Don't let it happen again

This gave me chills. Carl Sagan contemplates the possibility of the loss of past discoveries. While on the surface of it, it seems unlikely, and most people will say, "That could only happen in Islamic fundamentalist cultures", keep in mind that there are organizations here in the U.S. devoted to rolling back the Enlightenment.

Hat tip: Pharyngula

Science is a crazy business.

What a strange business this is: We stay in school forever. We have to battle the system with only a one in eight or one in ten chance of getting funded. We give up making a living until our forties. And we do it because we want to help the world. What kind of crazy person would go for that?

Nancy Andrews, M.D., Ph.D.
Dean, Duke University Medical School

Via Orac, I learned of this new lobbying effort to increase NIH funding. Brokenpipeline.org argues that a generation of researchers will be lost if we don't fix the NIH. They're right.

Currently, universities aren't hiring new researchers. They're poaching researchers from other universities. So folks in a position like me, where they're finishing a post-doc, and starting to look for work, are in the position that there are no new jobs available. It's a crazy time. Read more here.

John McCain is anti-science.

I wrote last week how John McCain has no plan for science. This week, we discover via the Washington Post that he points to basic science studies as a waste of money:

The federal government, he declares with horror and astonishment, has spent $3 million to study grizzly bear DNA. "I don't know if it was a paternity issue or criminal," he jokes, "but it was a waste of money."

Head over to the Washington Post for the whole story.

Who would you take money from?

One of my recent commenters brought up the spectre of tainted research dollars:

"Doctors have been critical of [Edith London's] research and the fact that she accepts money from Philip-Morris."

Does this matter?

As an introduction, I'm a research scientist. I've pointed that out on numerous times in my blog. I'm a post-doc, and I'm currently looking for a permanent position. I'm keeping my options open, looking at academic, industry and private research institutions when I'm looking for positions. Indeed, I'm looking for jobs on two different continents. As such, I'm looking at taking money to do research from numerous different sources.

In my 11 year science career thus far I have been funded by the National Institutes of Health, the United States Army Breast Cancer Research Program, a small foundation that shall remain nameless as it identifies my nationality (I have to have some privacy, right?) and my current benefactor, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

Does it matter who pays me? Am I beholden to the people who have given me money? Am I more likely to speak kindly about the American Army because they paid me? Am I less likely to say that Howard Hughes was an obsessive-compulsive because of the money that HHMI is putting into my retirement account?

My views on these questions have changed over time. Before I understood how science was done, I would have said that of course the source of money taints the scientist. Now I have a less simplistic view.

Modern science requires vast amounts of money. Someone has to pay for that work. In the U.S., the vast majority of biological research is paid for by companies. The second largest funder is the National Institutes of Health (paid for by American taxpayers). At the end of the day, money taints *all* research. How do you get around that?

The answer is reasonably simple. Firstly, most (all?) journals these days require a statement about funding and conflict of interest. When you publish in a journal, you have to state whether the work you are doing in any way will reflect on investments that you have or products that you own the rights to. You also have to put a statement acknowledging the source of your funding. This gives the readers of the article the opportunity to scrutinize your results with that in mind. Failure to disclose this kind of information is a huge no-no in scientific circles. Indeed, it can end careers to be withhold financial conflicts.

Secondly, science does not proceed based on assertions. It proceeds based on data. If a scientist publishes fraudulent data because they received money from a company (or because they wanted to impress someone), that is a career ender. Frauds get caught. If no one can replicate your results, you will get caught. And in the end, this is the most important part of science. We replicate each others results. We build on previous work. And in this process, frauds get caught. In the short run, they may get away with it. In the long run, they will get caught, and they will get fired.

In the end, our erstwhile commenter asks:

"Have your ever or would you ever take money from big tobacco to fund your research?"

Have I? No. I haven't ever worked on anything that they would be interested in funding. Would I? Yes. If I had a problem I was working on that they were interested in funding, I would take their money. I would disclose my funding source. And it wouldn't change my data.

Science Debate!

Via Mark at Denialism:

We must adapt to the fact that over the last few decades it has become critical that our politicians and policymakers understand science and implement policy that is consistent with scientific facts. And it is past time that we made science enough of a priority to merit a presidential debate on science. The need is clear, these days policymakers must be able to respond in an informed fashion to new technologies, new scientific findings, and potential disasters (such as climate change). Despite the need for a scientifically-literate political leadership, we have a president who says the jury is still out on evolution, who promotes failed abstinence-only sex education programs, and refuses to make any substantive changes to address global warming.

For more, go to Science Debate 2008.

Elsevier is protecting us. Really.

So, I'm a big proponent of open access publishing. Note the PLoS emblem in the top right corner of my blog. Open access means that the journal either 1) doesn't require subscription fees to access articles. or 2) doesn't require subscription fees to access articles after a certain amount of time has elapsed. It only seems fair. The public funds the vast majority of studies that are published in academic journals, they should have access to them.

All but one of my publications are in open-access journals. I've felt pretty strongly about this for a fairly long time.

How do open-access journals operate in the absence of subscription fees? Well, this is how PLoS operates:

It costs money to produce a peer-reviewed, edited, and formatted article that is ready for online publication, and to host it on a server that is accessible around the clock. Prior to that, a public or private funding agency has already paid a great deal more money for the research to be undertaken in the interest of the public. This real cost of "producing" a paper can be calculated by dividing your laboratory's annual budget by the number of papers published. We ask that—as a small part of the cost of doing the research—the author, institution, or funding agency pays a fee, to help cover the actual cost of the essential final step, the publication. (As it stands, authors now often pay for publication in the form of page or color charges.) Many funding agencies now support this view.

So they charge the people publishing. And really, this is a very small fraction of the cost of doing research.

Well, as you might imagine, companies that make their money off of subscription fees are rather upset by this new model. After all, Elsevier, a large academic publishing outfit, made £196 million (~$394 million US) last year, a 27% operating profit (off of £721 million revenue) made from subscription fees. There is real money at stake here. Just as a note of comparison, the NIH budget for 2006 was approximately $29 billion US. I'm not suggesting all of Elsevier's money is coming from the NIH, but as a comparison, $1.4 billion US spent on journal subscriptions - just to Elsevier - compared to $29 billion of research dollars. This is a significant percentage of the research pot.

So, what is poor, poor Elsevier to do? Hire a PR firm!"

We're like any firm under siege," says Barbara Meredith, a vice-president at the organization [American Association of Publishers] "It's common to hire a PR firm when you're under siege."

Woo! Sounds bad! And what did the PR firm create?

PRISM.

An astroturf organization, made to look like they're watching out for the quality of research. It's a pretty funny website.

Myth:American consumers have a right to free access to articles their tax dollars fund.

Fact:
American taxpayers do not fund peer reviewed research articles; they fund some of the research that is used in those articles.

Yep, so they should have free access to that work. And British citizens should have free access to British work. And Zimbabweans should have free access to their work. And I'm sure the good citizens of Britain and Zimbabwe won't mind sharing their work with Americans. Do you see where this is going?

Myth 2: Peer review costs publishers nothing - referees do not charge for their work.

Fact
Scholarly publishing involves far more than volunteer referees and printing. Non-profit and commercial publishers invest hundreds of millions of dollars every year managing and coordinating the work of millions of authors, editors and reviewers, and vetting millions of submissions through an independent peer review process. Publishers then also assume the responsibility and costs associated with bringing peer reviewed articles to the attention of other scientists and the news media, including the editorial staff that coordinate multiple revisions, extensive proofreading, layout, design, publishing, distributing and archiving of articles.

Yep, so you get scientists to volunteer to do the hard part, then you make a 27% profit laying out the data with pretty fonts. Sounds fair to me!

The stupid part in all this is that this lobbying organization is treating scientists like fools. (Quite clearly). Who do you think is going to read the PRISM materials? Cancer patients? Nope, it's going to be scientists. And it's going to piss us off just enough to finally send a grand F__k you to those publishers who have so insulted our intelligence. Mark my words. This is a lobbying effort that is going to bite Elsevier (and other publishers) in the ass.

Thanks to Tara who reminded me of how pissed off I am about this...