The Tim Hunt affair is destroying our community from within. We need to not let that happen.

So much ink has been – and continues to be – spilt over the Tim Hunt affair that I have nothing to add to it. The only thing that’s clear by this point is that the episode is more complicated than what it appeared at first. And it's also clear that both sides could have done things differently. Beyond that you look at the evidence and make up your mind.

I am writing this post for a very different reason. As someone who can call himself at least a semi-veteran of the blogosphere (for about 11 years), I can truthfully say that I have never seen the community so bitterly divided against itself. I reach this conclusion based on observations of arguments on Twitter, Facebook and other sources. Although I have occasionally posted about the episode on these sources I have largely been an observer. And what I observe is definitely disturbing. Many of the people involved in these arguments have been prominent members of the blogging and journalism community, and some of them are my friends and colleagues. And in all the years that I have blogged and seen these leading members of the community in action, I have never seen people who once stood as allies in a common cause fight with each other with the ardor that we historically associate with Protestants and Catholics, or with Sunnis and Shiites. And just like these groups, what is most remarkable and disconcerting is to see these people be at each others’ throats in spite of supposedly having so much in common.

To put it simply: I think that as a community we are destroying ourselves in profoundly anti-intellectual and divisive ways.

To be sure, the signs have been there for a few years. People either in favor of or against a particular argument have often adopted a take-no-prisoners attitude, especially on Twitter which has turned into a veritable Frankensteinian nightmare at times. Whether you call it public shaming or something else, the tendency to band together, rain down on people with indignation, discard them and then move on to the next outrage has turned into a regular Thursday morning occurrence. It’s not even a novelty anymore.

And yet I am seeing something qualitatively new with the Tim Hunt episode. A maelstrom of words that reaches new levels of divisiveness and vitriol. I am seeing fights break out between people who I would never have expected to fight with each other. I am seeing people simply refuse to agree with each other, even if the general agreement might be broad and they might be arguing about interpretations or about subtleties. I am seeing very reasonable people engage in ad hominem attacks in an endless fury of cyclical gyrations.

All this is disturbing for several reasons. The most important one is simply that this debate threatens to fragment the community into factions, each one of which refuses to give way and hear the other side of the debate. Meanwhile the moderates, the ones who are afraid to descend into the shouting matches for good reason, will continue to stay on the sidelines and their voices will continue to be largely silent. What you will end up with is a divided community of absolutist and polarized factions. What are the chances then that these factions with their history of bitterness and personal attacks will actually come together when something truly worthy of righteous indignation happens? To me these chances appear slim.

The second serious reason why this couldn’t possibly be good for the community or for anyone else for that matter is because it sends a very wrong message to the world at large, the vast community of ‘third party’ observers who don’t have a dog in the hunt but who simply want to know the truth (shouldn’t we all?). Simply put, this wider community will start ignoring us when something genuinely important or disturbing happens because they will rightly think that we have cried wolf all too often. They will start to think that we are neither good journalists nor good activists and all we are interested in doing is pointing fingers without effecting real progress. It’s worth thinking about this in a very practical way: if we raise hell at every single episode, no matter what its significance or lack thereof in the bigger scheme of things, how will people who want to learn from us be able to distinguish between all these episodes? If we decide to get outraged to the same extent at every single perceived injustice, trip-up, sin and faux pas, then not only are we not optimally allocating our outrage, but we also run the risk of not having enough left for the things that really matter. In addition we only end up equating outrage with actual action. This helps neither us, nor the true victims, nor the broader community. All it does is create smoke without fire and engender suspicion about our goals.

Thirdly and perhaps most importantly, all this simply stops us from learning from each other. Words about surrounding ourselves with echo chambers have become clichés, but they are clichés because they are true. If we decide that we are going to banish – if not from physical sight then at least from our Twitter feeds – everyone who disagrees with even parts of what we believe, if we passionately subscribe to that old chestnut that those who aren’t with us must automatically be against us, if we divide people into black and white categories of friends vs enemies based on some arbitrary ruler of at least 95% agreement, if we stop believing that someone can even vehemently disagree with parts of our worldview and still be aligned with our broader causes, then we will very rapidly get to a stage when the only people we converse with most of the times are largely intellectual clones of ourselves. At the very least our learning process will then become starkly impoverished.

All this and more has already happened, but the Tim Hunt has really taken the gloves off and exposed the cracks in the whole structure in my opinion, and nothing about it says good things about the future existence of a vibrant community where people respectfully disagree with and learn from each other.

How did we get to this stage? Everyone will offer their own views and there are undoubtedly very many responsible factors, but I continue to believe that the single overriding factor is the following: We have made almost every argument one about identity and ideology rather than about ideas. This is a general observation that has been shored up by other people, and Twitter is merely its most virulent manifestation. These days it has become almost impossible to say something without people regarding you not as an independent living and breathing human being with individual ideas but as part of some ideology or background. You cannot simply be John Doe saying something, something whose validity has to be evaluated on its own intrinsic merits; instead you have to be John Doe – feminist, John Doe – sexist, John Doe – libertarian, John Doe – person with white/black/brown/male/female privilege.

Now I understand that our opinions are undoubtedly dictated by our background, our community and yes, our privilege. But they are also dictated as much by our existence as independent thinking entities. To assume in the absence of evidence to the contrary that our identity must be the only thing shaping our opinions is at the very least unscientific (you are simply assuming one causal factor among several) and at worst an attitude that insults our unique existence as independent thinkers. My opinions on any matter are a function of both my background and of the logical chain of thinking that proliferates through my mind. To automatically assume that only my background is responsible for my opinions, or that the logical chain cannot exist without my background, is frankly an insult to the wonderful workings of the human mind and the history of human thought.

This constant, knee-jerk appeal to someone’s background and identity introduces a bias that can very much color your opinion about that person, and this bias is inherent in the simplest cases. It damningly breeds precisely the divisiveness that we claim to be against. For instance when two people are having an argument, the moment you start criticizing one person by stating their skin color in your opening argument becomes the moment when you are inevitably going to analyze their behavior through those particular tinted glasses. Is their skin color relevant to the debate and your disagreement with them? Maybe, and maybe not, but it’s both unscientific as well as profoundly unobjective to assume that it is without further scrutiny or reasonable cause. Assuming this ironically pastes the same label of discrimination on us that we often seek to abolish. Similarly when we assume that someone is saying something because of their ‘privilege’ (which is a very real thing), we shift the focus of the conversation from what’s being said to who’s saying it. It is time that we started evaluating people’s words and ideas on their own merits and not only as necessarily linked to their identity and ideological underpinnings (which may not even exist in their own mind).

What is even more disturbing is that this behavior is increasingly prevalent among those who identify themselves as liberals (although it’s also not absent among conservatives). For instance I have often observed this bizarre bias among people who say they are committed to diversity; what is confounding to me is that these people often appear to be committed to every other kind of diversity (gender, skin color, political affiliation) except diversity of ideas. Ideas have been at the forefront of human civilization for ten thousand years. Since when did they become secondary? What exactly makes them occupy a rung lower on the ladder from identity? It is downright weird for me to see this anti-intellectual behavior especially among liberals, some of whom are scientists or science journalists and who more than most members of the general public cherish the value of ideas.

I could go on with even more details, but they will add little to the general point. This elevation of identity above ideas and the alienation of people with different ideas who might still share a common core is hugely detrimental to the present and future of a community ostensibly engaged in sharing viewpoints and growing by learning from each other. The only result of this divisive attitude will be the fragmentation of people who heartbreakingly are far more similar to each other than what they think. 

I am neither so naïve nor do I consider myself so enlightened as to propose any solution for this disturbing trend. And yet I cannot help but observe that in a sense part of the solution is even now bleedingly simple, and I propose this solution - more a guideline than a solution, really - in the form of a plea. Find middle ground. Constantly seek the places where you agree rather than disagree, and you will find that there are more of those around than you think. Do not banish people even with divergent ideas from sight and mind, because these are really the only ones who can teach you something new; allowing these people to speak their minds is not easy, but the rewards are important. Respect diversity of ideas as much as diversity of identity, and stop automatically pigeonholing people into categories of identity and examining their arguments through these lenses. If you feel offended by something first try to understand it; it's hard, but it's worth the trouble. Finally, just stop equating every perceived and real act of dissension, of contrary opinion and thought as disloyalty to some real or fictitious ‘cause’ or ideology, as a less than perfect fit to a conviction. We are more similar than we think, we are more complex than we think, and we are much more than the sum of our identities. And that realization is really the only one that can bring us together at the end of the day.

The demise of SciAmBlogs

So I hear that SciAmBlogs is undergoing a radical overhaul and shedding no less than half of its bloggers, many of whom have been with the network since its inception. This includes many whose thought-provoking writings I respect - even though I don't always agree with them - like Janet Stemwedel and Eric Michael Johnson.

It's a shame really, because I think the network had really distinguished itself as one of the few blogging networks in the world whose bloggers had vibrant, independent voices and who were not afraid to write provocative posts. That being said, I don't have a problem seeing the logic of this move at all: after what happened during the last one year, it is clear that the network wants to repair what it sees as a broken image, wants to avoid dealing with even ten clamorous voices on Twitter, wants to stay away even from interesting controversy and - the importance of this aspect of any issue can never be underestimated - wants to please the lawyers. The rigors of maintaining a hundred and fifty year old organization's image are apparently much harder than the rigors of sustaining a diverse set of opinions and the accompanying freedom of speech.

However it is equally clear that by embarking on this new identity the site has picked safe over interesting and independent and has lost its reputation as a vibrant and diverse community of independent voices which you may not always agree with but whose views always provided food for thought. This is abundantly obvious from the new "guidelines" issued by the network - a veritable school headmaster's list of dos and donts combined with a palpable dash of Orwellian doublespeak - which prohibit its bloggers from hosting guest posts or writing "outside" their areas of expertise without consulting with the editors. In doing this SciAmBlogs has reduced its bloggers to - in physicist Sean Carroll's words - underpaid journalists and effectively dissuaded them from exploring new horizons. A blogger who gets paid a paltry sum of money every month for writing "safe" posts that won't get even a handful of people on Twitter riled up and are considered kosher by the editors is indeed no longer a real blogger, and I can definitely see why many of the network's previous writers quit instead of relinquishing their independence. 

Fortunately for the sake of the network some excellent bloggers whose writings I really enjoy, like Jennifer Ouellette, have stayed and I wish these folks good luck, but it's also clear they know what they are in for. There are also other specialists like Darren Naish who writes superbly on paleontology and prehistory. But these people are hedgehogs - acknowledged experts in specific subject areas. A science network truly worth its name needs both hedgehogs and foxes - people who like to muck around and explore other topics rather than mainly drill deep into one. They may not offer definitive answers but you can count on them to ask thought-provoking and even provocative questions. The network has now retained a few hedgehogs but it has lost all its foxes. The loss of foxes has greatly diminished the diversity of the ecosystem. 

In one sense the whole shebang was never the same since Bora Zivkovic left, but it really took recent events to bring it to this precipitous edge. In one sense this is a good decision since the site has now decided where the lines are drawn. The sad thing is that - for all its supposed emphasis on diversity - it has done the opposite and chose to draw the lines on the side of corporate approval instead of diverse opinion (and speaking of diversity, as this post on SciLogs noted, it's also interesting that most of the blogs which were cut - even for reasons other than low frequency of posting - were written by women). When it comes to maintaining diversity, the site has effectively gone the way of "We had to destroy the village in order to save it". I wish the remaining bloggers there good luck, but I doubt the environment will ever be the unique forum for independent voices and vigorous debate that it once was. Scientific American's Blog Network will probably survive in some form or another, but SciAmBlogs as it once stood is now over.

I leave the last word to Yana Eglit who wrote for the network for a long time and who sees in this unfortunate but predictable development a larger symptom of our collective woes, on SciAmBlogs as well as on social media in general. The whole thing is eminently worth reading so I quote here at length (the italics are mine):

"Social media has a powerful tendency towards homogenising opinions into a flavourless monolithic blob. While many who use social media are clearly and sincerely interested in promoting diversity, it is a bitter irony that the platform itself suppresses it. Dissenting opinions get transformed to strawmen and people become literal [insert favourite tyrants here]. Instead of trying to understand why someone you consider reasonable wrote something (in the case of twitter, in 140 characters!) so apparently shocking, and giving them the benefit of the doubt, you immediately jump to the conclusion that they are against whatever cause is in question. And the causes in question are usually far too complex to have a single position on. Especially one measured in not even words, but characters. 

But no benefits of the doubt are given — you stray from the path, you’re obviously up to no good. And you get axed. This breeds a form of conservatism — the group as a whole becomes too terrified to say something that will be misunderstood, and what could be a diverse discussion by multiple people of varied backgrounds becomes an echo chamber, a ‘circlejerk’ to use cruder but more to-the-point internet terminology.  

It’s somewhat ironic: in this system, you value minorities, you value women, you value the disadvantaged — but you do not value people. Individuals are worthless, to be cast aside the moment you find something disagreeable in them. People will support you until the first flaw, and then they take off to find someone not-yet-flawed instead. I admit that there’s an element in culture in my finding this strange and disagreeable — in Russian culture (as well as several other Slavic ones I’ve dealt with) we tend to see friendship and personal relationships (but especially friendships) as something rather sacred, something that should ideally transcend ideological differences, political disagreements, and especially character flaws. That can lead to issues in its own right, of course — everything comes at a trade-off, and every cultural description hides within it a massive statistical mess, but that’s something that always bothered me here, just how quickly people discard friendships they find no longer savoury. And this is especially nasty on the internet.

Mature nuanced discussions were never a blatant strong point of the internet, but here we have mature, nuanced individuals — intelligent, experienced individuals with a genuine interest to improve the world around them — having discussions on the level of teenage basement trolls. That, I think, is tragic. 

…and for what was all this? We lost a network. We lost voices who fought for us. We lost each other. We lost direction. We lost our actual main goal — to communicate the wonders of science with the world. And to some extent, I think this has damaged our rapport as bloggers with both journalist as well a scientist communities. Not to mention the curious public looking at all this in bemused confusion.We gained nothing."

I would go a step further and say that we gained something valuable, and then lost it with deliberate, purposeful and misguided conviction. It's something to mull over. However there is as always a silver lining. This story will serve as a cautionary tale for other blogging networks which wish to foster diversity. Meanwhile, both time and the Internet are limitless, so foxes like me will always have a multitude of new fields to play in.

A response to recent events on Sci Am Blogs

The re-post of my Feynman post on SciAm and the note attached to it have led me to write this response. Several readers have asked me what happened, so I will endeavor to clear the air and provide what I consider to be a complete story from my perspective.

Folks are welcome to comment and criticize any of the actors involved in the story. One reason I am writing this is because I think it raises several issues that are at the heart of blogging in the age of social media and under the umbrella of a larger organization.

Here's the gist of the story:

1. I host a guest post on women in science and later, I write a post on Wade’s controversial book (these are 2 of almost 200 posts on a variety of topics I've written for SciAm).
2. In response to criticism of the two posts on social media, SciAm issues a public statement. The blog editor asks me to run “controversial” posts by him. No specific guidelines are discussed (something I now regret not doing).
3. I write a post about how my perception of Feynman has changed and how we need to judge historical figures in their entirety and understand the times in which they lived. I do not think the post was "controversial" in the least and therefore do not run it by the editor.
4. The post elicits both positive and negative responses on Twitter, blogs and email. 
5. The post is taken down because the editors find it "controversial" and think that I should have run it by them. I am told that it would be best to part ways with the network.
6. SciAm resurrects the post with a note containing what I would consider an accurate, but incomplete, description of events.

SciAm is a strong network and I have much respect for their bloggers and editors, particularly blog editor Curtis Brainard. In fact, I am happy to note that they published a post debating the points raised in my original piece. In addition, the piece has also resulted in a spectrum of reactions on other blogs and on social media. This is exactly the kind of diverse give and take I expect a post to stimulate, and therefore I find the foregoing turn of events to be particularly unfortunate.

This episode does, however, raise bigger questions: 

• Should a network support the airing of controversial views? How does it decide what exactly is controversial, especially considering that the perception of controversial content can be quite subjective?
• How much should a brand care about opinions (particularly negative ones) on social media, especially in an age when waves of such criticism can swell and ebb rapidly and often provide a transient, biased view of content? How much and how should it let these opinions influence both its internal deliberations and its public responses?
• If a network is averse to publishing what it thinks are controversial posts, should it communicate this fact to bloggers at the time of hiring? And in this regard, since the perception of controversial content is subjective, how exactly should it word these concerns to bloggers? By explicitly declaring certain topics to be off limits? By instituting a formal process of vetting for posts that are declared to be "controversial" by majority consensus?
• Finally, if such policies are instituted, how does a blogging network foster an environment in which bloggers have the freedom to explore topics of interest?

I would love to see a serious discussion about these topics and hear people’s views. Meanwhile, I will continue writing (and occasionally covering “controversial” topics) here, so I look forward to the conversation.

First they came for the bloggers and I didn't speak up because...

Here's a breath of fresh air. I keep on thinking about Planck's quote about scientific revolutions not occurring until old generations die and new ones take their place and here's something of that sort happening, even if in a minor way. 

Prof. Phil Baran has started his own blog. It's easy to see this as a response to the commendable IBX oxidation experiment carried out by Blog Syn. That, by the way, was a great illustration of how science should work; research is published, it is then scrutinized, a few discrepancies are found, the original author responds and confirms the original results, and the new authors discover something new that had not been realized before.

But it's clear that the Blog Syn incident was only a seed for a realization that undoubtedly must have been crystallized in Phil's mind for a while. We have all seen how the old guard has often dismissed and scorned bloggers and their pesky, amateur blogs. Now here's someone from the new guard who clearly recognizes which way the winds are blowing:

Over the years I have vaguely followed some of them, mostly through my students or through being occasionally contacted by someone that runs a blog. Practically all of my colleagues roll their eyes the minute the word "blog" is uttered for a variety of largely justified reasons.  

But times are clearly changing...Last year I was at a dinner symposium where EJ Corey gave a brilliant impromptu talk before a toast. It was a captivating speech all about how things have rapidly changed over the span of his 80+ years. The take home message was that change is natural and you can either embrace it and adapt or be left behind. I'm no fortune teller but it is clear to me that blogging is here to stay and is gathering momentum.

There is something ironic about the fact that the words of the great E. J. Corey - an exemplar of the old guard who almost certainly is not going to start blogging anytime soon - should serve as an invitation to blog for the man who is widely regarded as one of the most creative synthetic organic chemists of his generation. 

Thank you Prof. Baran. Now, the next time they come for us, we know you will speak up because you are are a blogger.

Other reactions: Chembark

Chembark is back!

Paul Bracher is back from his self-imposed cyber-celibacy! Stay tuned.

A new look, with hair combed and shoes brushed

As you may have noticed, I have transitioned to a spanking new look at Field of Science (FoS), thanks to Edward's invitation and am loving it. I also join a super team of fellow bloggers whom I hope to regularly read. You won't have to update your bookmarks since you will be automatically directed here when you click on the old link.

I have to admit that after exercising my primitive blog management skills for the last five years, this feels like warp speed and spinach combined.

On anonymous blogging

There's a fair amount of drama going on at The Chem Blog, with "Kyle Finchsigmate" announcing first that he was going to retire, and then demoting (advancing?) himself to "emeritus blogger" to continue writing in his rather inimitable style.

I enjoy reading Kyle's blog and have always done so, and I doubt how many people would have the gumption to express themselves in the way that he does and still preserve a significant amount of intellectual substance and solid information. At the same time, I do find myself cringing once in a while at his novel use of expletives. That said, at least for me, the entertainment gains from reading his blog outweigh the displeasure I may sense in myself on reading what my inner "offense-meter" thinks is a disproportionate amount of profanity or irreverence. But that's not the point. The point is that on the whole, Kyle has always been honest about what he thinks, and that is something that everybody should value.

However, being a star does have its problems and I think Kyle is suffering from typical celebrity troubles. First of all, when you write in the risque language that he does, there is going to be a relatively higher proportion of people feeling offended; it's an inevitable collateral effect. Secondly and more simply, as Kyle's celebrity status improved and hundreds of people started reading his blog, the sheer statistical number of people that could be offended went up. With Kyle's cover blown, this became a particular problem.

Anonymous blogging does have its pitfalls. The advantage of being gung-ho and writing whatever you want about whoever you want, even if done honestly, can be outweighed by the possible consequences if discovered. In this information age, I think it's hard to stay completely anonymous for long. As your blog becomes more and more popular, the chances of getting outed naturally increase (Consider the 'Fake Steve Jobs' who was actually surprised that his his outing took that long).

That's one reason I decided to have a non-anonymous blog. Right at the beginning, I decided that I would not write about other scientists, my own work or my own advisor. Of course it's not very easy because it's human nature to be constantly tempted to point fingers at others and engage in gossip, as well as put in plugs for one's own work. At the very least, it's quite easy to be full of praise for someone, but in the world of science even such an action can have unintended personal consequences. It also seems clear to me that you face a larger risk even with run-of-the-mill writing if you work for someone who is high-profile and famous. Speaking for myself, the only time I have criticised someone is in case of blatant fraud or obviously questionable work where many others have raised similar issues.

But blogging non-anonymously and responsibly and yet effectively is nevertheless possible, and is demonstrated by one of the best examples of such writing that I know- Derek's In The Pipeline which is one of the most widely read scientific blogs on the internet. Especially being in industry, I would think that Derek carries a larger than usual burden of making sure he does not become a liability. I believe he has succeeded admirably in always writing entertainingly and quite provocatively, and yet avoided getting personal or offensive. His posts stimulate and inform without offending (at least largely; there is always going to be somebody who can get offended by anything). Paul Bracher's now sadly defunct blog was another example of provocative and yet gentle writing; it was interesting how even that gentle writing got Paul into trouble with commentators sometimes.

In any case, that's Derek. Kyle's different, and why not? In the end blogging is a personal activity and personal choice. Even if I am writing for others, it's my blog, and I should have the freedom to express my views the way I want to. It's Kyle's choice how much risk to bear. It's inevitable that he shoulders more risk with his particular style, and in my personal opinion, he could sometimes tread a little more softly as a small price to pay for less risk. But again, it's his blog, and if he changes himself too much for the sake of propriety, then it wouldn't be Kyle Finchsigmate's blog anymore, would it?