By 2010 the picture had only become more complicated, involving much more than genes and proteins. “Someone should have taken note” that “junk” DNA and RNA also play important roles, The Economist chided last year. Who should have taken note is not clear, but the oversight did not diminish the magazine’s optimism. Yes, “the pipelines are empty,” but not to worry. “Genomics has not yet delivered the drugs, but it will,” the article’s headline reassured readers.
Science and technology have turned in spectacular results, a performance which could reasonably be expected to continue. Questioning this assumption, however, elicits frowns or even termination from editors of science-focused media. In 1996, for example, veteran science writer John Horgan assembled his writings for Scientific American into a book titled The End of Science. It was the end of his job. Horgan says his “managers” thought his book was “bad for business” (though he has since resumed writing for the magazine.)
The nature of the NSF’s productivity report deters coverage by science journalists, according to Phil Hilts, director of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowships at MIT. The story merits coverage, he said, “but it is so unclear what might be happening [with research productivity], it dampens most reporters’ interest.”
Hilts wondered if the study simply reflected changing authorship patterns rather than pointing to something important and fundamental, echoing the views of Alice Huang and Luke Timmerman (a 2006 Knight Fellow). That view seems dismissive, however. After all, journalism is an exercise in clarifying the unclear. The president of MIT, Susan Hockfield, declined to comment.
Unfortunately, with so few scientists and science journalists willing to discuss the matter, we may never get a firm understanding of the situation. The NSF has stopped tracking the productivity metrics used in its working paper and won’t apply them to more recent or upcoming years, according to Derek Hill, senior analyst at the NSF for science and engineering indicators. I asked Rolf Lehming, program director for the NSF’s annual report, Science & Engineering Indicators, whether publication productivity measurements would be added to the dashboard of indicators. He declined to comment on the NSF study.
As President Obama mashes down the R&D accelerator, any problems with the engine will go undetected if scientists and journalists are not willing to look under the hood. That science has gotten more expensive, and thus less productive, seems to be undisputed. If Johns Hopkins’s Zeeger is right that the rising costs come from the maturation of the scientific enterprise, research will not only fail to move forward exponentially, the coefficient of progress will actually fall. If that is the case, scientists and science reporters must seriously reconsider the master narrative of rapid, ineluctable advancement. These giant questions are worthy of coverage—and comment.
Clarification: The text of this article has been changed to reflect that Horgan said his “managers” at Scientific American, not his editors, felt his book would be “bad for business.” After the article was published, Horgan specified that he was referring to publishing and advertising staff.
This editorial did not generate the traction it should have:
[Science 10 September 2010: Editorial Overbuilding Research Capacity
Bruce Alberts Bruce Alberts is Editor-in-Chief of Science.
Policies that offer incentives for individuals and institutions can
unintentionally induce harmful behaviors. One such perverse incentive
encourages U.S. universities, medical centers, and other research
institutions to expand their research capacities indefinitely through
funds derived from National Institutes of Health (NIH) research
grants.]
The science policy implications of "101 Theory Drive" have been underanalyzed. If science were on the treadmill, churning obsolete practices, it would not be possible for government and universities to examine the pathology. Obama is caught in a warp so that he is unable to recognize that intractable issues in biomedical research will not always yield to money. Instead, the churning takes on a hypnotic force so that self-analysis becomes impossible.
Scholars in the humanities and social sciences struggle to reflect on the meaning of their practices. However, for outright solipsism, there is nothing like a scientist. We could take the Bruce Alberts editorial and the thoughtful comments in "101 Theory Drive" as being urgently in need of deep analysis. In government, they just give it all a wave. At Science itself, if you comment on the churning, the magazine is likely to post and delete your comment.
Obama has to take personal responsibility for this eccentric state of the union. He has a duty to read the Alberts editorial and "101 Theory Drive" and comment on them. He cannot rely on his science policy experts. They are just helpless.
#1 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Mon 31 Jan 2011 at 02:17 PM
Regarding the portion about John Horgan and his book, "The End of Science," as a witness to those events in question, let me clarify what happened at Scientific American. None of the editors thought that his book was "bad for business." That concern came from the ad sales staff, which was worried that media planners would not understand the general premise of the book and would choose not to place their clients' ads with the magazine. (The purported thinking went something like this: "Well, if science is ending, why should we bother advertising with you?")
Although absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, as far as I am aware, Horgan's book did not lead to any missed ad sales.
Philip Yam
Managing Editor, Online
Scientific American
#2 Posted by Philip Yam, CJR on Tue 1 Feb 2011 at 05:56 PM
My former and current colleague Phil Yam is absolutely right. It was not my editors at Scientific who thought my 1996 book The End of Science was "bad for business" but executives responsible for sales, who are no longer at the magazine.
#3 Posted by John Horgan, CJR on Tue 1 Feb 2011 at 06:29 PM
As a research scientist for longer than I care to remember, I have seen changes to the way science is managed that deeply concern me. First, post docs are now treated like commodities that can be replaced as soon as their skills become no longer relevant to the chosen research direction. And research directions change more and more quickly as managers chase ever-shrinking government funding tied to political fashions. This means the depth of knowledge required to tackle the big problems is actually decreasing in the scientific community through a lack of continuity. The result is a desperate short-termism that works against real progress. How can the boundaries of human knowledge be extended when those charged with its advancement spend most of their time writing funding proposals, just to survive another year? The only alternative is for scientists to take funding from companies, who want to own the resulting intellectual property and therefore discourage publication (after all, secrecy is far cheaper than patenting costs).
#4 Posted by N.Clark, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 04:17 PM
Thanks to Robert Fortner for an excellent article, and to Philip Yam and John Horgan for their comments. What Fortner is onto is a cognitive limitation of humanity: we do not have a Chomskyan Remote Cohesion Analytical Device as part of our intellectual makeup. Perhaps someday you will be able to buy one at WalMart, but for the time being we need better analysis. For example:
[PRESS RELEASE FROM NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP 31 January 2011:
King Saud University (KSU) and Macmillan Publishers have signed a five year Memorandum of Understanding to enhance the university’s scientific communication and profile. Macmillan Publishers provide KSU with a wide range of services, including workshops on writing and publishing research papers in international journals, and manuscript editing services.]
This would be an interesting subject for CJR, perhaps for an embedded writer. One issue that needs to be faced in science is the opportunity cost of churning obsolete systems. In English teaching and testing, the costs should be obvious. The industry is huge. (I have asked The Economist to have its intelligence unit examine how large the fake English business--TOEFL, IELTS, for example--is, but even though parasite revenues are probably bigger than WalMart's every year, this is not something that the magazine would be able to grasp.)
In science, the issues are not quite as crude, but still intractable. (The best book to base an examination of the crudest aspects on is "The Art of Being a Parasite"). An indicator is the extreme weakness of Scientific American Mind. I am reading a lot of texts such as Mark H. Ashcraft's "Cognition," Baddeley's 2009 "Memory," Noah Lemos's "An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge," and course books in semantics and philosophy of language.
Philosophy, Linguistics, and Psychology are a failed cluster. By adding Literature, Harvard and UPenn could produce honors programs that would result in students with far better reading skills, but the universities just can't do it. They can't grasp how to unite fundamentals. For example, at the SFU bookstore today, I found "The Academic Writer's Handbook" by Leonard J. Rosen as the Psychology department's concession to the English language. Apparently, the COBUILD English Grammar has escaped notice.
In Physics, I discovered "Scientists Must Speak" as the English language presentation standard. Now, it is clear that in science at SFU there is a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of language. The opportunity costs should be patent.
We might ensure that high school students have mastered a good text on Cognition, and two good books on Memory (Baddeley and Schwartz). The last thing we would want to do is have students take AP Psychology. General introductory texts to Psychology are usually an embarrassment.
The author of "101 Theory Drive," McDermott, would make a good editor of Scientific American Mind, which should be a monthly high-quality magazine in which philosophy, psychology, and linguistics would be focused and advanced. Literature would be able to make a significant contribution. The lack of originality of that magazine is the ultimate tipoff. Human beings would rather not think too much about what they are doing. Mind is just a metaphor.
#5 Posted by Clayton Burns, CJR on Wed 2 Feb 2011 at 05:02 PM
looking at just the number of articles published has nothing to do with their quality or the advancement of knowledge. It's a very crude and in my opinion useless measure. I have to wonder what your agenda is here.
#6 Posted by Andy, CJR on Tue 8 Feb 2011 at 09:28 PM