My, that title sure is a mouthful, isn’t it? That's because in the span of a few short days, we’ve seen the following:
(1) An
invited review in
Neuron on the role of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and online forums such as
PubPeer,
PubMed Commons, and journal comments in shaping discussions about published research papers.
(2) A
commentary in
PNAS about the sad structural state of biomedical research in the U.S. and suggestions for change.
(3) A
MAJOR revision in how
NIH (National Institutes of Health) reviews research grants.
These communiques intersect because of how rapidly we can discuss them, who is allowed to comment, and where the debate takes place. Let me take these in turn.
The Vacuum Shouts Back: Postpublication Peer Review on Social Media
(1) An
invited review in
Neuron covered the role of blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and online forums such as
PubPeer,
PubMed Commons, and journal comments (like at
PLOS ONE) in shaping discussions about published research papers (by
Dr. Zen Faulkes):
Postpublication peer review through traditional scientific publishing is like kabuki theater: a slow, rehearsed drama in which the viewer must recognize the subtle profundities of performers wearing deliberately ambiguous masks.
Postpublication peer review on social media is like the mosh pit at a punk rock show. It’s fast, uncoordinated, a lot less subtle, more in your face, and involves a few more risks.
I thank Dr. Faulkes (“Dr. Zen”) for mentioning this blog and its cousin,
The Neurocomplimenter. I started the latter in response to overt dismissals of neuroscience as providing anything useful to our understanding of human cognition (and to emphasize the importance of studying brain function, more broadly). I
see it as “a new project designed to counter gratuitous anti-neuroscience sentiment. It’s part of my campaign to combat pop neurobashing profiteers.”
Lately, the compliments have been sparse (perhaps due to my pessimistic nature) but I will try to highlight the positives anon. Meanwhile, the critical element soldiers on. Dr. Zen nailed my reason for starting an anonymous blog right on the head: professional peer review is anonymous, so why should bloggers identify themselves? Many do, of course, and some researchers sign their reviews.
Regardless, there are strong traditions for using both anonymity and pseudonyms in science (Neuroskeptic, 2013), not the least of which is journal peer review itself. It is a little audacious for authors and editors to decry the negative effects of “anonymous bloggers” when essentially every journal practices anonymous peer review. Bloggers are often easier to identify than journal reviewers. We still don’t know who reviewed Wolfe-Simon et al. (2011)) for Science. But we know Rosie Redfield critiqued it on her blog (http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria-nasas.html), which ultimately led to a paper that failed to replicate key claims of the original paper (Reaves et al., 2012).
The
voodoo correlations neuroimaging brouhaha is another major example of post-publication peer review (that went a little pre-publication due to a preprint going public), much to the dismay of the journal editor and some of the implicated researchers (see
The Voodoo of Peer Review).
Dr. Zen also made the important distinction between completely anonymous commenters and those who identify as a pseudonym, a point that I often fail to make, e.g.
Anonymous Peer Review Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry: “The Neurocritic is happy to provide a new form of anonymous peer review, free of charge.”
Rescuing US biomedical research from its systemic flaws
(2) A
commentary in
PNAS relayed the sad structural state of biomedical research in the U.S. and made [some unrealistic, some potentially helpful] suggestions for change (by four distinguished scientists in positions of power):
There is a no more worrisome consequence of the hypercompetitive culture of biomedical science than the pall it is casting on early careers of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and young investigators.
The commentary discusses the unsustainable growth of the biomedical research enterprise and the overly competitive yet conservative culture it has spawned. This win-at-all costs mentality squelches creativity and collaboration, and concentrates resources in the hands of fewer and fewer investigators. The average age for landing one’s first tenure-track position has risen to 37. And
some estimates project that fewer than 8% of new PhDs will get tenure, with the figure an abysmal 0.45% according to
one report.
The “post-doc apocalypse”
1 has been widely discussed on social media (and in the popular press) for some time now. Potential solutions have been expressed by researchers at all levels, but these voices have been scattered. Those of us who are not in certain informal social circles may overlook a site of discussion somewhere, but who has time to search for it.
On the other hand, specific responses to the
Alberts et al. PNAS article have already appeared on
PubPeer (which allows anonymity) and
PubMed Commons (which does not).
Professor Dorothy Bishop made some trenchant points on the three major solutions proposed by the authors. You can read these at
PubMed Commons and click on links to blog posts, where she expands on the topics of academic workload, grant review, and evaluation.
Here's my worthless $0.02 on the matter, from a position of no power and no influence: I agree with Prof. Bishop that the “Predictable and Stable Funding of Science” solution is a pipe dream...
We encourage Congressional appropriators and the executive branch to consider adding a 5-y projected fiscal plan to the current budgetary process. This plan would be updated each year, at the same time that annual appropriation bills are written.
Ha ha ha ha ha! Have they forgotten the
Great Budget Sequestration of 2013 already? Getting the political parties to agree (or factions within parties) seems impossible to me. Even if all four authors win plum positions in Congress or the White House, good luck with that.
Perhaps more plausible are recommendations for downsizing the future workforce to reduce the glut of under- and unemployed junior scientists. However, they have to persuade graduate programs to admit fewer students and ban principal investigators from funding students through research grants (rather than through training grants). Some funding sources/agencies already forbid PIs from paying student stipends, and Alberts et al. propose that NIH should move towards this model.
They also suggest “Broadening the career paths for young scientists” so they're not looked down upon as
failures if they don't become a clone of their advisor at MIT. This would also require changing the minds of
Bob Graybeards everywhere. Good luck with that.
Another modest proposal is to force universities to pay their faculty. Here, however, they have to convince Chancellors and Deans of medical schools to forgo the “perverse incentives” of “soft money” positions, where the institution benefits from the indirect costs awarded to the university in conjunction with salary money paid by NIH. This would do away with a whole army of productive researchers. What a great idea.
Perhaps these unemployed “soft money” faculty could apply for the proposed Staff Scientist positions, displacing all the post-docs who are supposed to be in line for them. What a great idea. Good luck with that.
To be fair, let's see if the proposed Staff Scientist position might be a good idea. Post-post-docs could move into higher paying jobs that would better prepare them to run their own labs.
This is because they will actually run their supervisor's lab, at much lower pay and with no prestige:
We believe that staff scientists can and should play increasingly important roles in the biomedical workforce. Within individual laboratories, they can oversee the day-to-day work of the laboratory, taking on some of the administrative burdens that now tend to fall on the shoulders of the laboratory head; orient and train new members of the laboratory; manage large equipment and common facilities; and perform scientific projects independently or in collaboration with other members of the group. Within institutions, they can serve as leaders and technical experts in core laboratories serving multiple investigators and even multiple institutions.
Or here's an idea: there could actually be a place in the system for individuals who may not want to run their own lab! These people could conduct their own independent research and help with the grant application process, if so inclined. We'd call them Staff Scientists. We'd hire different people to take on the administrative burdens and call them Lab Managers. Still others could be hired as “technical experts in core laboratories serving multiple investigators and even multiple institutions.” We'd call them Technical Experts.
But this would be prohibitively expensive. Back to cheap graduate student labor...
The most important point is that I can lobby all I want for the Snarky Policy Consultant position, since this is my blog.
NIH and AHRQ Announce Updated Policy for Application Submission
(3) A
MAJOR, MAJOR revision in how the NIH reviews research grants was released today (April 17, 2014). At first I thought it was an April Fool's joke (and that I must have been dreaming for the last 16 days, which would explain a lot of things).
Effective immediately … following an unsuccessful resubmission (A1) application, applicants may submit the same idea as a new (A0) application for the next appropriate due date. The NIH and AHRQ will not assess the similarity of the science in the new (A0) application to any previously reviewed submission when accepting an application for review.
In essence, this does away with the “
two strikes” rule – which meant that rejected proposals were barred from being submitted again sans a complete overhaul.
Within minutes of this announcement,
Drug Monkey had
159 tweets and a
blog post on this new policy, which would allow investigators to submit multiple revisions of basically the same grant (hence the R01 A7, a grant funded on the eighth try). But it wouldn't
really be considered the same grant, so the numbers only go up to A1 (one amendment), thereby avoiding the stigma of A7. Thank you, NIH, that's very considerate.
And here we are again on social media, providing immediate feedback and discussion of important issues that impact the biomedical research enterprise. Can I get a full-time job doing that? We'd call it Blogger-in-Residence.
Footnote
1 I refuse to use the neologism because of what Google will turn up. And this is nothing new; it's been brewing since the early 90s: “From the early 1990s, every labor economist who has studied the pipeline for the biomedical workforce has proclaimed it to be broken.”
