Better, faster and cheaper is here to stay. Are you?

Who does not like a 50” plasma TV for a thousand bucks? Or a digital SLR camera or a laptop computer for five hundred bucks or a decent car around ten grant? Embracing the mantra of “better, faster, cheaper” by scientists, engineers, and management guys have ensured that everything we dream of owning and adding to the necessities or luxuries of modern life becomes “affordable” to the common man. I am not talking about the common man with an empty wallet, but about the one who is middle class- truly middle in his/her class- not enough dough to spend but enough status to get credit- he/she can go up or down from here based on their skills and luck.

            The mantra has followers in practitioners of basic science and health industry as well. As a result in basic science you see everyone shopping for the cheapest kits, reagents and personnel (the creation and evolution of post-doctoral fellows is a grand topic in itself, but I am going to spare that one also for now) for doing research. In health industry, you see that services and work that used to done in hospitals by experts are now done at home with the use of instruments that “common man” can use. The greatest example is diabetes management. Nowadays you don’t have to rush to a hospital to check your blood glucose levels and insulin injections- you can do it yourself with the help of “point-of -care” gadgets. 

            What is the point? The point is that when some technological or scientific or managerial improvement/advancement is made it disrupts existing technology and practices. Scientists, engineers and all other kinds of innovators drive these giant leaps forward for the mankind. As a result there is an increasing demand for these folks all over the world. Countries who have invested in producing more of these have seen prosperity follow right behind. But there is the other side of the coin -the moment something better is created people flock to it and as a result people who used to make the other product lose their jobs. When that something is made faster, “less” does the job of “more” or more can be made in less time, more jobs are lost. Imagine then that something becoming cheaper- I mean not just cheaper, but a lot lot cheaper- then people buy the new cheaper product and old one loses its market. Even more people lose their jobs. No one makes a profit without raiding someone else’s wallet in one way or other. The only way to survive is adapt. Put out your antennas, sense what is going on and what is likely to come up, and remember that just because you have survived the struggles in past does not make you “FIT” enough for every future struggle. As the world advances faster and faster, it will test everybody’s ability to keep pace at every step of the way irrespective of geographic locations, developed or developing status, capitalist or communist ideologies or democratic or dictatorial politics. This is a new force of Darwinian selection in play and it is called global economy.

Open research- removing secrecy from the search for nature’s secrets

In my earlier blog I described one of the important activities that determine the success of a scientist namely, publishing. The major purpose of publishing is to disperse knowledge. From a personal perspective publications are the lifeline for scientists. From the social perspective, publications disseminate knowledge to other practicing scientists. Again, from a personal perspective, frequently publishing results of one’s investigations shows the world that a scientist is still active (and also alive!). Publications in high impact journals show that he/she has gained respect. Becoming a regular contributor in top-journals shows the world that he/she is a star. In addition it tells the world that he/she is pioneer in his/her field and riding the crest of the wave of scientific progress. Appointments, promotions and awards are tied to citations and impact of scientific publications. Therefore, scientists ensure that information and details of methods used to procure it are kept a secret until it is safe for them to distribute it without jeopardizing their careers. This is the first level of secrecy in science that is a direct result of a scientist’s natural desire to retain one’s ability to win bread for the family.

 

            The second level of secrecy is introduced into the practice of science as soon as scientific information is published. This is a result of publications not being freely and readily accessible to everyone. This in turn is a result of the hold of publication industry over the information transfer it controls. No doubt, their-own survival and economic principles are the heart of this behavior. The importance of free dissemination of scientific knowledge however, has not left the attention of NIH policy makers. Therefore NIH has recently mandated that all NIH supported work has to be made available free of cost to everyone- open access- a great starting point. Also, there are several publishers who have willingly adopted openness as part of their operating philosophy. As a result 13000 journals are currently open access according to open science directory (www.opensciencedirectory.net), which is no mean thing for people hungry for access and scarce on resources. Compare this to the 40000 (forty thousand) journals indexed by pubmed (a biomedical search engine supported by NIH; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed) that covers just medicine and health!

 

            Support from major UNO organizations such as WHO through special programs help people in developing countries access to several journals. For this reason, several open access titles have special eligibility requirements such as accessing from developing countries. But one should not forget that resources are not plenty and uniform across communities and regions in developed countries. Steps are required to address this deficiency.

 

            Do we really need these many journals? Consider the rate at which journals are sprouting out- a compounding 3.3% per year- much more needs to done from scientists themselves to stop the addition of further chaos to an already crowded environment. Part of the reason for increase in number of journals is the support extended by practicing scientists to this industry. Such support (knowingly or unknowingly) consume huge amounts of resources for procuring access rights to these journals by libraries and individuals and ends up eating up financial resources that can spend towards better causes such as education and training of aspiring young scientists and increase of scientific infrastructure. This is especially true for developing countries, which are short on resources to support scientific research. Maybe a step in the right direction from practicing scientists would be to curb their enthusiasm to support new journals and instead expand the scope and reach of the ones that already exist.           

 

            Not that I am obsessed with open source. But, to be frank, the concept has seeded parallel thinking in so many areas that it is hard to ignore the basic strength of its philosophy. One such area that has been adapted from open source philosophy is open science. This is a practice where scientists boldily put up their results (even proposals on which they are planning to start working or apply for funding) out in the open for feedback from the public and colleagues. They do this at great risk of getting scooped by competitors. This is a risky enterprise as it poses high probabilities of getting scooped, especially in highly competitive areas. Due to this reason, there are only a handful of scientists who opt for this. Most of the times, they also however seem ensure that they do this in a way that protects their competitive advantage. An extension of this practice from individual labs to teams of like-minded people all over the world is seen in enterprises such as OpenWetWare (http://www.openwetware.org). OpenWetWare encourages scientists to participate in hosting classes, publishing protocols and exchanging information. The exercise presently seems to have a large participation from scientists all over the world. Support for organizations like OpenWetWare comes from both government-supported funding agencies as well as individual universities. However, since participation in this endeavor is currently driven largely by personal motivation, more support has to come from funding agencies and universities to encourage and promote these activities.

 

            At the far end of the spectrum of the practitioners of open access, are open science institutes such as Molecular Science Institute (MSI), California. MSI was founded by reknowned geneticist and Nobel laureate, Dr. Sydney Brenner. In their own words “Additional and explicit social goals of the Institute are to encourage young researchers to independently explore new ideas and to nurture a free and innovative scientific environment beyond the constraints imposed by conventional academic, corporate, and government organizations, and to gain experience relevant for more ambitious interdisciplinary biology driven research projects later this century”. MSI is now designated as a Center of Excellence in Genomic Sciences (CEGS) by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The support extended by NIH itself to institutes such as MSI should be heartening for everyone as it evidently envisions a different path in the coming years (or decades) away from the one that is dictated by the publishing industry. Again, it is heartening to note that MSI is not alone in this world and open science institutes are currently propping up everywhere around the world through the support of private and public organizations.

 

            Concerted actions from all the participants would help with the progress towards the distribution of knowledge freely as well as READILY. An open environment will support both individuals and groups who struggle for key information for their scientific investigations. In a global economy and a well-connected world, it is important to realize that the costs of wastage (including carbon footprints) will be ultimately borne by everyone. No amount of insulation would prevent the costs-in terms of wasted labor and productivity-from spilling over man-made boundaries in the current scenario that has blossomed into a truly global one.

Bridging the ideal and real worlds of scientific publications.

If you are a non-scientist, can you remember a time when you asked a scientist about his/her job? If you ever did, I am sure you will never forget it. Most scientists ensure that it becomes memorable event of a lifetime for others. I have seen people wanting to run away as scientists get on with this. I have also noticed expressions where the listeners looked like they were about to clobber the scientist’s head at the first chance he/she looked the other way. Why are scientists so obsessed with what they do? Is the magnitude of obsession unique to the profession? Fact- this behavior is not unique to scientists or science. Everyone does it in every field. But scientists overdo self-advertisement as that is what the profession demands. You are forced to be your own mouthpiece and trumpet. 

It starts off with the demands for publishing. The efforts that go into accumulating enough data for a publication are not trivial. During this process, the practice of science is real, ideal and unbiased. Even though there are scientists who practice science solely with a view to publishing, there are also an equal number of scientists who ask valid, interesting and important questions in order to make the foundations of investigation (present and future) solid and strong. Subsequently, when one writes a paper for publication, the demands are different. Again, this comes naturally to every scientist- assembling a story that explains why the question that was addressed is important, why particular experiments were done, why they were chosen over others, and what the outcome means for people working in related areas. Scientists have to make the arguments strong, the appeal broad, and the story non-controversial.

The next round starts with selecting a journal for publication and ends with publishing it. In this stage, the demands of the publishing industry make science a different kind of social enterprise by bringing economics back into the picture (the earlier one being the search for funding an investigation/proposal). From here on, scientific information becomes an economic commodity- a fact that a lot of scientists have not fully realized even as I write this blog. It is something that practicing scientists have willingly or unwillingly served into, due to severe time constraints, lack of awareness about the existence of this parameter and most importantly due to the innocent belief (as is my case) that journals and publications are driven entirely by objectivity. The fact that publications are peer-reviewed has helped to build a trust in the current system. In addition, the current publication avenues, just like the current funding avenues have evolved over a long period of time and served the community quite well. Therefore, on the surface there seems to be nothing wrong with the enterprise. Is there room for improvement? Yes, and if I did not think so, I would not be writing this blog.

Understanding the fact that scientific knowledge is a marketable commodity would be a starting point to think about making improvements to the system. A recent essay by Neal Young in PLoS (Young et al, 2008 PLoS Med 5(10):e201.doi:10.1371/ journal.pmed.0050201) is an eye opener. Titled “Why current publication practices may distort science”, it makes compelling arguments for reconsidering “how scientific data is judged and disseminated”. The essay provides valid and interesting analogies of scientific publications to economics. It also explains the nature of the forces, their origins and associations to create an economic perspective on the commodity that we as scientists produce and deliver on a daily basis.

  To practicing scientists, reading relevant literature comes naturally. So does writing reviews, perspectives and views on papers or emerging areas summarizing the relevance of the recent findings and where the area stands, the direction it is headed and how proposed experiments would make break-throughs in an area. Again as scientists, we are aware of this practice- papers about papers- as the majority of us earnestly participate in this enterprise. However, I find that the new trend, papers on papers- how the publication industry itself functions- helps us to understand what goes behind the curtains and what factors other than pure science and its practice affect the outcome of our efforts. Reading work of this nature is important to both scientists (who generate the information that is published) and the end-users of the information (aspiring students, peers and people in industry) as impact of a work cannot be simply based on popular parameters such as citation and publication in high-impact journals.

  Even in the age of electronic publishing, high-impact journals try to create artificial scarcity, where print page limits are an excuse to reject scientific articles. Extremely low acceptance rates give status symbols to scientists to publish in those journals. It seems that the accepted flip-side of this coin namely branding, which is the accepted high value of a paper due to its presence in a popular journal, is also misleading as it frequently fails to correlate with the scientific content. Another factor, oligopoly that is practiced by journals with few publications slots determines what is selected as “visible science”. From what I understood after reading Young’s essay, a lack of awareness or acceptance of the aforementioned factors leads scientists themselves to “neglect novel ideas and independent paths for investigation” leading to herding behavior, where the actions of dominant players supercede individual information arising out of emerging investigators.

  As scientists, an awareness of these factors would help us judge our own work and that of others with a more objective mind. It will help us to discount factors that would bias our selection of a particular result or experiment over another one, merely due to the status of the result. It will also help people in the industry by bringing more objectivity into selection of studies for translation into marketable products. Most importantly, the awareness of “winner’s curse”- the effect of exaggeration of results, associations between data sets and relationships between parameters investigated (especially in high impact journals, due to the nature of their demands) on the end-users of such information would help regulatory authorities. It would make them rethink their ways and look more deeply into supporting evidence before granting public use of a technique or agent. In the cases of drugs where it takes a long time before protracted and adverse effects take time to become noticeable for the authorities to intervene, keeping an open eye and maintaining objectivity towards scientific data will serve public good. Efforts should be therefore forthcoming from all participants of science to bridge the ideal and real worlds of scientific publications.