Are Athletes:Sports Journalists as Researchers:Science Journalists?

In the hype leading up to the Superbowl, the biggest story may be Marshawn Lynch's interactions with reporters. This style of interaction appears to be spreading to other sports stars as well and it makes me wonder about the role of sports journalists. In today's social media dominated society sports stars and fans have more direct access to each other than ever before and as with other sectors being revolutionized by technology the middle man is being cut out.

Sports writers used to be the conduit between athletes and fans, but today athletes and fans can connect through any number of avenues from Twitter, to Facebook, to Tumblr, to personal websites or even reddit. Athletes can use any combination of these social media outlets to craft their own narrative and relationship with fans rather than relying on sports writers to dictate their image. This changing relationship between athletes and sports writers appears to be similar to what is happening between researchers and science writers. A number of researcher friends have posted and commented on this recent poll complaining about the disconnect between beliefs/perceptions of the public and scientists. So what is causing this disconnect, does the responsibility of science understanding fall to the general public, the scientists communicating their findings, or science writers translating findings from scientists to the general public? As social media has opened up new avenues of communication for athletes, it also has for researchers. Grant organizations are recognizing the importance of putting in knowledge translation plans in place before projects start. However, without the public being interested in learning about science findings, whether the information comes from science writers or researchers, translating science may just be akin to throwing paper in the wind.

The poll I linked earlier also had a number of interesting questions about the role of science in society. More than half (57%) and a little under half, (43% and 40%) of scientists thought that major problems are that  there is a lack of public interest in science, lack of media interest in science, and too few scientists communicating findings. While the public has a fairly positive view on the impact of science on society, there is a trend towards negative feelings with the public lessening in their perception of U.S. achievement in science, the contribution of science to society and the return on investment in science. So it seems that while science and researchers are attempting to reach out more than ever, the public may not want to hear it. Before science and researchers work on knowledge translation it seems that we need rehabilitate the image and trust in science and researchers.

A recent demonstration of the public's mistrust in research and higher education comes from Wisconsin where Governor Scott Walker has proposed a slashing of $300 million from the UW-system over the next 2 years in order to help balance the budge and offer the institutions more flexibility in their own governance and spending. After announcing the plan and receiving backlash he also suggested that professors teach more classes because they were not doing their jobs on the 2-2 schedule of teaching at large research institutions. This brought noted backlash from professors and others in higher-education who suggest that between research (the most highly valued asset at research institutions) teaching and service, professors spend over 50 hours a week working. However, others are unwilling to "break out the tiny violins" and see professors and researchers as underworked and overpaid. Interestingly, the article links a page that lists UW-system pay and if you look at the first page the top 3 paid employees are coaches and sports administrators while the rest of the page is almost entirely dominated by marketing, economics and law professors making a fraction of what they could make outside higher education (pay for these professors is 2-5 times higher than other disciplines because of the competition/availability of jobs from the private sector). So before we can work on knowledge translation, we need to work on the image of higher education and research so that the public can trust and be interested in research.

Edit: 1/30/2015 - I was looking more into the Wisconsin higher education budget issue and see that it parallels the battle with K-12 teachers in the state just 4 years ago with many of the same claims, that they are overpaid and underworked. It seems that much of the misunderstanding of teachers at K-12 that is magnified at higher education levels is that time spent in the classroom in front of students is the only time that should count as work.

Edit 2: 1/31/2015 - I found this article discussing the same issues and article that I mention here about the divide between the public and science/higher-ed. They offer one possible bridge with open forums for scientists and the public (in particular those who are most against various scientific findings - vaccines, GMOs, etc) to discuss issues.

Edit 3: 1/31/2015 - Great discussion on Science Friday about the Pew findings

Career Trajectories

Early in my PhD studies a mass e-mail was sent out to PhD students from researchers at the Northwestern University recruiting PhD students to take place in a study on the training and aspirations of current PhD students. The study was a longitudinal study that included in depth interviews every one to two years to assess current training and aspirations with follow-ups to assess whether those aspirations changed and whether training experiences affected aspirations. Every so often I try to find what has come from the study and in searching recently stumbled across this report from the Welcome Trust on how PhD students choose their careers. If you skip to the end of the report for the conclusions and thinking points, they sound eerily similar to the suggestions from the recent report from Post-Docs and a working group on PhD education. 

MORE CAREER ADVICE AND SUPPORT DURING THE PHD

1. Help with planning careers and making grants applications to aid the transition to next stage.
2. Continue and enhance current networking opportunities. Access to information about different sorts of careers within and outside academia, provided early in the PhD.
3. For those who are struggling during the PhD, a system of mentoring with other scientists and researchers in the field would be welcomed, and could help give them a wider perspective

DEVELOPING NEW INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO CAREERS IN, OR WITH, ACADEMIA

1. Considering the opportunities for research posts which involve academic research, but are not solely based in academia. This might include jointly-funded research posts in institutions, or industry sponsorship of research posts.
2. A range of flexible technical scientist roles. Scrutinize the PI role and see if this can be broken down and split into more than one role, for example one focusing on project management, the other on laboratory work.
3. Allow scientists to take up part-time or temporary research related roles, such as project management and managing a research budget, at different times in their careers to allow for more family-friendly work and regular hours. PhD experience – knowing how academia works and how to communicate with academics – would be invaluable for such roles.

CHANGE TO ACADEMIC CULTURE AND WORKING PRACTICES

1. Remove funding criteria which require PhDs to relocate and consider research into the extent to which moving around benefits the scientist or the science outputs.
2. Institutions to learn from family-friendly innovations and systems in other sectors that enable people with children to pursue careers, for example challenging the notion that long hours equate to productivity.
3. Potential for fewer academic funding awards, but for longer time periods.
4. More investment in staff and career progression, in line with what is common in other industries, so that PhDs can realistically plan their careers.
5. Institutions should find ways of incorporating new academics more into the ‘corporate world’ of the university, potentially through guaranteed teaching posts over time.
6. Effective ‘line management’ could be valued more in academia. This may involve training for senior scientists as well as juniors, plus incentives in the university system so that coaching, support and mentoring can be increased and valued.
7. Create awareness and raise the profile of a range of role models who have come to successful science careers through a variety of different routes and backgrounds. Challenge the prevailing opinion, evident in this study, that the Principal Investigator is the main and only career option for newly qualified post-doctoral researchers.
8. Women could also benefit from seeing more female role models following careers in academic research. This would be particularly valuable if accompanied by information on their backgrounds and how they have overcome any challenges.
9. Ensure that there is good communication and dialogue about working benefits that do exist within academia (often more comprehensive than those that exist in other sectors), such as maternity leave provision and the options for working more flexibly within academic research.
10. More information and research is needed on whether moving posts or institution, if pursuing a career in academic research, is actually of long term value to researchers. As science becomes more international, virtual technologies are helping to forge collaborations without the requirement for face-to-face contact.
11. There is a perception that it is a ‘requirement’ for a researcher to have moved posts to successfully apply for a certain grant; if this is a myth, then funders need to better communicate this.
12. Challenge the ingrained perception that working in industry equates to intellectual constraint while academia means intellectual freedom. One participant told us that new biotech companies offer legitimate opportunities to publish, but that academics do not necessarily know about. Knowing more about the world of industry may help early career scientists weigh up all the opportunities open to them to remain in science.

Reading through the rest of the report is quite interesting. Many of the quotes from participants could have easily come from graduate students and post-docs that I've known. The sobering part of the report is that there is no end in sight. With stagnate demand for new faculty hires and an ever growing glut of PhD graduates and post-docs these issues are likely to get worse before they get better.

Neuroeducation and Brain Games

I've previously written about the issues surrounding brain games and it looks like the question of whether the claims that these games make are true or not is being decided by the FTC. This is about just one company, Focus Education, an "edutainment" software producer whose game, Jungle Rangers, was claimed to have been scientifically proven to improve school performance, attention and behavior even going as far as to claim it could alleviate ADHD symptoms. While the company only made $4.5 million in an industry that pulled in over $1.3 billion last year, it may be the canary in the mine.

Looking at the Focus Education website I can't seem to find any specific claims about what the program will do. More interestingly however is the complete lack of scientific investigation into the product mentioned on the page. I tried to track down the publications from their team and of the three researchers, it appears that Dr. Kerns is the only expert publishing on attention and in ADHD populations. However, on her webpage she doesn't have any trials investigating the effect of the brain training game within the last few years.

This case speaks to many of the problems that the Stanford Center on Longevity raised in their open letter about Brain Games.

Here are summarized versions of their 5 claims again:
1. More research needs to be done.
2. Other lifestyle changes (i.e. exercise, sleep, stress, diet, social interaction) are better studied alternatives that show cognitive benefits
3. The claims made should be verified by multiple independent labs and compared against active instead of treatment as usual interventions
4. No study has shown a brain game to prevent Alzheimer's Disease
5. Training is not like a vaccine, it is a continuous process that without work loses its effect

I'll be interested to see if more claims are charged against companies or if companies see this warning shot and are changing their marketing and web presences.

My First Experience with the Consequences of the Global Market Economy

Exploring the Mind

The butterfly effect represents a notion in chaos theory that a small change in initial states can lead to dramatic changes later. The complexity, massiveness and speed at which money is moved around is mind boggling and somewhat scary. I've never paid much attention to my own money, much less the how supply and demand of certain goods and services drive the strength and weakness of various currencies. However, in June I moved to Canada to take a job in Toronto and am obviously paid in Canadian Dollars. At the time the exchange rate was 1.07 CAD to $1. However, since then the price index of barrels of crude oil have plummeted in response to massive over-supply, losing somewhere near 50% of its high price in mid-2014 value. Interestingly, Canadian Banks are heavily invested in Oil and with happy consumers at the gas pump come sad US citizens living in Canada trying to move their money back to the US as the exchange rate has fallen to 1.19 CAD to $1. It doesn't look like its getting better any time soon and I've essentially lost 10% of my salary without having my salary in Canadian dollars changed and I went from being paid slightly better than the NIH US post-doc scale to slightly worse than.

As far as I understand, the reason this is happening goes something like:

After I noticed this happening I wanted to understand why and discovered the petrodollar effect. From the article, the petrodollar originates in the 1970s when the US began to protect Saudi oil as long as it was sold in US$. Canada sells most of its oil through the US and thus sells oil in US$. In the early 1900s large reserves of conventional oil were found and then developed in Canada. In the mid-1900s a new source of oil in the form of tar sands but development was hindered by low profit margins. These fortunes turned at the start of the 21st century and high oil prices made it profitable to extract tar sands oil. However, now rising costs to extract and process the oil paired with global oversupply of oil causing decreases in pricing is making it hard to make a profit in tar sand and shale oil. So in 2015 as oil supply remains high and chances at profitability remain low the newer shale and tar sands projects are facing the chance of closing down. By keeping supply high and prices low, OPEC stands the chance to knock out the start-up competition and later grab a larger market share allowing them to have a greater influence on pricing.

In the end it is an eye opening experience. Its also amazing to watch how a product and a small number of business owners can interact to cause massive changes in currencies around the world.

BRAINFest! Report

On Saturday January 17th I helped with BRAINFest! which was held at the Ontario Science Center and organized by the Ontario Brain Institute. The Science Center is holding a few month long exhibition called BRAIN: The Inside Story which has exhibits and installations that help children and adults alike learn about the brain and how we think. Over the weekend of January 17th and 18th, the Science Center also held BRAINFest! In their exhibition hall (which interestingly I saw 2 couples looking at for their wedding reception while I was there) they hosted a number of groups from across Toronto and Ontario who were interested in the brain in some way. I went to BRAINFest! as a part of Let's Talk Science which is a nationwide organization that builds interest and engagement in science, engineering and mathematics. We had a few experiments, one on hand-eye coordination and a second on reaction time. We also build neurons and had a brain puzzle and quiz.

The Brain Exhibit itself was amazing! There were a number of artistic representations of neurons and parts of the brain as well as tons of information about the brain, cognition and rehabilitation. I took a few photographs here. The fest and exhibit reminded me of the Brain Fairs that we hosted at the University of Iowa except on steroids. One thing that I was very proud of with our Brain Fairs were that they were always offered in public spaces that were easily accessible, meaning that anyone could attend them. We were specifically hoping to target families who may not always have access to these types of educational experiences. A great offering at the Iowa Children's Museum was Family Free Night on the last Friday of every month. I was a part of two engagement projects on Family Free night (Brain Fair and Childhood Numeracy with the DeLTa center) and we saw well over 1000 people each time. So while the BRAINFest! was amazing, I had hoped to see more or steeper discounts on ticket prices in order to allow more people to enjoy such a fun and informative event.

Evaluating Scientific Impact

Current practices for evaluating potential hires, tenure cases and grant applications relies almost entirely on research publications and previous grant funding. While this system doesn't seem all that great, I suppose its better than the old system of evaluating on "potential for brilliance." Dorothy Bishop wrote in a Timers Higher Education op-ed that this system of evaluation is not only hurting professors but our entire scientific enterprise. While the topic dovetails nicely with my previous post on improving the scientific journal, in particular not cherry picking what to publish, I want to focus on how hiring committees are evaluating potential colleagues and evaluations during training. In particular how do you separate the role of advisors from trainee ability. By focusing on number of publications and appearance of those publications in "glamour mags" like SCN what are we actually evaluating and what are we missing?

I'm particularly interested in the effects of undergraduate experiences setting up future scientists for different career trajectories. I chose to study at a small liberal arts college where I was able to gain broad training as well as play intercollegiate sports and participate in a number of other extracurricular activities like research. However, research activities at small liberal arts colleges that don't place as much stress on independent research for their faculty (in contrast to schools like Swarthmore and Williams which are small liberal arts colleges that expect productive research agendas) are different from R1 research institutes. At R1 institutes, the bigger the base, the higher the peak. That is usually a motto I use to describe my running preparation, but it works for research programs that rely on a lot of cheap labor in order to chase ever more research dollars and research investigations. In R1 labs, undergraduates are encouraged to volunteer in labs as early as their first year where the "research" they will take part in will involve such "research" tasks as washing glassware, entering data into spreadsheets, and calling participants. However, by biding their time, by the time they are juniors and seniors, they may have moved up the chain to the point that they are actually conducting research and providing substantive contributions worthy of research publications and if they are in a prestigious lab those publications may end up in a glamour mag. Research at small liberal arts colleges generally starts later but skips most of the janitorial aspects of research and throws you into the fire completing a research project from inception to presentation. In my own experience I didn't start research until the fall of my junior year, but I completed a literature review, developed an experiment, developed stimuli, ran participants, analyzed the data and presented it at local conferences. This led to an entirely new study my senior year that in the end helped me gain distinction in my major. However, while I had what was likely a better preparation to conduct research at a graduate level, I didn't have any publications. So could someone's entire career trajectory be decided at 17? By deciding on a career in research in high-school, what choice of major and school and lab could set you up for possibly reaching the highest heights?

Exploring the further downstream consequences, do publications in undergrad get you into either prestigious (CHYMPS) universities or high-profile labs (HHMI etc) which then lead to possibly more publications or a better chance of publications in glamour mags. Going back to the influence of the advisor, what happens if the culture of the lab is that everyone is just assigned a project and by doing the work they get the publication? What if the a lab is more liberal in putting people on papers for their contributions? Like most jobs, there seem to be certain amorphous/ambiguous attributes that are desired when looking for new hires. In my minimal experience on the market, I've come to understand that the training experience I and many of my classmates had at the University of Iowa Neuroscience program is not what is generally experienced in other programs. I get the impression that most people assume that graduate students just work on projects that are assigned to them and the logical follow-ups to those projects. However, most of the graduate students that I worked with worked on the "themes" of their graduate advisor but were independent and distinct projects that they led. In fact, what I've been told a post-doctoral position is supposed to be for (i.e., proving that you can direct and lead independent research) is what our graduate experience was.

Relating our experience to hiring practices and whether career trajectories are decided at 17 I like to contrast hiring in academia to sports recruiting. Academic hiring looks for the seasoned, but not too seasoned candidate, someone who has put in their dues at the various levels but didn't have any time off the track towards professorship. In sports this approach would be similar to tried and true process of overpaying veteran players who have shown they can produce but may not pan out based on the large investment you make in them. Another approach that is very popular in sports is looking for "high-ceiling" prospects, individuals that look to have the skills to be amazing but are young and unproven. In science two candidates a year apart, one just graduating a the other with one year of post-doctoral training but fairly similar CVs, the job would almost always go to the one with one more year of training.

Going back to Dorothy's article, I'm interested to hear what comes from the meeting in April, but I do not know how scientists will be judged in the future. As the granting and publishing fields change, there has to be a change in how we evaluate scientists, especially people who plan to pursue primarily research careers and people who pursue primarily teaching careers.

BRAINFest!

I recently stumbled across a blog post about neuromyths and the responsibility that neuroscientists have to communicate neuroscience research to the public. This weekend I'll be doing my part by taking part in BRAINFest! at the Ontario Science Center in which the public will be able to interact with a number of displays, experiments and demonstrations and speak with researchers, clinicians and practitioners about the brain.

A list of activities include:

• Cracked: New Light on Dementia(Sunday only)
  See a research-based drama that challenges the way dementia is presented and discussed.
• My Virtual Dream
  Come watch this cutting edge production. Lucky volunteers will get to use their brain waves through wireless headsets to co-create a spectacular panorama of dynamic colours, sights and sounds.
• Roboticize Me
  Attend the world premiere of the CBC Doc Zone documentary film about robots. Evening event - Tickets required.
• Hot Science
  Listen to researchers and patient advocates talk about hot topics relating to brain research and brain health.
• Brain Injury and Concussion
  Parachute Canada presents brain injury related activities and simulations including Jello Brain to show brain fragility.
• Addiction and Schizophrenia CAMH presents a schizophrenia virtual reality experience – special navigation and motivation through a virtual city. 
• iPod Project Learn about the Alzheimer's Society Toronto's iPod project where they provide seniors with an iPod and a playlist of music to decrease stress levels and improve quality of life.
• Brain Disorder Augmented Reality Explore information about brain disorders in displays incorporating AR.
• Ontario Brain Institute Entrepreneur Demos Demos include: Avertus - EEG Headband; Sense Intelligent - Seeing Sound App; Sound Options -  Tinnitus Device; POND - Anxiety Meter for Autism.
• Augmented Communication Devices Interact with Holland Bloorview's PRISM Lab Technologies using reliable body function to build communication mechanisms.
• Brain Research and Big Data Find out the latest from the Ontario Brain Institute's Brain-CODE Team - Big Data and Research panels as well as a pixel brain drawing activity.

I'll be there with Let's Talk Science from the University of Toronto to engage school-aged kids on different neuroscience experiments. I'll write about my experience of the event afterwards.

Exercise and the Brain

One of my dissertation committee members, Michelle Voss, from the University of Iowa just wrote a great article in the HuffingtonPost about exercise and the brain. In the article she focuses on the benefits of Brain Derived Neruotropic Factor - BDNF, a protein that among other things improves the brain's capacity to change. Besides helping to make the brain more plastic, exercise has been shown to be important for decreasing stress, improving memory 1,2 and warding off depression as well as improving the condition of a number of neurodegnerative disorders and neural insults 1, 2. In fact Art Kramer's lab has been investigating the use of aerobic exercise as an intervention in school aged children to improve cognitive and academic performance.

In my own experience I both feel better and am able to think more clearly when I exercise. Almost everyday is planned around when I'll workout. Meeting in the morning, guess I'll go in early and then leave a little early so I can run while its still light out. Meeting in the afternoon, I'll run in the morning. Events scheduled throughout the day, I'll have to run as soon as I get up at 5:30. From high-school through college I played soccer and ran cross-country and track which meant that I worked out in some form almost everyday for over 8 years. It got to the point that at 3:00PM if I wasn't working out my body would start to do weird things, my mind slowed down and my body became achey. One of my biggest worries is sustaining an injury that limits my ability to perform any form of exercise. I'll continue to exercise in the hopes of chasing all the benefits that exercise my brain and overall health.

Improving the Scientific Journal?

I've been trying to wrap-up and submit my dissertation research and have been dealing with a number of different journals. I recently looked up how expensive it would be to start your own journal and found that the physical costs would be under a few hundred dollars a year, while the costs of people (e.g., Editors, Copywriters, etc.) would cost a few hundred dollars per paper which does't seem all that expensive when profit margins are at least 20% for publishers. But in starting your own journal, what things would you do to improve the process? Below I offer a few possibilities, but am interested in other ways (and am not as radical as others have suggested 1, 2).

1. Pre-registration
Pre-registration, where the design of a study and its subsequent analysis protocol is submitted to a journal before competing the study, is an emerging, but controversial topic, with some in support, some against, and some unsure.  Pre-registration appears to be a fundamental starting point for many of the other suggestions below, with preregistration encouraging open access, data sharing and encouraging attempts at replication. One of the main concerns about pre-registration is that it will constrain scientists from the fiddling and post-hoc data-mining that currently runs science. However, I don't see why pre-registration with your original design and analysis plan can't also report new analyses that come after the fact. The difference with pre-registration is that your original and possible non-significant results are reported as well as the finagled and later thought of results. Especially since we are over-reporting positive results, it will be nice to see why experiments fail as well as see non-replications of high-profile studies that are currently suspect but not challenged in the literature.

2. Open Commenting/Changing Peer-Review
Some journal have adapted a two-step review process in which papers that pass an initial review are posted for open commenting as a discussion paper and then later reviewed in the traditional ad hoc review system. As the review process often takes a minimum of a few months and could potentially gone on for years, the open commenting period helps alleviate the strain of finding reviewers. This also opens up scientific dialog spurring and collaboration.

3. Open Access
Without open access most of scientific articles are only available to those who are willing to pay for the articles or work in a place who buys publisher access. Open access asks researchers to pay for their research to be made available to anyone once accepted. The Right to Research Coalition provides a list of benefits across various agents. Though Nature and other publishers caution that Open Access are not a panacea that some think.

4. Data Sharing
Data sharing provides a number of benefits including: scientific integrity, increasing the impact of research, preserving data for future use and teaching purposes. Some fields seem to be more interested in open data, but there are a some issues, like confidentiality and vulnerable subjects, that need to be kept in mind.

5. Removing Impact Factor
The impact factor (IF) - the number of citations a journal receives in a year divided by the number of articles published in the journal, is meant to be a measure of the impact and quality of scientific output. Over time, IF has become a shorthand prestige and has lead to both journals and scientists chasing every higher numbers. However, this chase has perverted whether any particular article is making an impact and how science is crafted and published.

Edit 1/15/2015 - Michael Eisen who co-founded PLoS did an excellent AMA on Reddit yesterday about academic publishing addressing many of these issues.

Addendum to Hyperopia in Acadaemia

Happy New Year!

In my second to last blog post of 2014 I wrote about two reports on the state of post-docs in science. The gist of the reports was that there is a glut of highly educated scientists and researchers who, without significant changes to our current scientific structures, will likely be unable to find jobs or promotions. Just two days later I found an article summarizing a Royal Society working group report in which they recommend giving a "clear statement" about the role of universities for managing the expectations of junior scientists. Dame Anthene Donald, the head of the working group noted that, "there should be proper dialog about what a PhD is for ... that it is not simply the first step in a logical career progression." Besides advice to students to prepare for jobs outside of the academy and advice to supervisors to warn and temper students expectations, the best piece of advice from the report suggests that universities should provide appropriate training in transferrable skills and arrange visits from people outside academia to outline alternative career paths.

Theses suggestions are certainly good, but perhaps not all that timely, nor perhaps as dire as it sounds. Although I don't remember many cautioning me to not start graduate school or to leave school once I arrived, even 5 years ago a number of people discussed how difficult the job market was. The report seems to presume that everyone that enters graduate school hopes to leave and try to become a researcher at a R1 research institution. I for one know that not everyone going to graduate school intends that as I myself entered graduate school with the explicit understanding with my dissertation advisor that I was training to work at a primarily undergraduate, teaching focused (likely liberal arts based) institution. Likewise, on the other side of neuroscience, many students training in molecular neuroscience planned to enter industry after graduating.

When I arrived in Canada for my post-doc, I found that there were a number of opportunities available to both graduate students and post-docs in neuroscience for training in business. The Mitacs Elevate Program allows post-docs to work in a company and pursue research. The Ontario Brain Institute offers more formalized training in management and entrepreneurial-ship through three programs. So while there may not be enough jobs in R1 institutions or in other schools in the academy, positions and opportunities are starting to outside the academy and with fair warning as the Royal Society suggests, graduate students can make preparations early in their career.