The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one:
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one.
Yet the light of a whole life dies
When love is done.
Francis William Bourdillon
(found 7/12/06 on the inside cover of an old book with title “Perdita” in the patient library of a university clinic)
Slashdot reports a United Nations study that
the richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of all household wealth… Most previous studies of economic disparity have looked at income, whereas this one looks at wealth – assets minus debts.
Looks similar to science budgets, yea, yea.
An interview with Richard Münch in Laborjournal 12/2006, p.23 confirms this: 17 out of 100 German universities consume 50% of all funds provided by DFG. He furthermore believes that SFBs and research networks are a kind of ideological framework; projects are not assessed retrospectively; there is an overkill of management costs where a considerable part of third-party funding is used to get more third-party funding.
No, this essay will not deal with altruism in science but with the science of altruism. There are two new papers from the Fehr group (one in Science on Nov, 3 about diminished reciprocal fairness after magnetic stimulation of the right prefrontal cortex and a second in Nature on Aug, 24 about altruism in two indigenous groups in Papua New Guinea). I was, however, much more impressed by their recent review of human altruism.
Cooperation between genetically unrelated groups is a typical human behaviour (otherwise seen only in ants, bees and the naked mole rat) where there seems a strong reciprocity between selfishness and altruism. Cooperation is rarely stable and may deteriorate under worse conditions. Altruistic rewarding and reputation seeking seem to be the most powerful determinants of future donors’ behaviour where effects of punishing behaviour seem to be underestimated: Cooperation in larger group continues only if punishment of defectors and non-punishers is possible.
Donald Kennedy is writing in this week’ Science editorial about Responding to Fraud. The editorial is even more about prevention of fraud: The external reviewers ask for future risk assessment of potential fraud. Science will think in the future
… which papers deserve particularly careful editorial scrutiny. Papers that are of substantial public interest, present results that are unexpected and/or counterintuitive, or touch on areas of high political controversy may fall into this category…
I appreciate such an initiative and I agree that science is based on an assumption of trust – no procedure will be immune to deliberate fraud. However, looking both at people and at papers could be worthwile. I would give extra score points for
Looking at papers will also reveal inconsistencies
Another option is to pay reviewers – the review process is becoming more and more time consuming – and even to plan on-site evaluation. An option probably not feasible is to delay publication until the main findings are independently reproduced.
Finally, I see a large gap between the attempts of Science and Nature to improve their performance while some average impact journals never respond if you ask them to correct or withdraw a highly distorted paper. Yea, yea.
Guide to promoting integrity in scientific journals published by the Council of Science Editors
“I agree with everything you said that was correct, and I disagree with everything you said, that was incorrect” (Adlai Stevenson according to AJRCM 2006;174:1056) – a nice comment that fits every situation.
The German Spiegel has an interview with Tim O’Reilly about the quality of internet resources. It seems that everybody can voice his or her opinion while the final decision about a feature or a patch is done in the “inner circle”. Entry to the inner circle is limited to those who qualify by previous contributions – probably a very similar system in science. O’Reilly talks in this interview also about Jaron Larnier’s warning that Wikipedia may be dangerous for creating mono-culture-knowledge. He agrees that Wikipedia has been abused in the past but believes that the mechanisms behind Wikipedia to identify abuse are much better than in any political system, yea, yea.
It seems that the German word Zeitgeist is increasingly used also in English texts. When thinking again and again about science and scientists, I always come back to a famous assay of Karl Jaspers written in 1932 (he lost his professorship in Heidelberg 1937; in 1938 he was forbidden to publish any more).
The title of the essay is “Die geistige Situation der Zeit”. The chapter “Wissenschaft” is always a comfort to me when being desperate about the inequity of the scientific world. Here is an excerpt:
Wissenschaften leisten auch heute Außerordentliches. Die
exakten Naturwissenschaften haben einen aufregenden Gang
rapider Fortschritte in Grundgedanken und empirischen Ergebnissen
begonnen. Ein über die Welt verbreiteter Kreis der
Forscher steht in den Beziehungen des rationalen Sichverstehens.
Einer wirft dem anderen den Ball zu. Dieser Vorgang
findet Widerhall in der Masse durch die Handgreiflichkeit der
Resultate. Das sachnahe Sehen in den Geisteswissenschaften
hat sich zu mikroskopischer Feinheit gesteigert. Ein nie dagewesener
Reichtum an Dokumenten und Monumenten ist vor
Augen gebracht. Kritische Sicherheit ist erreicht.
…
Die Krise der Wissenschaften besteht also nicht eigentlich
in den Grenzen ihres Könnens, sondern im Bewußtsein ihres
Sinns. Mit dem Zerfall eines Ganzen ist nun die Unermeßlichkeit
des Wißbaren der Frage unterstellt, ob es des Wissens wert
sei. Wo das Wissen ohne das Ganze einer Weltanschauung nur
noch richtig ist, wird es allenfalls nach seiner technischen
Brauchbarkeit geschätzt. Es versinkt in die Endlosigkeit dessen,
was eigentlich niemanden angeht.
…
Nicht also schon die immanente Entwicklung der Wissenschaften
macht die Krise zureichend begreiflich, sondern erst
der Mensch, auf den die wissenschaftliche Situation trifft. Nicht
Wissenschaft für sich, sondern er selbst in ihr ist in einer Krise.
Der historisch-soziologische Grund dieser Krise liegt im
Massendasein, Die Tatsache der Verwandlung der freien Forschung
Einzelner in den Betrieb der Wissenschaft hat zur Folge,
daß jedermann sich mitzuwirken für befähigt hält, wenn er nur
Verstand hat und fleißig ist. Es kommt ein wissenschaftliches
Plebejertum auf; man macht leere Analogiearbeiten, um sich
als Forscher auszuweisen, macht beliebige Feststellungen, Zählungen,
Beschreibungen und gibt sie für empirische Wissenschaft
aus. Die Endlosigkeit eingenommener Standpunkte, so
daß man in häufiger werdenden Fällen sich nicht mehr versteht,
ist allein die Folge davon, daß ein jeder unverantwortlich
seine Meinung zu sagen wagt, die er sich erquält, um auch
etwas zu bedeuten. Man hat die Unverfrorenheit, „nur zur
Diskussion zu stellen” was einem grade einfällt. Die Unmenge
gedruckter Rationalität wird in manchen Gebieten schließlich
zur Schaustellung des chaotischen Durcheinanderströmens der
nicht mehr eigentlich verstandenen Reste früher einmal lebendigen
Denkens in den Köpfen der Massenmenschen. Wenn so
Wissenschaft Funktion von Tausenden als jeweils zum Fach
als Beruf gehörender Interessenten wird, dann kann wegen
der Eigenschaften des Durchschnitts auch der Sinn von Forschung
… durcheinander geraten.
-moblog- There are many things “nice to know” but only a few “need to know”. Molecular epidemiologists having access to large datasets sometimes forget what most people on earth “want to know” – how to prevent and cure human disease.
[sorry in German, one of my favorite poems, Goethe – Faust you are right]
Habe nun, ach! Philosophie,
Juristerei und Medizin,
Und leider auch Theologie!
Durchaus studiert, mit heißem Bemühn.
Da steh’ ich nun, ich armer Tor!
Und bin so klug als wie zuvor;
Heiße Magister, heiße Doktor gar,
Und ziehe schon and ei zehn Jahr
Herauf, herab und quer und krumm
Meine Schüler an der Nase herum –
Und sehe, dass wir nichts wissen können!
Das will mir schier das Herz verbrennen.
Zwar bin ich gescheiter als alle die Laffen,
Doktoren, Magister, Schreiber und Pfaffen;
Mich plagen keine Skrupel noch Zweifel,
Fürchte mich weder vor Hölle noch Teufel –
Dafür ist mir auch alle Freud’ entrissen,
Bilde mir nicht ein, was Rechts zu wissen,
Bilde mir nicht ein, ich könnte was lehren,
Die Menschen zu bessern und zu bekehren.
Auch hab’ ich weder Gut noch Geld,
Noch Ehr’ und Herrlichkeit der Welt.
Es möchte kein Hund so länger leben!
Just found this note at the bottom of a paper offered by Ingenta Connect: 
The paper is the result of public funded research, written by researcher who is only partially paid for his work while both referees were not paid for their work. Yea, yea.
firstmonday has an interesting article about the limits of self-organization and “laws of quality”. Given 52 million tracks in the Gracenote database, 1 million entries in Wikipedia and 17,000 books in project Gutenberg, Paul Duguid throughly examines the two laws of quality
Although more professionalized, similar principles operate in science. With these large genetic studies, I have the feeling that most errors occur at the interfaces, during hand-shaking of disciplines. There are certainly only a few people that can design a study, examine a patient, go to the laboratory, analyze and annotate the data and publish them. This means that even many eyeballs can not look around the corner and that it will take many years for the “good stuff to spread”. Yea, yea.
Just read the entry of Janet D. Stemwedel about the 2007 North Carolina Science Blogging Conference, a “free, open and public event for scientists, educators, students, journalists, bloggers and anyone interested in discussing science communication, education and literacy on the Web.” Do not miss her tag “Shameless self-promotion” ;-) Three editors from The Lancet will take up to 49 registrants. Who can give me a free ride from Munich (bonus miles welcome)?
The analysis of a large dataset can be done in many different ways. At least in my experience documentation is getting confusing after many weeks of work – what has been done at which time? Can I reproduce my earlier findings? Where are the latest figures? What remains to be done? …
This is an ever increasing problem. Some information is documented in lab books, other in clinical journals, or even sitting on a server database where it may change over time. I have therefore described my own documentation procedure in a PDF paper that is online at this site.
With a quick view at the figure you will see that I am (mis-)using spreadsheets for documentation Please note (1) the drop down arrows at date and task that can be used for selecting lines even of long lists and (2) that tabs can used for fast switching between results (3) one tab contains all analysis scripts (4) and one tab all links.
The redesign of the PLoS journals today is not just a facelift. They continue to have fresh ideas and unconventional approaches. A recent email said that
we encourage authors who are fluent in languages other than English to submit translated versions of an article summary … in other languages. Translations should be submitted as Supporting Information files labeled “Translation of the article summary (or entire article) into language XXX by author YYY”.
That is a nice idea, showing another benefit of online journals, yea, yea.
A decade ago Karen Hunter (at that time Senior Vice President of Elsevier) did a brilliant analysis why scientists publish:
For academic scientists, the research paradigm is the experiment and the publication output is a journal article. Academic science researchers publish to establish their claim at a specific time to a specific result. They publish to gain other forms of recognition (such as promotion and tenure) that require publication. They publish in order to have independent certification of the results and to have those certified (refereed) results archived in perpetuity. Finally, they publish to communicate with those who may be interested in their works today …
She continues with another important aspect
… not the circle of cognoscenti (who do not need publication to be informed) but researchers in related fields, researchers in less well-connected institutions and students working their way into the inner ring.
In my opinion, the “claim at a specific time to a specific result” is probably the most relevant motivation for a scientist. Nevertheless having claims on ideas presented in a printed paper seems to be still a habit of the pre 1995 stone age of scientific publishing. Databases will be certainly as reliable in the future as printed paper. I guess that in 50 years the access to current electronic documents will be even better than to any printed paper. Yea, yea.
Anders Sandberg attended a seminar in Stockholm and has written an interesting report. I have doubts if we have so much need for heroes. There are so many prizes that you can apply for – an impressive list of prizes and honours that you can find at the CVs of some laureates: Albert Lasker Award, Paul Ehrlich Prize, and many, many more. Google returns 60.100.000 hits if you search for “science prize” and there is now even the European database of science prizes that will find a prize for every scientist. Yea, yea.