this is not okay
You’re afraid of making mistakes. Don’t be. Mistakes can be profited by. Man, when I was young I shoved my ignorance in people’s faces. They beat me with sticks. By the time I was forty my blunt instrument had been honed to a fine cutting point for me. If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.
I don't know where I initially found this quote, but I've returned to it often and it is particularly relevant to a conversation I had this week with a young scientist.
It is rare, but occasionally I get glimpses of the future of science on Experiment. Most scientists don't use Experiment in the way we intend. There are a combination of problems and points of friction involved. When a few scientists go out of their way to use Experiment the way we imagine it gives me hope. Maybe we're not crazy after all and there are people that believe in the same future that we are trying so hard to build.
The incentives are wrong and no one knows how to fix it.
As a scientist you want to do the right thing. As a scientist you are in a position to uncover something about the natural world that no one in the history of mankind has explored. That is exciting. For most scientists if they had it their way they would share their lab notebook openly, share their protocols openly, share their failures openly, and share their results openly.
All of those things are the right thing to do as a scientist and as a human. The world would be a better place if we shared our learnings openly. The difficult part is today sharing openly comes at a cost. First, as a career scientist you are not rewarded sharing your lab notebook, protocols, failures, or results openly. Secondly, sharing your research openly comes at a cost; it allows people to criticize you. As a career scientist you are rewarded for acquiring grants, publishing in high impact peer-reviewed journals, and other metrics that don't always focus on producing the best science. Sharing your research openly means that you give others the opportunity to scoop your ideas, publish before you. And, if you can't publish then you could lose your job and your career.
If the incentives are wrong, someone has to start somewhere. What I've learned in the past five years is that you don't always get what you want by fighting the system head on. Another strategy is to find the tailwind and ride the tailwind in.
The world in which I want to live in may be idealistic, but I truly believe that there will be a new system that rises up. The system will equal out the playing field for anyone to pave their way in science. The system will be similar to what happened to the software industry where engineers are judged by their work not by their credentials or college degrees. To get to this world we have to open source science. The current incentives are backwards and there might be too much friction to influence this from within academia.
Hope resides in the young ones and the old ones.
To build this new system we need wide adoption within the scientific community. Building things that last and permeate often come from the feeling of frustration. The reason why we started Experiment was because we were frustrated with how things were. We knew things could be better. We know there were a subset of scientists who also wanted things to be better. To be honest I still don't know exactly how we will get to a place where things are more fair, more honest, and more pure but we are fighting for it. We're not the only ones fighting.
A world where the research process is democratized and anyone can be a scientist resonates with the majority of scientists I've spoken to, and that number is now in the thousands. However, very few of these scientists will actually change their behavior to promote the benefits of this new world. This is largely because most career scientists have priorities. Being able to put food on the table and keep their jobs is a number one priority which puts fighting this fight as a lower priority.
That said when I speak to the young ones and the old ones they are much more open to the idea of sharing their research process openly and results openly. The young ones want to do this, and many do. The ones who don't are usually afraid of what their superiors may think of them. The old ones want to do this, and many do. The ones who don't are usually handicapped by their lack of familiarity with computers and technology.
Don't let the middles ones put the young ones down.
I spoke to a high school scientist yesterday on the phone. The scientist that I spoke to is not important. What is important to me is he is exhibiting all the behaviors I want to see in our community. He is publishing his entire research process in real-time. He is writing in the same way that he speaks. He is not afraid to hide his ignorance.
However, by putting your raw and unfiltered scientific results out there for the world to see creates opportunity for more "experienced" people to criticize you. It doesn't matter how experienced you are as a scientist, some scientists don't know how to criticize you in a graceful and constructive way. Or, some scientists think it is okay to criticize younger scientists in a nonconstructive way. Maybe it is because this is how they were treated as a young scientist? Allowing this type of nonconstructive criticism can kill a community.
It is already scary enough being a newbie at something. For someone who is more "experienced" to tell you that you're doing something wrong and that if you're doing something wrong maybe you shouldn't be doing science at all can be terrifying. Some newbies will persevere. I have no doubt that this particular high school scientist will persevere.
When I take a step back and think about how this impacts the funnel, this is not okay. If 100 newbie scientists try to science and all of them get unwelcome comments from more "experienced" scientists and only 1% persevere we're losing 99 potential scientists for the sole reason that they had a bad experience sharing their science early on.
I want to document some of the things this particular high school scientist wrote me in an email:
I am honored by and greatly appreciative of your commitment to help all people, regardless of age or collegiate experience, pursue the research they are truly interested in and passionate about.
My personal experience on experiment.com has been truly liberating and given me a new appreciation for science in a variety of aspects. It is definitely a point of pride for me to be able to tell other scientists and researchers that I have a self-funded study, and the fact that my project is not dependent upon the financial support of other scientists' grants or universities makes it much easier for me to determine the course of my research and work with companies to obtain necessary equipment or reagents.
It was definitely a new experience to receive feedback from another researcher halfway around the world, which is an amazing benefit of sharing my research online - in my short tenure as a professional researcher (which I define primarily by the communication of my work), I have really only been able to associate with smaller local groups of professors and scientists in my area or at larger events I attend, such as science fairs or conferences. However, I will not deny that the tone of the comment did impact me in a way that I had not really experienced in my scientific career before.
At the end of the day, science matters to me far too much to stop it at the first hint of criticism I receive, and although it is my natural defensive instinct to retreat from and ignore comments like ____, I think that they always contain valuable insight, no matter how difficult it may be for me to view them objectively. From what I've heard from other researchers and what I've read regarding science history, vitriolic criticism is not only not rare but in fact relatively common in the scientific community, and if anything I feel honored that there are people who are interested enough in my research to comment on it at all.
What I believe is most conducive to influential and fulfilling science is the adequate balance of support and encouragement with constructive advice and the motivation to continue to learn and improve, and I don't believe _____ has upset this in any way.
Not all new scientists are as mentally tough as this one. I'm not sure how we scale and make Experiment a safe place for humans to share their science, but I can tell you that I am thinking about this a lot. This keeps me up at night. If there are 100 aspiring scientists and the way in which "experienced" scientists communicate their criticism that makes these 100 scientists feel unwelcome this is not okay.
You are not better because you have a degree or because you have experience. If we can make a place where scientists in our community are supportive of each other and always gave constructive criticism maybe more people who think about becoming scientists will stay.
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we are trying so hard to build