Websearch your CongressCritter and navigate to the email / reply form. Then give him or her an earful (eyeful) about the attempt by Reps Maloney and Issa to discontinue the requirement for public funded science to be made publicly available (by the Omnibus Appropriation passed in Mar 2009).
Please. Put your Critter on alert that this is bad legislation that is bad for taxpayers. Additional detail is after the jump. Continue Reading »
I am greatly enjoying reading this measured takedown
For example, the article on foxnews.com states, “Grad students often co-author scientific papers to help with the laborious task of writing. Such papers are rarely the cornerstone for trillions of dollars worth of government climate funding, however — nor do they win Nobel Peace prizes.” I will assume that the bit about “Nobel Peace prizes” was a mistake made by the Fox News writer, since as I’m sure you’re aware, scientific achievements do not lead to Peace prizes. Further, most science of any kind doesn’t lead to a Nobel Prize. They really don’t hand out that many of them.
But let’s de-construct this one a little more. Grad students often are the lead author on scientific publications, because they carried out the work. I know you feel that this shouldn’t be the case. How can they do science without a Ph.D?! Well, it turns out that’s how you get a Ph.D. By doing research that leads to publications.
of this variety of ignorant mewling about the conduct of science.
“We’ve been told for the past two decades that 'the Climate Bible' was written by the world’s foremost experts,” Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise told FoxNews.com. “But the fact is, you are just not qualified without a doctorate. In academia you aren't even on the radar at that point.”
In academia, the people who are "on the radar" for any given topic are those who are most directly and deeply involved in the work. Sometimes that breadth and depth comes from a longer career in the field. Sometimes it comes because as a grad student you have done nothing else other than focus exclusively, think deeply and read exhaustively on a given topic. Ultimately, those who should be listened to most are those that know the most.
Academic credentials can be the marker, but are no substitute, for expertise.
How often do you cite a paper for the overall, Gestalt thrust of the story? For the whole picture?
How frequently do you cite a paper for only a figure or two out of the whole thing? Or for a method?
What does this tell you about the notion that there is such a thing as a meaningful standard of a "complete story"?
Dr Becca has a post up in which she ponders a perennial issue for newly established labs....and many other labs as well.
The gist is that which journal you manage to get your work published in is absolutely a career concern. Absolutely. For any newcomers to the academic publishing game that stumbled on this post, suffice it to say that there are many journal ranking systems. These range from the formal to the generally-accepted to the highly personal. Scientists, being the people that they are, tend to take shortcuts when evaluating the quality of someone else's work, particularly once it ranges afield from the highly specific disciplines which the reviewing individual inhabits. One such shortcut is inferring something about the quality of a particular academic paper by knowledge of the reputation of the journal in which it is published.
One is also judged, however, by the rate at which one publishes and, correspondingly, the total number of publications given a particular career status.
Generally speaking there will be an inverse correlation between rate (or total number) and the status of the journals in which the manuscripts are published.
This is for many reasons, ranging from the fact that a higher-profile work is (generally) going to require more work. More time spent in the lab. More experiments. More analysis. More people's expertise. Also from the fact that the manuscript may need to be submitted to more higher-profile journals (in sequence, never simultaneously), on average, to get accepted then to get picked up by so-called lesser journals.
This negative correlation of profile/reputation with publishing rate is Dr Becca's issue of the day. When to keep bashing your head against the "high profile journal" wall and when to decide that the goal of "just getting it published" somewhere/anywhere* takes priority.
I am one who advises balance. The balance that says "don't bet the entire farm" on unknowables like GlamourMag acceptance. The balance that says to make sure a certain minimum publication rate is obtained. And for a newly transitioning scientist, I think that "at least one pub per year" needs to be the target. And I mean, per year, in print, pulled up in PubMed for that publishing year. Not an average, if you can help it. Not Epub in 2011, print in 2012. Again, if you can help it.
The target. This is not necessarily going to be sufficient...and in some cases a gap of a year or two can be okay. But I think this is a good general rubric for triaging your submission strategy.
It isn't that one C/N/S pub won't trump a sustained pub rate and a half-dozen society level publications. It will. The problem is that it is a far from certain outcome. So if you end up with a three year publication gap, no C/N/S pubs and you end up dumping the data in a half-dozen society level journal pubs anyway...well, in grant-getting and tenure-awarding terms, a 2-3 year publication gap with "yeah but NOW we're submitting this stuff to dump journals like wild fire so all, good, k?" just isn't smart.
My advice is to take care of business first, get that 1-2 pub per year in bare minimum or halfway decent journals track going, and then to think about layering high-profile risky business on top of that.
Dang, I got all distracted. What I really meant to blog about was a certain type of comment popping up in Dr. Becca's thread.
The kind of comment that I think pushes the commenter's pet agenda, vis a vis academic publishing, over what is actually good advice for someone that is newly transitioned to an independent laboratory position. I have my own issues when it comes to this stuff. I think the reification of IF and the pursuit of GlamorMag publication is absolutely ruining the pursuit of knowledge and academic science.
But it is absolutely foolish and bad mentoring to ignore the realities of our careers and the judging of our talents and accomplishments. I'd rather nobody *ever* submitted to journal solely because of the journal's reputation. I long for the end of each and every academic journal in which the editors are anything other than actual working scientists. The professional journal "editors" will be, as they say, the first against the wall come the revolution in my glorious future. Etc.
But you would never catch me telling someone in Dr. Becca's position that she should just ignore IF and journal status and publish everything in the easiest venue to get accepted. Never.
You wackaloon Open Access Nazdrul and followers need to dissociate your theology from your advice giving.
__
*there are minimum standards. "Peer Reviewed" is one such standard. I would argue that "indexed in PubMed" (or your relevant major database) is another such. Also, my arbitrary sub-field snobbery** starts at an Impact Factor of around 1.something.....however I notice that the IF of my touchstone journals for "the bottom" have inched up over the years. Perhaps "2" is my lower bound now.
**see? for some fields this is snobbery. for others, a ridiculous, snarky statement. Are you getting the message yet?
A recent funding opportunity announcement from the NIH Guide caught my eye. PAR-11-086 is for "NIAID Science Education Awards (R25)", the purpose of which is described as follows:
This funding opportunity announcement (FOA) encourages applications from organizations that focus on the development of science education for K-12 students. It is expected that these education programs will provide outreach to a large audience of students at a national level, directly or through their teachers, using approaches where successes can be measured.
Emphasis added. Despite the fact that these R25 mechanism awards have been used by the NIH for a long time and did not even remotely imagine the use of currently available new media and internet technologies, there is an obvious fit. For my audience. For those of you who already use blogs or even YouTube or Facebook, to disseminate scientific information.
Upside in this particular announcement includes the use of standard receipt dates for the application (I've seen some NIH ICs that use a once-per-year, nonstandard receipt dates so check your IC's announcements that use the R25 mechanism.) You may request up to $175,000 per year in direct costs and propose up to 5 years of support.
Are you listening yet, my friends?
There is one obvious trouble spot, since measuring the "success" (aka, any impact or influence on knowledge) of scientific blogging is not an easy task. Still, it isn't as though this is a novel requirement or goal for websites and similar Internet based resources. There already exist ways to try to measure impact. And as you know, sometimes in the NIH grant writing game all that you need to do is provide nominal cover for favorably-disposed reviewers. You know those annoying polls that pop up on websites now and then? I seem to notice them at NIH websites with some frequency. Of course, I just close them but if this is the accepted way to monitor web impact, easy-peasy. Those who have prior experience doing brief post-seminar "evaluation" surveys can probably whip something up in SurveyMonkey or PollDaddy in a trice.
This particular FOA is directed at the K-12 primary and secondary school age groups. I'll point out that not all FOAs that I've seen using the R25 mechanism are limited to this particular audience. So you may find something that fits better with an audience that is of most interest to you under another FOA.
Need ideas? Start with RePORTER to see what is currently funded by the NIH under the R25 mechanism (New Grants, Existing Grants).
The Society for Neuroscience has announced the bloggers which have been selected for official recognition and promotion during the 2010 Annual Meeting to be held in San Diego (Nov 13-17).
Theme A: Development
www.functionalneurogenesis.com/blog/ (Twitter @jsnsndr)
http://geneticexpressions.wordpress.com/ (Twitter @geneticexpns)Theme B: Neural Excitability, Synapses, Glia: Cellular Mechanisms
www.hillaryblakeley.net (Twitter @hillaryjoy)
http://qscience.wordpress.com/ (Q[science]ultd)
Theme C: Disorders of the Nervous System
http://fresheyes-neuroscience.tumblr.com (alc2145)
http://houseofmind.tumblr.com (Twitter @houseofmind)Theme D: Sensory and Motor Systems
http://blog.pascallisch.net/ (Twitter @Pascallisch)
http://neuromusings.com (The Neuro Dilettante - Twitter @neurodilettante)
www.davidderiso.com (Twitter @davederiso)Theme E: Homeostatic and Neuroendocrine Systems
www.dormivigilia.com (Twitter @Beastlyvaulter)Theme F: Cognition and Behavior
http://neurosci.tumblr.com (Twitter @aechase)
http://neuroblog.stanford.edu (Twitter @stanfordneuro)Theme H: History, Teaching, Public Awareness, and Societal Impacts in Neuroscience
http://khawaja-sfn2010.blogspot.com (Twitter @thekhawaja)
Wow. Wired Science has launched a blog network of six writers that looks fashioned in the mold of the Discovery Magazine blog stable. Look who's joined up.
Pretty good lineup, mostly ex-Scienceblogs.com authors, looks like- Brian Romans of Clastic Detritus is the only one of the six to not previously have blogged at the Sb, as far as I know.
There's a couple of things that jump out, in addition to the WOW! factor of such interesting writers being pulled together. @KateClancy observed:
Wow, only one woman in the new Wired Science Blog network... it's like we just don't do science or write about it...
@KateClancy another trend in new science blog networks is that there aren't any scientists in them, just journalists.
And naturally, your most humble narrator noticed that the lineup is kinda....pale.
Perhaps these are issues they might care to address with any subsequent recruiting they might do....
Do you have a particular style by which you cite literature in your common scientific parlance?
This poll was motivated by a comment from a trainee who observed that one style was common in the prior training stop and a distinctly different style was common in the current training stop. I found that odd.
One of the more salient issues to me in the wake of Scienceblogs.org's PepsiBlog fiasco was the moderate schism it revealed between science bloggers (lower case) who self-identify as journalists and those who self-identify as scientists.
The uproar was driven in large part by the journalist types screaming about traditional journalist ethics and the supposed hard line that is drawn between the editorial and business sides of a media property.
My response to this was that as a profession and job sector this is nothing more than a convenient fiction. Recent history is rife with cases in which financial considerations clearly shaded, moved, biased or otherwise influenced content. Look, I get it. There are many cases in which the alleged Chinese wall works. Cases in which newsmedia entities published stories clearly against their own financial interest. And yes, there is a lot of print and J-school professor hot air wasted on devoted to the ethical line.
But at best, these forces for ethical hard lines are losing. Better bet is that the profession is just irretrievably conflicted and we are just going to have to muddle along.
But what really disturbed me was the eagerness of some otherwise respectable scientist-bloggers to start claiming that they (meaning "we) are quasi journalists. Claiming that they (and let's be honest, "we") actually should lean toward and adopt the supposed professional ethics of journalism.
An exchange I've been having on the Twitts today illustrates precisely why science bloggers should not only not adopt a journalist stance but should continue to disparage, correct and otherwise dissect journalistic "coverage" of a science-related story.
The news of the day is the judicial decision to block an executive order issued by President Obama to expand the number of stem cell lines which could be used in federally funded research. The NYT bit does a good job of summarizing the context.
For years, private financing has been used to create embryonic stem cell lines, mostly from discarded embryos from fertility clinics. The process destroys the embryos. President Bush agreed to finance embryonic stem cell research, but limited federally financed research to 21 cell lines already in existence by 2001.
Under the Obama administration, private money was still needed to obtain the embryonic stem cells, but federal money could be used to conduct research on hundreds more stem cell lines, as long as donors of embryos signed consent forms and complied with other rules.
See? This is by no means a complicated story. The grand hoopla over the original decision by President G. W. Bush to permit federal funding of research on a limited set of stem cell lines was a HUGE media storm. Really, even most lay people should be up to speed on the issues and rapidly appreciate the scope of the current judicial ruling.
And yet some respectable science blogger went ahead and Twitted this:
Yikes! Judge halts stem cell research http://is.gd/eAPR4
The link goes to the NYT piece, btw. Nice headline from @davemunger, right? A journalistic headline. The kind of headline that the typical author/journalist, when called on it's inaccuracy, tends to (wink, wink) blame on the editor. "Not my headline (shrug)" they will say in faux apology.
Irritated by this inaccurate sensationalism which clearly implies to the naive reader that this judicial act actually blocked all stem cell research, I responded to Dave with:
halts Obma's *expansion* of permitted use of *federal funds* RT: @davemunger: Yikes! Judge halts stem cell research http://is.gd/eAPR4
He came back with:
@drugmonkeyblog Sure, but not quite as exciting when you put it that way. The implications of the move are still drastic
Quite a tell, isn't it? Typical journalistic approach and why we need scientist-bloggers to oppose this sort of inaccurate communication. Sensationalism that draws the eye is "exciting". That is the justification. So what if the viewer/reader who just glances at headlines walks away with a totally inaccurate perception? He gave the link to the story, right? No fault of his if people don't read it and immediately grasp the nuance...
Yeah, well I object to this journalist tradition/ethic.
This is what I absolutely detest about journalism, dude. Just say no to inaccurate hypage RT: @davemunger: not quite as exciting..
What I object to is this notion that the closest approximation of the truth is optional. Inconvenient. That the business exists to get attention and readers, no matter the cost to the accurate transfer of the best possible information. It is, quite simply, offensive to my professional sensibilities. Yes, we have some movements toward hype in scientific publication but this doesn't mean I agree with it. In point of fact I draw parallels between journalism and GlamourMag science...and Dave Munger stepped right into the steaming pile of why this is so.
@davemunger:
@drugmonkeyblog What is inaccurate about my statement?
the judge did not "halt stem cell research" dude. He reversed the *expansion* of what could happen with fed funds.
.@davemunger return to the Bush scenario in which fed funds could be used for *some* stem cell res. private/state funds used despite fed
@drugmonkeyblog TFA says It's actually unclear whether the ruling reverses back to Bush's compromise, or even rolls that back as well
Ahh, the typical journalist dodge-and-weave when called out on inaccurate reporting. No, this is not some discussion of he said / she said and what might possibly be the downstream implication. I might buy it if you'd started your comments with this or refined them. It is intellectually dishonest to claim you intended your initial Twitt to lead to this particular nuance. Bullshit. Sure, when backed into a corner you can find some loophole to try to weasel out of. Just like the next one...
@drugmonkeyblog And he did "halt stem cell research." He may not have halted *all* stem cell research, but I didn't say that.
HAHAHAHA! Classic journalism. Use an unmodified and bold statement. When called out for the inaccuracy of what you know damn well was going to be the overwhelmingly frequent perception of the statement, retrench to Clintonian parsing of syntax. "I didn't say 'all', dude, not my fault if people inferred that from my unmodified statement. It could have easily meant 'judge halts one experiment involving stem cells in one obscure lab'! HAHA!"
Bullshit. You should be ashamed of yourself when you find yourself in this ridiculous attempt at a defense.
Unless you want to, you know, be a journalist. Then I guess it is totes okay to create whatever inaccurate impression you want via selective quoting, selective phrasing and other tricks.
Pfah. I spit on this journalist tradition. This is why it is an absolute mistake for people who identify as science bloggers to move toward being "more like journalists".
Their crappy practices are the very reason that we bother to blog about science!
How can you have forgotten this?
