you later.

Maybe I have figured out why scientists may be reluctant. Maybe I have already diminished my career. Is this the soft fascism that blogging brings? Who knows? Will my digital trail ultimately be the rap sheet that will be presented in the court of scientific banishment? These are questions we all should ask ourselves while banging away on those plastic keys.

Am I the only scientist out there that goes to talks and immediately thinks,

“wow this person has such a great project/ideas and great data, i am never going to be able to compete…”

I usually walk away from talks feeling like I: 1) have been wasting all my time on trivial un-interesting crap, or 2) I am never going to be as good/smart/fast/whatever as person “x”.

Should I just stop going to talks?

This recent post by Kristi inspired me to discuss a topic that was on my list. In some sense, it is an expansion of my last post.

Web 2.0 has really emphasized the democratization of knowledge. This has been done by technology alone (for example, look at what happened to the record recoding industry after the advent of home-recording software), but Web 2.0 + technological innovation has added information to capability.

In science, the open source movement has democratized the access of any user to scientific knowledge, although the goal was to give more scientists that access. As I usually do on my blog, I show that a thing that starts with good intentions on the web often results in unintended negative consequences.

Often this is because the speed at which technology and data is thrown at the end-user (society in general in this case) out-paces that user’s ability to critically think about cost-benefit, or do any other critical analysis.

I will posit that in our generation, we will see the dismantling of “traditional” science and the undermining of science education and the validity of the research degree, such as the Ph.D. In fact,this process has already begun. I have discussed this in other blog posts, and articles like this underscore the point.

As I thought further, I thought about how most of you might respond to thus-and that is something along the lines of:

“How can you argue against the amateur scientist, doing work at home, look at people like Einstein, the patent clerk, or Tesla, or Volta, or Galileo…these were outside the “establishment”. Maybe we need people outside the “establishment” to shake up the system and provide progress…”

Yes, my friends, my heart lies there too, because I have been immersed in the Hollywood messages of the “outsider” shaking up the system. My own life has been an example of that-I never meant to be a scientist…

However, this is mostly hogwash, constructed to give us that “rooting for the underdog” psychology. And there are fundamental differences between a Tesla or Volta experimenting at home-with electricity that could only harm them-and someone armed with a home-lab full of viruses.

The advent of the citizen scientist so far has been limited to counting things, or categorizing things, which, I guess is somewhat palatable. But even this is difficult to comprehend. For instance, take this article: Citizen scientists watch for signs of climate change.

Here we have an article that shows how results can be biased by citizens who have a priori conclusions about the physical world and who are trying to fit the data to those predisposed conclusions (see previous post).

Without proper training in the scientific method and critical thinking, we think we are exposing future scientist to potential work, but is it possible we are reinforcing ideas about fitting data and reaching conclusions before the experiment is done?

This, you may argue, is no big deal. Maybe you are right and I am overreacting. OK, but articles like this: The geneticist in the garage should make your ears perk up. Hacking a computer and freezing it is annoying, but rarely deadly. Biohacking an organism and releasing that into the environment should make you shudder all the way home to your family.

As more and more information and technology flows freely via Web 2.0, I argue we will see a linear increase in the advent of these sorts of “home laboratories” and with them will come the democratization of science education and knowledge such that the years of training and apprenticeship that shapes a scientific mind will be rendered meaningless.

If I can get the information about how to grow yeast and insert a plasmid online, and I have access to the reagents, why would I want to waste my time and money on an establishment “book education”? And how great a resource if I am tired of terrorizing people by mailing anthrax. I will just grow up some avian flu in my bedroom and release it…you get the idea

In the end, I think this will all come down to what Thomas Jefferson wrote,

“A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”

Mob rule is brewing in the way we treat AIG executive pay, and it is coming to a lab near you. These things are not as disconnected as they might seem on the surface.

We scientists like to think of ourselves as the objective-thinking type. We school ourselves in the scientific method and how to use statistics to either accept or reject the null hypothesis.

All this is well and good inside the walls of academia, but outside those walls and essay-question tests, something much different is occurring.

I cannot seem to figure out whether this shift is due to the inadequate academic preparation of junior scientists or whether it is due to the enormous cultural influence of the modern media on scientists. I also wonder if this shift in scientific thinking from the objective to the subjective will hasten as we adopt more media-driven solutions provided by web 2.0 (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, etc.)-but that is for another post.

I will choose here to specifically pick on American culture, particularly on the influence of Hollywood, mainly because Hollywood is our only real cultural export.

The nature of storytelling has been discussed in many other forums and has casually (not causally) been linked to evolution. The conclusion of many of these discussions is that storytelling is a particularly human way of making sense of seemingly disparate pieces of information and synthesizing them into a coherent whole.

What does this have to do with science? It should be fairly obvious that this is usually what we think of when we publish papers as scientists. Some would argue that as scientists, we tell stories.

This is particularly evident in the discussion section of published papers, where we try to link our work to the broader context of our particular field. In fact, papers with titles like this one: Revisiting Science in Culture: Science as Story Telling and Story Revising underscore this view of science-as-storytelling. I fear that we tread on dangerous ground with this sort of hand-wavy thinking about science publication.

For instance, in the previously mentioned paper, the author (Grobstein, 2005) writes:

“What follows from this consideration of scientific method is that scientific statements are not either claims or approximations to ‘Truth,’ but provisional stories, reflecting human perspectives, that get progressively less wrong.”

On the surface, this statement might seem OK to the untrained eye, but the author throughout this paper makes a major blunder that I see replicated time and time again.

It is a mistake I have been observing more and more as I review scientific papers. The author conflates the idea of doubt, uncertainty and skepticism (strengths of science) with that of relativism (something we are told is essentially scientific). The author concludes that all data and their interpretations are relativistic, because we can’t conclude any objective truth from our scientific stories.

This is strike one and strike two, and both stem from the media-driven popularization of the idea of relativity, and from Hollywood’s portrayal of the ideas of Einstein.

An oft used quote from Einstein, and one that sums up the pop-culture view of science is:

“Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world”

Although this view sells books like “Einstein’s Dreams” or is romanticized in pseudo-documentaries like What The Bleep Do We Know, and even is discussed on Oprah, this seemingly innocent interpretation of Einstein also has a sinister side.

This sort of “everything is relative” philosophy also finds its way into a culture that is sympathetic towards cultural relativity (good) and uses that sympathy as an opening into which it can inject itself into our scientific teaching and writing (bad).

So what can we conclude thus far? Hollywood-driven pop science culture has injected a large dose of pop-relativity into the American ethos and this filters into American science.

Strike three comes from Hollywood as well. It is the simple idea that all stories must have a happy ending, an ending that ties everything together and allows the cowboy to ride off into the sunset, or the conflict to be resolved, or whatever.

This can be seen in papers that I read/review, where the authors have a number of possible interpretations for their data, but choose the interpretation that allows them to tell a compelling story, or stick with an established storyline of the lab, or even agree with the storyline of other labs.

The pressures to publish combined with the pop-science-culture injection of “the coolness of relativity” and the desire to tell a story with a congruent, Hollywood-style ending is lurking under the surface of modern scientific publishing.

I think more often then we allow ourselves to believe, scientists are fitting the data to the story by choosing the interpretations they want, rather than taking Robert Frost’s Road Not Taken.

Even those of us who think we are objective can’t escape the influence of American media in the sciences.

When will we begin to become concerned about this?