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.
