Behind the Curtain Again

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about some of the not so great behind the scenes goings on in science. I'm revisiting that after news broke yesterday of a paper by Dr Fiona Ingleby and Dr Megan Head being rejected by a journal reviewer with the following comment.

Images of comments from Fiona Ingleby's twitter

The paper in question was on gender issues in the flow of researchers from PhDs to Post Docs and not only does the review suggest that the authors needed 'to find one or two male biologists to work with', it also included this lovely commentary.

Images of comments from Fiona Ingleby's twitter

Or Mr Reviewer, maybe there are issues of where women get published due to people like you. On top of the drivel above the Reviewer also acknowledges looking up the author's websites and notes their genders and post doc status in the review and appears to see them as 'junior' researchers. Ironically both authors  have over 20 years of research under their belts. You know how I said status matters in my original behind the curtain post? Well, I think this is a perfect example of that point. 

On their twitter feeds, Dr Ingleby and Dr Head have pointed out that this kind of review really shows why we need double blind peer review. At the moment, when an author submits a paper they get reviews back from anonymous reviewers. However, the reviewers get full access to the author's details so can easily find out things like their gender and status in the field in question at will. Does this skew their perceptions of the work they are given to read? Well I think the above comments tell you that it does. Double bind peer review would remove the element of reviewer bias as the reviewer can only judge the work, not the person. Another option is to let the authors know who is reviewing them because, as you find with internet trolls, once you take away the mask of anonymity, people think a lot more before they speak. However, a clear argument against this would be that knowing a reviewer's identity could lead to personal vendettas or bribery. Therefore, double blind peer review is probably the way to go to protect integrity in science. 

The publisher (PLOS One for anyone who cares) who allowed these comments to stand as 'legitimate' criticism have since apologised and state that the paper is under being looked at under the appeal Dr Ingleby and Dr Head have submitted. But frankly, that's not good enough. How could any editor allow such complete and utter rubbish be included as a review? What are they going to do to ensure this doesn't happen again? Will they stop sending papers to the reviewer in question? I hope that this incident sparks a wider discussion and maybe change in the peer review process, but I won't hold my breath. If at least it makes reviewers think twice about what they write about papers and what editors accept as legitimate reviews then that's a small positive result from this. However. until peer review changes, I don't think we'll see the back of dodgy reviewers comments.

Does Scientific Accuracy Matter in Fiction?

Science can be found all over the place in fiction. From crime drama to the obvious science fiction, it pops up everywhere; but, does it matter if fiction is scientifically accurate? Validity and accuracy are funny things to apply to fiction as, well, it's not real. However, how does scientific accuracy effect story telling and what does it tell an audience?

The most obvious place to look at science in fiction is by looking at science fiction itself. Sci-fi is awash with amazing ideas of what might happen in the future, but it's also home to some things that are just draw droppingly bad too and can make you want to bang your head against a desk when you notice them.

One of the best examples of scientific accuracy in a story I can think of is Doctor Who's Weeping Angels. Why? The quantum lock. The thing that makes the Angels so terrifying (apart from the fact that they could be anywhere) is that they only move when you don't look at them. In the episode Blink the Angels are described as being quantum locked because there are many things in quantum physics that don't do certain things when you observe them. Those two words are a perfect descriptor for the Angels and is filled with science. For a general audience it sounds cool and opens the door for people to maybe explore what quantum is all about, which maybe, just maybe might encourage someone to pursue physics. However, for people who know what quantum theory is, that description is a stroke of genius. For me, it perfectly encapsulates the Angels in real quantum theory. Like electrons, when not being measured or watched they have a probability of being anywhere and everywhere, but once seen they suddenly become fixed in the most probable place. Its beautiful writing, complete with respect for science and I think its just wonderful.

There's unsurprisingly a lot of science jargon thrown around in Star Trek, and sometimes it gets a little bit muddled. In the original series, the writers originally to use lithium as the Enterprise's power source, but their scientific advisor highlighted that as lithium is a known element with known properties (which didn't include powering warp drives), they should switch to using dilithium crystals, which don't exist. However, in a strange twist, Lithium-6 crystals are being tested as a possible fusion fuel source, which might just be used to power space ships in the future! So we move from a real phenomena to a made up one. Using Lithium to power a starship is bad science, and people will notice it. However, when you make up a new molecule, there's no science base for it. Therefore, this helps to encourage the audience to suspend their disbelief and go, "OK if you have dilithium, this is possible." Another great example of a made up science fudge in Star Trek is the transporter and it's most important component the Heisenberg Compensator. From what I can find the Heisenberg compensator is introduced in Next Generation because physics tells us that you can't know both the position and momentum matter with absolute accuracy, which is known as the Heisenberg Principle. Therefore, how could you transport people without seriously messing them up? Well all you need is a Heisenberg Compensator to remove this problem! How does it work? In the words of Trek Scientific advisor Michael Okuda "Very well thank you". So once again you go from certain sections of the audience going "Transporters? Hmm. How do you fix the Heisenberg uncertainty for that to work?", to "Oh, ok, they have a box which does a thing.", once again creating a suspension of disbelief. The key thing as to why these fixes an fudges work is research, particularly with the Heisenberg Compensator. The writers found ways to understand the world and what governs it, then were able to find reasons why the story breaks fundamental rules.

Now when is science portrayed really inaccurately in fiction? The most prominent example is the age old "I'll just increase the resolution for you" which appears all over fiction when the suspect has been caught on CCTV. It's just so stupid! You can't get information from nothing. What even more frustrating is an easy fix. CCTV cameras collect lots of information, so what if the investigators get a low resolution version of the video which can be sent to them really quickly? Then if they see something interesting they can just ask for a high resolution frame to be sent over! Ta daaaa! You get the number plate without conjuring it up from thin air. There's only one time when this kind of reality abuse just might be acceptable that I can think of, and then it's only just acceptable by a hair. The TV show was Alias (and awesome by the way), and it took them THREE DAYS to increase the resolution. Yep. 3 days, not seconds or minuteness, which in my mind is just about acceptable considering they were using CIA supercomputing and databases to reconstruct the image.

So does scientific correctness matter? Yes and no. When science in fiction is done right, its beautiful. When it's not it's awful. If what you want breaks the rules, make something up! It's simple and effective. There are very few situations when people won't accept it even in contemporary setting. It's really rewarding for a reader when you can can reference and adapt real science to suit something a plot point in a story. When that's not possible, making up a reason why you can break the rules can be just as good. Especially, if you can hint to the real science blocking your way. Either way, if science or technology has a large baring on a story and it doesn't work, it can kill it; especially when all it would have taken was the few moments to read that Wikipedia page in a bit more detail.

Behind the Curtain

One of the things in my PhD which has been the most eye opening is looking behind the curtain  and seeing how science actually works. Let me tell you, it's quite a bit different to how the scientific community like to present it. 

In school you are taught that a textbook tells you the truth and scientists come up with experiments, write conclusions and communicate them to the masses in statements that are irrefutable. When I got my head around that, I though it was great and that science was a pure pursuit of truth, free of prejudice. As time goes on you do A-levels and a degree and you're taught that just because its published doesn't mean its true. People make mistakes, experiments can miss out key factors. You are taught to scrutinise papers and see if the claims they make are valid. That's sensible too, everyone can't be right all the time. Through all this time the messages are consistent. Science is about finding the truth, constantly doing better, all ideas are valid if you can back it up with evidence. If you find something out, it'll be accepted because science has peer review and the community is open to change. Then, you become a PhD student and you realise that although the great scientific method is pretty good, when you look up close it's stained, chipped and not the perfect thing you thought it to be.

People are people. We look out for ourselves, we hold onto our views very tightly and don't like it when others challenge them. We have authority structures where the people at the top have more say than those at the bottom, we need money and some people will not always be moral bastions in their pursuit of it. 

Why am I stating this? Well, however much scientists pretend that scientific truth is all that matters. They're only people. And being only people they bring the flaws of the human race into science, meaning that science isn't always unscrupulously fair. A small number of scientists fabricate results. A small number rig peer review, the very process the scientific community heralds as so rigorous and so just and the cornerstone of research practice. However, the problems aren't just when people try to further themselves. It can be hard to challenge existing thinking, you can get knocked back for challenging the status quo. Sadly, it's very unlikely that Einstein's papers would see the light of day if he'd first written them in today's climate as potentially important ideas can be ignored if they stray too far from generally held opinion. Also, this unwillingness to hear contradictory ideas to the accepted has the potential stop mistakes (unintentional and deliberate) being highlighted, as a new paper may be turned down for obtaining a different result than an already published paper. There's also another reason why Einstein might not have been published if he presented relativity today. Status. Status matters. If you've not published in a field before, sometimes you can be looked on with suspicion. Science can suppress rather than support new voices. 

Beyond this some people actively find ways to make their research go further. Science is competitive, having lots of papers matters and so does the number of times your papers have been used in other work. So, what's an easy way to bump up the number of papers and the number uses of your work? Cut up a project into tiny sections, publish them separately and mention them in the next paper along to give your usage numbers a boost (this even has it's own name in science 'salami slicing'). Basically, this means scientists can make themselves look better, by artificially inflating their performance metrics. Can you blame people for doing this? I don't think so, science is pressurised. You need good paper numbers to get good grants and you need grants to work so, if you can, why not make 3 papers from 1 important result.?

What's the point in saying all this? Well, it's pretty unsettling to find all this out after you've jumped on the science is awesome bandwagon and are bound to a PhD project. A process you've thought was a great system of truth and equality isn't quite as good as it should be and it's better to find that out early. Also, for people outside of science it's important to know that when the media say, "Scientists have discovered..." what they really mean is, "Some people did a bunch of experiments and they claim that...". However much it pretends, science and the fabled scientific method isn't flawless. It's as flawed as the people who conduct it. To claim otherwise is just not true.