Scientific American on "How to Fix Science"

The October 2018 issue of Scientific American features a set of articles under the umbrella, "How to Fix Science."  It begins with a prologue describing "antiscience currents" and arguing that one of the ways to "fight back" is to "tackle its own problems" and "shore up their enterprise from the inside."  The articles in the feature are as follows.

• "Rethink funding" by John. P. A. Ioannidis.
• "Make research reproducible" by Shannon Palus.
• "End harassment" by Clara Moskowitz.
• "Help young scientists" by Rebecca Boyle.
• "Break down silos" by Graham A. J. Worthy and Cherie L. Yestrebsky.

The middle three articles are by science journalists, while the first and last are by academic scientists. Readers of DTLR will recognize that the first two articles discuss topics that have been kicked around on this blog over the years.  DTLR readers will also notice that I have been castigating Dr. Rush Holt, CEO of AAAS, recently, for avoiding these very issues.  Holt believes science is just fine the way it is.  DTLR has previously made a similar argument as the prologue of the Scientific American feature:  we need to clean up our own house before we can, with any good conscience, ask the public to continue financially supporting our endeavors.  Thus, I view the Scientific American piece as a rebuke to the Rush Holt model for responding to the "significant erosion of trust in science over recent years" (a phrase used by Worthy & Yestrebsky).

The leading piece by Ioannidis is a good starting point for this conversation.  Perverse incentives stimulate perverse outcomes.  His piece not only touches on funding issues, but hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions. While I disagree with many of the details in his proposed solutions, I believe the spirit of his piece is absolutely on target.  We need to fix the incentive systems in the scientific enterprise, and this is fundamental infrastructure.  Unfortunately the elites who thrive in the current scientific infrastructure have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, and would oppose all Ioannidis' proposed reforms.


The article by Palus is a decent introduction to the non-reproducibility issue for the general reader, but lacks the space to delve into the methodological details of good experimental design, experimental quality control, and adequate reporting that are discussed, for instance, in Richard Harris' recent book, Rigor Mortis.

Moskowitz states that sexual harassment is more prevalent in academia than in any other arena except the military.  I am not surprised by this.  Having worked in various sectors of the economy - academia, industry, and government - my personal preference for a setting conducive to scientific research is the private sector, not academia.  In fact, the academic tenure system protects 'assholes' including those who practice harassment.

Boyle's article consists of comments by various young scientists on the following issues:  moving, money, culture, family, industry vs. academia, getting jobs/fellowships/into school, and representation and inequality.  I agree with the writer as well as Ioannidis that the treatment of young scientists in today's science ecosystem is appalling, and needs to be drastically reformed.

Finally, the article on interdisciplinary research is really another reflection of the perverse incentive systems for academic science.

I mentioned that I agreed with the spirit, but not many of the details of Ioannidis' piece.  Readers, what problems do you see in the incentive structure for scientists, and what solutions would you propose?

Physical Review E milestones

Previously I wrote about the Physical Review family journals' landmark papers.  In this month's APS News, one of these journals, Physical Review E:  Statistical, Nonlinear, Biological, and Soft Matter Physics, notes that it is celebrating its 25th year.  They have posted a series of 25th anniversary milestone papers, one for each year since its founding in 1993.  At the time of writing, they're up to 2011, with 6 more years to go.  Moreover, I found that in 2015, they celebrated the publication of their 50,000th paper by posting another list of milestone papers.  Both lists were compiled by the editors (and editorial board) for making important/significant contributions to their field.

I will ask the same question I asked in my earlier post:  how many are papers in fluid dynamics?  After all, PRE's original subtitle was Statistical Physics, Plasmas, Fluids, and Related Interdisciplinary Topics.  Of course, many of the papers in both PRE milestone lists are related, and in some cases closely related, to fluid mechanics, broadly understood.  I won't have the space to talk about all of them here.

The most important fluid dynamics paper seems to be one that appears in both PRE milestone lists:  Shan & Chen (1993), "Lattice Boltzmann model for simulating flows with multiple phases and components," appearing in the first year of the journal's life.  The 2015 milestone list includes a second fluid dynamics paper, also from the first year of the journal's life:  Benzi et al. (1993), "Extended self-similarity in turbulent flows."  Finally, the 2018 milestone list features Baskaran & Marchetti (2008), "Hydrodynamics of self-propelled hard rods," motivated by observations of gliding bacteria.  The latter paper could also be considered part of biological physics.  The 2018 list has not been completed at time of writing, so I may need to post an update when the series is complete.

For reasons discussed in my earlier note, PRE does not seem to be part of the group of the most elite fluid dynamics journals, consisting of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Physics of Fluids, and new arrival Physical Review Fluids (PRF).  Indeed, with the arrival of PRF in the Physical Review family, Physical Review E's role in the fluid dynamics community could become diminished, though its mission statement continues to include both complex fluids and fluid dynamics.  I checked PRE's website today, and the editorial board continues to have members covering fluid dynamics.  We'll see in the future whether some kind of equilibrium is reached between the two journals.

More pointless AAAS propagandizing

In the last few months, I have written about Dr. Rush Holt's stewardship as CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  Today I received a fund raising letter, mimicking the language of his earlier writings, but giving examples of how AAAS would "promote and support good science communication."    All of this again presumes that the "scattered distrust of science" is due to poor communication and public misunderstanding.  That may well be, but first and foremost Science has to clean up its own house.  The current incentive system for research penalizes the care required to increase its reproducibility.  Using the considerable influence of the AAAS to help address this does not seem to be a priority of Dr. Holt, who insists that science is just fine the way it is.  If you received a similar fundraising letter from Dr. Holt, DTLR encourages you to send it to the shredder.

Physician, Heal Thyself

Just today, Dr. Rush Holt (CEO of AAAS) sent out the following message.


DTLR does not recommend responding to this solicitation.  Until AAAS is prepared to dedicate an equal amount of resources to cleaning up Science's own house - by working to reform the perverse incentive system for scientific research, and improve its reproducibility - the above solicitation is nothing but a self-serving propaganda effort.  AAAS, as publisher of Science, the nation's leading general science journal, has a particular responsibility here, and Holt claims to be its Executive Publisher.  Will Science proceed to make the distinction between exploratory and confirmatory research, as its previous Editor envisioned?  In the midst of the crisis on reproducible research, discussed at length on this blog, how much longer will Science deserve the public's trust and support?

See also this post by Sabine Hossenfelder.  I have disagreed with her in the past, but this time I'm 100% on board.