[Coral-List] Fwd: For graduate and undergraduate coral reef scientists

Vassil Zlatarski vzlatarski at gmail.com
Mon Nov 2 15:32:50 UTC 2020


Great, David, to keep reef knowledge high!

With admiration,

Vassil

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: David Blakeway via Coral-List <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>
Date: Mon, Nov 2, 2020 at 9:10 AM
Subject: [Coral-List] For graduate and undergraduate coral reef scientists
To: coral list <coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov>


For graduate and undergraduate coral reef scientists

The recent ‘Darwin was wrong’ thread elicited many comments and
perspectives that I feel are important for young scientists to be aware of,
and which I have tried to collate below. I hope it does not sound didactic.
I am open to feedback of course if any of it seems incorrect or out of
line. I have arranged them in three topics:

 *1.       **Accept uncertainty*

If you have what seems to be a good idea, it’s easy to develop the
conviction that it is right. But in fact, history shows that it will not be
right; the best you can hope for is that it will be incomplete. If it’s a
bad idea it will be quickly rejected (in theory). If it’s a good idea it
might gain hold for a while, but experiment and observation will gradually
reveal anomalies. Then someone will develop a new idea that explains
everything the original idea did, plus the anomalies. Eventually people
will find anomalies in the new idea, and so on. Recognising this pattern,
it is important that you search for evidence inconsistent with your ideas
and include that evidence in your articles. That might help you develop the
next idea! Or someone else. Either way it’s progress.

Charles Darwin is a great example here because he spent so much time trying
to disprove his own ideas. The article by Droxler & Jorry discussed in the
‘Darwin was wrong’ thread is a bad example because they do not even mention
previous research contrary to their ideas.

 *2.       **Explore historic research*

I recall, in an older coral list post, a frustrated graduate student
recounting her institution’s policy of not citing publications more than 15
years old, presumably because they didn’t want to appear outdated. This
policy is ill-informed and counterproductive. Reading and citing historic
research is valuable for at least three reasons. Firstly, to acknowledge
and credit those who’ve built our foundation. Most are dead by now of
course, and no longer need the kudos. Still, respect the legacy! (and bear
in mind that our own period will be history soon enough). Secondly, reading
the original papers will ensure you don’t mis-cite them. For example, with
respect to the Droxler & Jorry article, the reality is that although Darwin
believed his fringing-barrier-atoll model explained most atolls (and it
probably really does), he knew it did not explain them all, because he had
explored the anomalies. Droxler & Jorry are in fact arguing against a
deeply ingrained *interpretation* of Darwin. Thirdly, and most importantly,
the historic literature contains many great ideas that have either been
forgotten or were not understood at the time. The best of these, if they
come to light, will be revolutionary and will generate entire new fields of
research. Nineteenth-century literature is particularly rich, because
naturalists of the time were very broadly educated, and really got out
there (Darwin’s Beagle voyage lasted nearly five years, as did von
Humboldt’s exploration of the Americas). And some of this literature is
great reading! You will be holding your breath at von Kotzebue’s (1821)
account of sounding barrier reef fronts in the South Seas - extremely
dangerous work, all for science! (one wonders what the crew were thinking).

 *3.       **Understand (distortions in) the publication and citation
system*

If you are a student within an academic institution you likely have
unlimited access to scientific publications, because your institution is
paying large annual subscriptions to the publishers. Once you leave
academia, or get a job in less wealthy academia, you will find that most
publications become inaccessible unless you can pay 20-30 $/€ per article.
It’s difficult to do effective research in these circumstances, and it’s
very frustrating knowing the information is there but held to ransom. This
situation has arisen because a small group of companies control the
extremely profitable business of academic publishing. They have manoeuvred
into the incredible position of being able to charge their workforce (us)
to provide goods (hard won knowledge in the form of articles) that they can
sell an unlimited number of times until copyright expires! Which I think
might be never! (copyright for individuals normally expires 70 years after
death but I don’t believe that applies once you’ve signed over copyright to
a company). These companies are understandably protective of their business
model and will attempt to crush, through legal action, anyone trying to
circumvent their system by providing universal free access to the knowledge
(e.g. Aaron Swartz, Alexandra Elbakyan). Of course, publishing companies do
have costs; Nature apparently claims production costs are $20-30,000 per
article. This sounds improbably high. If it’s true it indicates inflated
salaries at Nature, most likely among the executive not the troops.

I don’t know enough about the publishing system to guess how it will
evolve, or how individual researchers can best act to make it more
equitable. Personally, I won’t submit my research to paywalled journals,
but you might find that approach difficult if your supervisors disagree. I
like open access journals, especially PeerJ. But even they have
disappointed recently, by significantly raising fees and discontinuing
their preprint service. Maybe bioRxiv? Maybe Coral Reefs can leave Springer
and self-publish under some archived creative commons arrangement?? I don’t
know, I just hope things change.

Regarding citation metrics: Evaluating the quality and future significance
of scientific work is difficult. This has led to the rise of citation
metrics, such as the H-index, as a proxy for the quality of articles,
researchers and journals. The main reason these metrics have become so
prevalent is that they are easy to calculate, and calculation can be
automated. As a proxy for quality they are inherently unreliable,
especially once they become influential in job prospects and funding
allocations. The problem is best expressed by Strathern (1997): “*When a
measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure*”. This is exactly
what’s happened in science, to the extent that your viability as a
scientist depends on hitting the target. In fact, somebody else will hit
the target, so you’d better exceed it. This obligation is probably the
reason why relatively few early and mid-career scientists are active on
Coral-List; they simply don’t have the time. Some scientists do better on
the treadmill than others, but I believe almost all would produce more
meaningful work if they had more time to explore and reflect. Citation
metrics are perhaps even more insidious and entrenched than paywalls, and I
don’t have any good solutions here either. Just be aware that they, like
the paywalls, are impeding science (in my opinion).

One other aspect related to the pursuit of citations and publicity:
sensationalist headlines can easily be misappropriated. Rupert’s prediction
about Droxler & Jorry article inciting fundamentalists is already borne out
in this link (same as the one Doug showed):

https://crev.info/2020/10/darwin-coral-atolls/

It is interesting that the link was provided by the author André Droxler.
If I were him I would be backpedalling fast from this one. I can only
presume more hits on this page generates more hits on the Rice University
page and more hits on the Annual Reviews page and everyone’s happy!


Anyway Dear Student,

Coral reefs are still there (for now) and the privilege of experiencing and
(partially) understanding the reef will always outweigh the obstacles you
might face. Good luck and please do read some of those early books, ideally
in original cloth-bound hardback. They feel good and smell right! Most were
reprinted several times and the later editions are not costly. A great one
to start with is:

Darwin, C.R. 1842. The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs
_______________________________________________
Coral-List mailing list
Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list


More information about the Coral-List mailing list