Invisible police in senior academia

I have this recurring experience on social media where I say something that, to me, seems bleedingly obvious but ends up offending senior academics. What happens next is always the same: a series of private communications, admonishing me for my tone, holding me responsible for the failure of other scientists to choose to do better quality science, and asking me to rethink my “strategy”.

As one professor wrote to me privately the other day (and no, I will never reveal their identity or the identity of anyone else who contacts me privately): “I think you are really sabotaging your cause with this kind of behavior. I recently was discussing [Registered Reports] with someone and they basically said that they have a bad taste in their mouth about them simply because of your behavior as their primary advocate. I hope you will take a breath and think about how to best achieve your goals (which I largely share) - I don't think belittling the people you want to convince is the way.”

It was a heartfelt response from someone I like and respect to this tweet, where I referred to senior academics in neuroimaging as “unique and beautiful snowflakes”. This isn’t alt-right rhetoric – it’s a quote from Fight Club (one of my favourite films) that I think aptly and ironically summarises the primitive feudal system in the life sciences. As I wrote nearly five years ago, “Cognitive neuroscience is littered with petty fiefdoms doing one small study after another – making small, noisy advances.” I also write about this in my book. My message is always the same: scientists asking important questions do what’s necessary to answer them, and if that requires working in consortia then that’s what they do. Those who need to take these steps but refuse to try are usually driven by a combination of careerism and delusion.

The nature of these responses I get from professors tells me something interesting: that a lot of scientists – and for whatever reason they usually tend to be senior academics – misunderstand why I use social media. They assume that it’s part of some strategy or tactic, or a tool in an ongoing programme of open science advocacy. I know that’s how some people use twitter (and they do it very well), and perhaps my twitter feed looks like that from time to time, but it’s NOT how I use it and it’s not why I joined twitter in the first place.

Going right back to 2012, the reason I joined twitter was to offer the public (and non-scientists especially) some behind the scenes insights into the life of a working scientist. If people are interested in hearing these thoughts then they can tune in. If not they can ignore me or even block me, which is absolutely fine. I’ve tried to stay true to this mission by following three simple rules.

1.    Always be honest. On a lot of issues I say nothing, but when I do say something I always give my honest view, and provided that opinion isn’t libelous I would say exactly the same thing if you asked me in a one-to-one conversation, in a media interview, or in the question time of a talk. When I respond to you on twitter I imagine that you are sitting in front of me. I don’t censor my own speech online except to avoid ending up in court. “But that’s a bad strategy!”, exclaim the professors. “You are attacking the people who have power, rather than diplomatically trying to change their minds” – as another professor put it to me in an email. NO. Again, you’re confusing me for a politician who uses social media to persuade people to agree with them. I use social media to explain to people what I think, and to learn what they think, not to tell them what I believe they should think. 

2.    As a general rule, I tend to avoid criticizing individual scientists for their statements or practices, not because I have any problem with people who do (provided they aren’t  abusive or threatening I think this is a vital and much under-valued function in science), but because most of my interests lie in how groups behave and changing large-scale systems. I do make exceptions to this, e.g. as recently in my response to Brian Wansink.

3.    I don’t have an “internet persona”. The very thought of this makes me cringe. For better or worse (probably worse), what you see on here is exactly what I’m like in real life.

I’m happy to take personal criticism. Maybe it's an Australian trait, but as I said to one professor, I actually hugely appreciate this criticism, especially when it’s personal. In the past, this kind of criticism has given me pause. That said, I prefer it to be public because that better serves the purpose of why I joined twitter in the first place – to pull back the curtain on academia. I don’t really see the point in having extensive one-on-one debates with senior academics about what I say on twitter. Let’s have these debates outside and then those who are interested can learn something about what senior academics care about and how they interact. As I was discussing with Tracy King last night, there is a huge web of senior power in academia that is invisible and intractable to most people. Let’s reveal it.

Now you may well say that my approach on social media works against the broader “strategic goals” of open science but - brace yourself - I don’t really care if it does, and there’s not much point trying to convince me otherwise. The day you convinced me of that would be the day I left twitter because it wouldn’t be me anymore doing the tweeting – it would be some faceless “open science” entity named Chris Chambers.

And although it's not the point of this post, while we're on the subject: from a "strategic" point of view I think we’re doing ok. Registered Reports have hit nearly 150 journals and appear to be working as intended; we’ve launched the TOP guidelines across 5000 journals and organisations; the PRO initiative is changing journal policies to favour open data and materials; we’ve launched a new Accountable Replications policy at Royal Society Open Science (and had two submissions already in the last two weeks); we’ve established the UK Reproducibility Network and the UK Network of Open Science Working Groups; we’re working with the British Neuroscience Association to advance their impressive agenda in supporting reproducibility and transparency; I spend a lot of time helping people (on twitter and privately) with their Registered Reports submissions, policy launches and other open science challenges, and much more. We are steering the ship literally every day toward more rigorous, reliable science, so that the next generation can be rewarded and required to do high quality work. To most (not all) of the professors who email me to complain about my tone: remind me again what you're doing to further this mission?

Perhaps this is all in spite of me being on social media and my tone. If so then so be it – my tone on here is who I am. But I doubt it. Within reasonable bounds, I doubt anything I say on here matters very much in the grand scheme. What each of us does out there is so much more important. We’re witnessing a remarkable passage in the history of science, and for better or worse my words are just one human’s humble observations of that history as it unfolds. Onward.