Some scientists are more science-famous than others, some of us work are more prestigious institutions than others, some of us receive far more compensation than others, and there are some professional activities that some of us do and a lot of us don’t. Picture in your mind someone who people might classify as a “big league scientist.” The checklist would include employment in a fancy-pants institutions, publishing in the most exclusive journals, received big awards, a steady stream of funding from public and private sources, regularly hobnob with a coterie of other fancy-pants scientists. Is this person actually operating in a different league than the rest of us? I don’t think so. Nobody is a big-league scientist because we have no leagues. Science is not a sport, and the ability and capacity to do high quality science is not even comparable to what happens in sports. And what constitutes high quality science is highly subjective. For some people it’s an h-score, for others, it’s how many of their middle school students understand how osmosis works, and others it’s how well you’ve prepared trainees for doing more science. “Excellence” is a meaningless term in this situation¹, if you’re thinking that more excellent people are in higher leagues. I can understand where the idea of leagues may be appealing. Some folks have different spheres of influence: local, regional, national, international; dealing with very little money, some money, or hundreds of millions of dollars; specialized in publishing research, teaching, working in industry, policy, or something else. But please don’t think of these as tiers that are above one another. Our social ecosystem is far more complex than that, and the perception or imposition of these hierarchies gets in the way. How we think about this issue is foundational for equity, access, and justice in science. Because those of us who believe and act as if there are some of us are in higher “leagues” than others are harboring fundamentally different types of growth mindsets than others, and have different beliefs about the background and environments that it takes to “advance” oneself into higher “leagues.” No matter where you work, you can submit and publish your work in any journal. When you’re assessing a person’s talent as a scientist, you can’t learn this from how many papers they’ve published, how much grant money they bring in, or the level of status associated with their position. While some folks insist on putting rankings on people, departments, institutions, journals, and everything else, it's not like professional sports with organized leagues.
Yes, there are certain skills and situations that can help you advance your career in science. You can be really good at writing grants, you might be great at difficult math or some obscure but very important techniques, you might have been born into the right zip code, you might have had the chance to volunteer in a program that gave you connections to influential people. Here’s an old school example explaining why acting as if there are “leagues” is problematic: The progress of evolutionary biology and genetics was (arguably) slowed by decades because folks had simply overlooked the science of Gregor Mendel. It took decades for his work to be visible to scientists in relevant fields. If that same exact project was done by someone who was more deeply engaged in the “big leagues,” our understanding of the inheritance of traits would have advanced far more rapidly. Let me give you an example ripped from my own (personal) headlines. I recently was visiting with a friend at another institution who describing to me their cool and ambitious collaborative research project under development. For the past couple years, they’ve cobbled together some smallish amounts of funds from local agencies and were preparing to launch. It was running on very thin budgetary margins, with not quite enough funding for staff so a lot it would be coming out of the hide of the PI in the long run, and the science was extremely solid but the amount of replication could have been better if there was more time/money/support. I was like, “This sounds like a super cool project for a couple different NSF programs, have you applied?” My friend had convinced themselves that the project didn’t have enough preliminary data, or that the panel wouldn’t be convinced it would be important or exciting enough, and that it wasn’t just ready for prime time. But I really made the case to them that this project was a great fit. I think if this same scientist was working in a bigger “league” institution, they would have been surrounded by people who would haven’t thought twice about submitting this as a proposal to a federal agency. I left that conversation thinking that my colleague felt not as fully enfranchised in our research community because their position didn’t have the same status and resources as others do. Whereas I am convinced the reality is that the folks who are making the funding decisions for these projects definitely feel that this person belongs — even if there are some elitist attitudes to be found in other corners of our community might not feel the same way. When I’ve served on NSF panels, I’ve occupied equal footing with people who worked in federal agency roles, community colleges, research institutions, small liberal arts colleges, and other regional publics. And I’ve seen enthusiasm for supporting work from throughout all kinds of institutions, without regard to “leagues” that someone may be operating in. I think this mindset that we are all members of one scientific community, all performing our individual roles, all of which are valuable, needs to be more than rhetoric. It’s something that we need to believe in and be a foundation for how we interact with others. Are you at a conference and there’s a person you’ve never heard from from a place you’ve never heard of? Learn about them and what they do! Is there a student applying to your lab but their only research experience is with someone who is poorly published? So fricking what! Are you excited about the intro course that you’re teaching even though everybody in your department thinks it’s a blow-off course that you shouldn’t invest in? Follow your conscience and your heart! When I started Small Pond Science eleven years ago, I think I was tired of my and my colleagues at institutions like mine being perceived of as less, or as not a part of the broader community. The journey that I’ve taken since then (which has brought me into higher “league” activities if you want to see it that way) has indicated to me that this hierarchy only exists when people insist it upon us, and intentional communities can be far more equitable and accessible. We stop treating science as competitive sport, as more as a community endeavor. We aren’t separated by leagues, but we are kept apart by those who believe in them. 1 When I give the occasional DEIAJ talk or roundtable or whatnot, the conversation varies greatly with the audience, but the one thing I can promise is that I will bring up this paper. I will never not stop talking about that paper. You’re currently a free subscriber to Science For Everyone. Thanks for your support! If you wish to support this work more, then you could pay for a subscription.
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Friday, 20 September 2024
What it takes to become a big league scientist
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