A rainy forecast for science in the US on a rainy afternoon - but with suggestions from top scientists on how to fix the forecast

I remember getting hints of the tough times scientists were having even before starting graduate school just before the Great Recession. Early on to mid-way through graduate school professors would try to ameliorate our worries that “this was a good time to be in school” because “things would get better by the time we graduated.” Then of course came the 2013 sequestration and by the end of graduate school I wasn’t hearing any more optimism.

Now, in my postdoc, there is nearly constant talk about the worry to find a job, the salary for postdocs who are often trying to raise a family, talk of a longstanding professor not having their grant renewed and another faculty member having to leave the department and start again somewhere else.

So much so that it is easy to become immune to the negative climate and accept that this is the way things are with funding rates in the teens, versus 30% in the early 2000s. After all, there is nothing that can be done, right? Also, let’s not get too down on ourselves as PhD graduates still have lower unemployment rates than the general population.

But then my PhD advisor sent me an article published in PNAS, written by four of the top scientists in the US including Dr. Bruce Alberts who was awarded the National Medal of Science last year. In the article they lay out the “systemic flaws” in the “US biomedical research ecosystem” and their proposals for slowly fixing the system.  

They explain that after WWII, America adopted the belief that research would expand indefinitely. What followed was a drastic increase in the size of universities and continual increase in the budget of the National Institute of Health (NIH), the major funding agency for research, up until the 1990s. But as funding slowed, there is an unprecedented amount of demand for grants due also to an increased workforce and increased costs of doing research.

The funding system:

The current funding system for science is generally a lengthy process where professors apply for research money (and increasingly their own salary – the authors point out) through grant agencies, which can be governmental or private. The proposed projects, as well as the previous publication record of the professor are evaluated. But the system rewards only those projects that will most likely succeed and produce results quickly (otherwise those grants are not renewed) and those that have a clear benefit to science.

But as many have pointed out, including the authors of the article, many scientific advances have come from basic scientific endeavors without any foreseeable translational benefit. The current system stands in the way of developing new approaches or paradigms.

Of course it makes sense that the National Institute of Health has an impetus to fund those studies that will likely improve the health of Americans. The alternative governmental source, the National Science Foundation, however only has $7 billion instead of the over $30 billion budget of the NIH.

Yesterday I attended a talk and was impressed by a pioneering technique to get crystallographic data on very small protein crystals using existing technology. Later the researcher said that he would not have been able to develop this method if he had been at a traditional research institution – he is at Janelia Farms, which is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) research campus where researchers are fully funded without having to apply for research grants and are highly encouraged to take on risky projects. But HHMI investigators are a vast minority of researchers. 

He echoed the same sentiments as those of Alberts, et al.: that the time-consuming process of applying for grants not only takes time away from scientific reflection but also can be a drain on excitement and motivation – in some ways, the most important resource scientists have. He has observed colleagues very excited about a new idea. But by the time that idea got NIH funding two years later, their enthusiasm was attenuated.

The pressure to publish:

Because high-impact publications are the gateway to getting more funding, the authors claim that the current hypercompetitive environment encourages researchers to both rush to publish their results, sometimes cutting corners, and also to exaggerate their findings and the significance of their work. They suggest that this has contributed to an upward trend in the inability to replicate published results.

I have personally observed that the inability to reproduce results has led to a lot of wasted time, money, and morale. If the results of an experiment differ from those published and accepted in the field, the first instinct is to check all the numerous variables, including methodology, reagents, and the experimenter themselves (especially if the researcher in question is a student).

Their solution is to de-emphasize the importance of publications in analyzing the merit of scientists. Rather funding agencies should also examine the quality of the researcher’s work and their overall contribution to the science field; have they contributed to a new break-through or paradigm shift?

The ever-increasing PhD workforce:

Scientists have been trying to call attention to the unsustainability of the increasing workforce for years. But science currently operates on a pyramidal scheme where low-paid graduate students and postdocs carry out the brunt of science with the hope of one day having a lab of their own. Thus each lab produces many more trainees (sometimes dozens) than can possibly replace that single professorial position. As a result, the number of PhD graduates is increasing while the number of academic positions is relatively stagnate. It used to be the private and governmental sector could absorb some of these graduates but now those markets are also becoming saturated.

They suggest, as have others, that the only viable option is to de-incentivize the over-reliance on students and postdocs by limiting the amount of research funds that can be used to pay their salaries and limiting the number of years postdocs could be paid from federal funds. Instead, they would be paid through training grants and personal fellowships: forcing universities to accept less graduate students. Additionally many have called for an increase in the salary of students and postdocs so that researchers would see staff scientists as a more viable option. A result of this is that laboratories would hire less people and lab sizes would shrink, but Alberts, et al. makes the argument that since staff scientists are more permanent, productivity would not decrease.

In addition, it would seem to me that professors would have more time to mentor the students and postdocs they do have.

Importantly the authors point out that increasing the NIH budget, while helpful, is not a permanent solution as this simply drives growth in institutions that will quickly eat up any new resources. Rather they call for gradual policy changes in how science is funded that will take effect over ten years.

As it takes a long time to change the direction of a bulky ship such as the science enterprise, I can only hope that there will be more communication between scientists and policy makers and more action in government. As these recommendations appear to be bipartisan there is no reason not to act now.

Beyond the Bench: Poetry Edition

In college I took a poetry writing class for fun. I really enjoyed the writing and editing process though now I can't bring myself to read my poems about smoking Pall Malls and rebelling against gender norms. During an office visit my wonderful professor recommended that I use my unique background in science as inspiration in my poems. But I was not really in a place scientifically and as a fledging poet to fully realize her vision. But what I took away from her suggestion was the possibility to merge my two interests – how science and poetry are not inherently polar opposites.

I have heard, mainly in abstract terms, how art and poetry can change the way one thinks and approaches science. As someone who enjoys painting and writing, I also unfortunately struggle to imagine how this is done practically – I think about science and then when I need a break, I paint. Sometimes I paint about science and technology but I have not found a way, consciously at least, to bring art into science (aside from some nice Illustrator images for presentations).

And so I have come to highly respect and appreciate those who can merge the two worlds and by doing so, enrich both. In that vein, I will be posting about some poets who were also scientists (or scientists who were also poets) or who brought scientific themes to their poetry.

Margaret Cavendish Lucas was a philosopher, writer, and scientist of the seventeenth century. In 1667 she sparked a debate by asking to attend a session of the Royal Society of London and was eventually allowed to attend to see Robert Boyle demonstrate several experiments. She wrote about topics such as the scientific method and how the matter that makes up humans, rather than a divine God, enabled us to think. Below is one of her more famous poems.

Of Many Worlds in This World

Just like as in a nest of boxes round,
Degrees of sizes in each box are found.
So, in this world, may many others be
Thinner and less, and less still by degree:
Although they are not subject to our sense,
A world may be no bigger than two-pence.
Nature is curious, and such works may shape,
Which our dull senses easily escape:
For creatures, small as atoms, may be there,
If every one a creature's figure bear.
If atoms four, a world can make, then see
What several worlds might in an ear-ring be:
For millions of those atoms may be in
The head of one small, little, single pin.
And if thus small, then ladies may well wear
A world of worlds, as pendants in each ear.

Her writing strikes me as straightforward for the time – less than 50 years after Shakespeare was producing the works that would perplex middle and high schoolers for centuries. The poem encapsulates the excitement of scientific discovery. Things at the cellular level may be just as exciting as the planets and space, which seems to capture the imagination of the general public much more. With the line: “A world may be no bigger than a two-pence,” I envision a bustling cellular city in the vein of London circa the industrial revolution: people pushing their wares on carts along axon tracks, the protein patrolmen monitoring the streets for people in the wrong place, and the occasional bacterial thief that threatens to disturb the whole society.

The last lines, “ladies may well wear a world of worlds, as pendants in each ear” evoke the aristocracy to which Cavendish belonged. And just as we may be blind to the cellular and atomic worlds underlying our being, aristocrats were blind to the troubles as well as essentiality of the working class. The line “our dull senses easily escape” could be a critique of her class and the dullness of being a woman in a time when women had no access to science. Though I could be misinterpreting it through my modern lens, “Nature is curious,” suggests that it is in human nature, which also encompasses women, to be fascinated by the world around them.

Genetic factors associated with autism also linked to higher intelligence

From “Rain Man” to the BBC’s “Sherlock Holmes”, popular culture portrays autistic people as having astounding abilities in areas of memory and deduction while lacking basic social skills.  While most people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are intellectually impaired, research supports the idea that they can have increased cognition in non-verbal areas.

But a study published yesterday by researchers from University of Edinburgh was the first to find a link between genetic factors for autism and higher intelligence in people without the condition.

ASD  is a developmental disability that causes behavioral, learning, and social communication disabilities. One out of 68 children are reported to have ASD in the U.S. according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Up till now it was impossible to rule out that cognitive defects seen in autistic individuals were simply did not come from the environment, driven by the social and communication challenges of autism.

At this point, it is helpful to have a brief refresher on genetics: Our genes encode the information that tells our cells what to do. While everyone has the same genes, we have slightly different versions, or alleles, of the genes that help make us different from each other. These versions are passed on to our children.

Sometimes a single rare mutation can cause disease, such as in Cystic Fibrosis. But often it is more complex with mutations in different genes working together or with the environment to cause disease.

This more complicated version is the case for ASD. Last year it was shown that many gene alleles that are risk factors for autism are actually common in the general population but a combination are needed to cause autism.

The researchers wanted to see if these common risk alleles for autism were linked to cognition. They examined nearly 10,000 adults in the general population (i.e. without autism) and tested their cognitive performance on four tests as well as analyzing their DNA for alleles known to be associated with ASD.

They found a positive correlation between the presence of ASD risk-alleles and general cognitive performance. Specifically, those with the ASD-associated alleles did better on tests for verbal fluency, logical memory, and vocabulary.

The researchers suggest this finding will give insight into why some autistic people display incredible intelligence in certain areas and help understanding of how genetic factors for autism change brain function.

Clarke, J-K., et al. (2015). Common polygenic risk for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is associated with cognitive ability in the general population. Molecular Psychiatry. doi: 10.1038/mp.2015.12

“She’s strong for a girl”: The Negative Impact of Stereotypes About Women

This week I had the privilege of writing a guest post for the SciLogs Blog, The Next Regeneration. The link for the article is here, but I have also included it on Bench and Beyond as one of the great things about SciLogs is that writers retain editorial control. 

We have all heard the stereotypes: women can’t drive, they don’t understand computers, and how many blondes does it take to screw in a light bulb? But those are all in good fun, right? But what if gender stereotypes actually bring about the observed differences between men and women that supposedly underline these stereotypes? A recent study by the psychologist Marina Pavlova at the University of Tübingen tested this idea.

While previous studies have supported the idea that negative stereotypes hinder women’s athletic and cognitive performance on a range of tests, those studies all looked at tasks with preexisting stereotypes. For example women score worse on math tests when reminded of old “adages” about women and math.

Pavlova and her colleagues instead wanted to see how stereotype impacts an area where no gender difference exists. Could a fabricated stereotype change the way women and men perform on a test?

They chose the event arrangement (EA) test, used on certain modern IQ tests to measure nonverbal reasoning skills. Participants arrange cards depicting scenes, such as a man fishing, cooking over a campfire, and preparing for a trip, in a logical order to create a story. Scores are based on the number of correct sequences and amount of time required.

117 college students were split into three groups and given different instructions for the test. The first group was given standard instructions on the task. A second group was additionally told: “females usually perform worse on this task” while the third group was told: “males usually perform worse on this task.”

Men and women performed equally well when no stereotyped messages were given. When the group was told that women usually perform worse, women’s scores on the test decreased. In contrast, men’s scores actually increased, perhaps reflecting that their confidence was boosted by the perceived weakness of women. helped boost that they thrived on their perceived advantage.

The most surprising findings came from the group that was told that men usually do worse on the test. Men’s performance was diminished as expected, but instead of improving women’s scores, they dropped just as much as men.

Pavlova and her colleagues also looked at positive messages. Telling participants that women are usually better at the EA test modestly improved women’s scores without affecting men. However, the opposite was not true. Women’s performance was even more hurt by being told that men are better at the test than the more explicit message that women are worse.

What clearly emerges from the study is that women are more susceptible to stereotyping than men. The only time men’s performance declined was when given the explicit negative male message.

Why are women more impacted by the stereotypes than men? Although controlling for preexisting stereotypes on this specific test, researchers cannot escape society’s influence on women, which begins at an incredibly early age. Women are constantly under the threat of stereotype. And women who break stereotypes face harsh criticism not faced by men, such as criticism of working mothers who use daycare or the perception of women who speak up as being aggressive or bossy rather than being leaders.

The researchers suggest that since women have a history of being typecast, they may misinterpret the message “males are usually worse” to mean that if men have a hard time with the test, women will have an even harder time. 

More and more studies confirm the existence of subtle forms of bias against women at all levels of society. It is a major finding that these subtle biases can have even greater psychological consequences than more blatant and bygone forms of sexism. Interventions are needed to combat existing stereotypes at an early age.

Pavlova, M., Weber, S., Simoes, E., & Sokolov, A. (2014). Gender Stereotype Susceptibility PLoS ONE, 9 (12) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0114802

Finding the lead, beating the bushes, and other journalism-speak

It all started with this blog as a way to refresh my non-academic writing skills. I found that I have enjoyed writing about science, albeit it to a somewhat muted audience, even more than I thought I would. It has become ever clear that I enjoy writing about science much more than doing the science. And with the uncertainty in lab research I realize that I should at least pursue an uncertain field that I love.

In January I started working as an unofficial intern (ie volunteer) with the UIC Office of Public Affairs, science staff. It has been a great experience so far and I have learned a lot about interviewing other scientists, writing headlines, and how to write for the public.

Most recently, I wrote my first article for the UIC science blog. While I know science writing and communication is a crazy competitive field and hard to break into, I am at least have to try my hardest. Wish me luck and stay tuned both here and at http://uicscience.tumblr.com/.

She works really hard but he’s a genius! Why women are less represented in certain fields.

While there is often a call to get more women in the STEM fields, in reality one must look at the different sub-fields rather than the whole. By 2008 women earned more Ph.D.s in biology than men, but that number drops to less 20% for physics or computer science. The results of a study published January in Science help explain why certain fields within STEM and the humanities have much less women than others.

The authors started with three competing hypotheses and used questionnaires (a total of 1800 faculty, postdocs, and students) to determine people’s attitudes within the particular fields. The other variable was the percentage of women Ph.D.s in that field in the U.S. While the other two hypotheses, that the more time-demanding the field, the less women or the more selective the field, the less women, did not hold up, the third showed a strong positive correlation: The higher the emphasis on the need for brilliance to succeed in that field, the fewer women earned Ph.D.s in that field.

Fig 1 from Leslie et al. (2015).  Expectations of brilliance underlie gender
distributions across academic disciplines. Science, 347 (6219).

The general public rarely hears a call for more women in the humanities or social sciences, but this area has a large distribution within the sub-fields. While women are the majority of those getting Ph.D.s in education and psychology, less than 35% of degree-earners are women in economics, philosophy, and computer science. These three fields, as well as physics and computer science are fields that more highly valued giftedness over dedication.

Questions such as, “Even though it’s not politically correct to say it, men are often more suited than women to do high-level work in [discipline],” examined biases about women’s intelligence in the different fields. Indeed, those fields that highly emphasized brilliance were more likely to hold these biases and therefore are likely less welcoming to women.

Interestingly, the same trend held true for African Americans, who the authors state are also stereotyped as lacking inherent intelligence. As a control, the authors showed that the trend was not true for Asian Americans, who, for better or worse are often stereotyped as the “model minority.”

The authors’ recommended that, “academics who wish to diversify their fields might want to downplay talk of innate intellectual gifted-ness and instead highlight the importance of sustained effort for top-level success in their field.”

This supports my previous argument, and post, for the role of imposter feelings in dissuading women from pursuing certain fields. Studies have shown that women are less likely to see themselves as brilliant and more likely to attribute their success to hard work. While I focused on science as a whole, it makes sense that insecurities over being an “intellectual fraud” would be magnified in disciplines where raw intelligence, rather than diligence, is emphasized.

Therefore it seems we need to target the fields themselves with a de-emphasis on “brilliance” (this will be hard to do as those within the field probably like to think of themselves as such) and put more emphasis on women’s intelligence from a young age.