Thoughts about academia`s obsession with quantity

by Tibor Hartel

I was just re-reading the paper of Joern Fischer and his colleagues about academia`s obsession with quantity, more papers, more grants and more everything. Here, I focus on one potential aspect of this issue. I am aware that here and there I may look crazy, and exaggerate, but the intention is to offer a short blog and maybe one short second of reflection.

Cover of the Rene Guenon`s book: ‘The Reign of Quantity and Signs of the Times’ (source: internet). Recommended for further reflections about quantity-quality issues in broader perspective.

I wonder to what extent this obsession is rooted in and induced by our new (researcher) population demographics. Yearly, thousands of ‘scientists’ may be produced in just one field of biology, in just one continent. Each being extremely enthusiastic, clever, inventive and willing to do great things in research and life. The sad news is that each of them will not end up being a successful ecologist. And this is not because they don`t deserve it. No, there is nothing personal. It is even worse: we may be (and I am sorry for being so direct) too many. The researcher population is growing, resources are scarce, and it is already stressed by its own demography.

We all feel the symptoms of this, let me enumerate just few: the review system is increasingly random (excellent papers being rejected without review while other papers go under review). This randomness makes difficult to publish even good stuff. There are new journals available every week almost (each aiming to be revolutionary), and new journal initiatives, as a response to the growing population of … manuscripts. Permanent jobs are rare resources today in this field (postdocs positions increasing?). I even feel that ‘transdisciplinary science’ may flourish, to an unknown degree, as a result of the above mentioned population demographics: being transdisciplinary allows scientist to pass the border of the ‘science habitat’ and establish outside academia.

One can feel that such an environment is full with pain and frustration. The strong natural selection processes acting on each member of this growing and crowding researcher population. In any other animal species, e.g. rats, such a crowding certainly would select for behaviours and morphs which are not ‘normal’. We know this from Darwin and subsequent works. Below some abnormal behaviours in science (there may be other, more proper examples too) selected in and by the overcrowded researcher population: The ‘obsession with quantity’, described by Joern and his colleagues. The goal of science changes in an overcrowded scientist population: generating valuable knowledge may not be the main objective, but papers which cease being a means (through which knowledge is communicated) and become the goal. In this way, papers are displays of alpha ranking and the most highly ranked members of the community are given more (re)production rights via grants, PhD students and permanent positions. The selection of PhD students (future researchers) is interesting too: image is valued, the created noise and the ability to sell (in other words, the ability of the candidate to capture what the alpha fe/male want from her/him and act accordingly in order to get the position). Being silent and humble is not valued – such people are generally not noticed (of course, noisy people can be humble and clever too…but the selection criteria is the noise and not always the humility and wisdom behind, and that is the problem).

If the scientific products of our days are the result of the struggle for life (in its Darwinian sense), induced and controlled by the demographic context (i.e. the result of an abnormal behaviour, induced by an abnormal situation, basically), how we can ever expect a society to take us (and our big explosions, i.e. papers) seriously?

Reading recommendation: Notebooks from New Guinea

BY JAN HANSPACH

After recently having two posts about a project in Papua New Guinea (PNG), people who want to know more about what research can be like in that pacific country might be interested in the recently published book “Notebooks from New Guinea”.

In short essays the Czech Entomologist Vojtech Novotny describes his experiences with local tribes, remote research stations, the spirits of the forests, driving a car when having a malaria attack and many other aspects of daily life but also deep reflections coming from ten years of field work there.

Not knowing PNG myself I can’t really judge how close it is to the reality. What I can say is that it was fun to read and offered some amazing perspectives not only about the people of PNG, but also about the Czech Republic, scientists, research and nature conservation in general.

I can only agree with the conclusion of Alan Steward in his recent TREE review on the book: “It will also generate a deep respect for the scientists who manage to carry out top-quality groundbreaking research in this most challenging environment”.

And if you ever planned to go to PNG, take Novotny’s advice: “The tropics are safer than you think. After all, most of humanity lives there more or less contentedly. So keep to the same level of caution, paranoia, and hypochondria as you are used to at home.” (Well, but don’t forget to take anti-malaria meds with you!)

Chytrid fungus in Romania?

by Joern Fischer

Not much is known about chytrid fungus in eastern Europe, as shown in a recent paper by Olson and colleagues. The fungus has decimated many amphibian populations around the world. What’s its role in Romania?

Tree kangaroos and crowd-funding: follow-up

Guest post by Euan Ritchie

Funding is getting harder and harder to find right? And, the future doesn’t look great, well, at least in Australia (http://www.nature.com/news/fears-grow-over-australian-science-funding-1.12934). But, before you get depressed and start contemplating another career there IS a way we can find funding to undertake important research. It doesn’t rely on governments or funding bodies, it relies on you, me, anyone! It’s called crowd funding. I’m sure this concept may not be new to everyone and it’s been written about elsewhere before (http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-5347(12)00298-4), but I wanted to briefly reflect on my own experience of crowd funding (bearing in mind I’m only three days in of a 45 day campaign), having just begun my first project (www.pozible.com/tenkile) and what I believe are some of its benefits, acknowledging there are downsides too.

 “Tenkile or Scott’s tree kangaroo” (source: Tenkile Conservation Alliance)

Perhaps the biggest difference I’ve noticed already is the instant feedback you get about your ideas, and this is reflected both in a monetary sense (people funding you or not), but also by people’s comments. You know very early on how important the public thinks your work is, not just a small number of people on a grant review panel. There is no hiding, people either like what you’re doing or they don’t, but perhaps this is how a lot of science should be funded? The community decides what is of most value to them and how much support it deserves (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMj_P_6H69g) . The other terrific aspect of the process is that the public is with you from day one, so they are more invested (some financially, but many emotionally as well) in your research. This can only be a good thing for everyone in terms of communicating just what scientists do and why research is so important. I’ve already had a long list of people wanting to come and help us in Papua New Guinea. Perhaps this is not surprising though.

“Torricelli Mountains” (source: Tenkile Conservation Alliance)

Another major upside of undertaking a crowd-funding project is developing promotional videos and engaging with the media in all its forms. In my case, I was fortunate enough to work with a talented young filmmaker, Reuben Warren (http://framereactor.com/site/). It was a wonderful process that brought together the arts and sciences, and we ended up with a video that I believe captures the message and importantly emotion in our project (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmAhomk1tU0). If there’s one thing science needs a whole lot more of, it’s passion and emotion. In a world where scientific papers keep increasing (http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(12)00125-5), in some cases exponentially, but the environment tracks in the opposite direction for the most part, such partnerships may help us to sell our messages better and connect with society.

The last benefit I’d like to mention is profile building. Since starting the project, I’ve been retweeted and shared countless times and importantly, encouraged by people from all over the world and from all walks of like. I’m very grateful for this support and recognize that this project has opened up new opportunities to me, well beyond just gaining the support we need for our project.

“The future of conservation” (source: Tenkile Conservation Alliance)

So in short, if you’ve been thinking about crowd funding for a while but aren’t sure it’s for you, like I had, give it go!

A crowd-funding project on tree kangaroos

By Joern Fischer

A colleague and collaborator of mine — Euan Ritchie — just launched his first crowd funding campaign, on rare mammals in Papua New Guinea. Knowing Euan personally, I trust whatever he manages to get started in PNG will be very good science, and firmly focused on being of real-world use. It’s for this reason that I’m happy to help distribute Euan’s call for funding.

Find out more in the video below and on his project website. More on crowd funding in general in this previous post.

New paper: Interdisciplinary sustainability science in the Amazon

New recommendation as submitted to Faculty of 1000 Prime:

Joern Fischer and Jan Hanspach

A social and ecological assessment of tropical land uses at multiple scales: the Sustainable Amazon Network.

Gardner TA, Ferreira J, Barlow J, Lees AC, …, Viana C, Weinhold D, Zanetti R, Zuanon J., Philos Trans R Soc Lond, B, Biol Sci 2013; 368(1619):20120166

This week, a special issue about ‘Ecology, economy, and management of an agroindustrial frontier landscape in the southeast Amazon’ was published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Amazonia harbours the largest tropical rainforest in the world, and is valued for its contribution to global climate regulation, as well as its unique and rich biodiversity. It also provides a home and livelihoods to millions of people and provides timber and agricultural products for global markets. As is well known, human impact in Amazonia is causing the ongoing loss of its natural capital. Finding ways towards more sustainable land use is therefore a key issue. 

In this paper, Toby Gardner and colleagues describe a major effort in promoting sustainable land use in the context of an initiative called the “Sustainable Amazon Network”. At multiple scales, this initiative seeks to understand the regional ecological system, as well as the social system and interactions between the two. The current paper does not present specific findings, but rather gives an overview of the initiative. We believe that putting together an initiative such as this deserves recognition in the peer community. We wholeheartedly support the authors’ statement that “building effective multi-sector and interdisciplinary research programmes at large spatial scales remains one of the most difficult challenges facing sustainability science”. 

One aspect that is particularly interesting in this paper is the section on “Practical lessons and realities from the field”. This section discusses the various challenges and obstacles that come with a major transdisciplinary project, most importantly ‘developing and maintaining engagement with partners’. Although vital, the effort that goes into such large transdisciplinary projects is usually not visible in a standard empirical papers, and is not easily rewarded by existing funding and incentive structures. 

We recommend this paper because we think this is an excellent example how to study social-ecological systems, and we hope that the initiative described can make a difference for the future of the Amazon and its people. 

Disclosures

Joern Fischer published one paper with Toby Gardner in 2009. Fischer, J., Peterson, G.D., Gardner, T., Gordon, L., Fazey, I., Elmqvist, T., Felton, A.,Folke, C., Dovers, S. (2009). Integrating resilience thinking and optimisation for conservation. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 24, 549-554.

New paper: Europe’s extinction crisis

By Joern Fischer

Today I’d like to recommend a new manuscript in PNAS, available here.

Europe’s other debt crisis caused by the long legacy of future extinctions.

Dullinger S, Essl F, Rabitsch W, Erb KH, …, Kühn I, Pergl J, Pysek P, Hulme PE. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2013 Apr 15; PMID: 23589873 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1216303110

This paper illustrates the notion of an extinction debt very elegantly. The authors look at current red lists in Europe, and find that red lists for many species correlate best with past socioeconomic indices, as opposed to present indices. In other words, current red lists are best described by what humans did 50 to 100 years ago rather than what they are doing now. The authors interpret this better fit to indicate that what we are witnessing now in terms of threatened species is the result of our actions a long time ago.

An interesting additional finding is that current expenditure on conservation further improves model fit; but does not fundamentally change the fact that current red lists are best explained by past socioeconomic conditions. 

The authors interpret these findings to indicate that extinction patterns very likely will get worse – because we are now reaping the rewards of our actions one hundred years ago, and current actions are far more detrimental to species.

An important conservation take-home message is that current actions to halt biodiversity loss (a declared policy goal in Europe, for example) probably fall short even further of what is needed than widely agreed on.

I think this is an elegant case study; good for teaching the extinction debt; and an important warning to society regarding likely future extinction patterns.

This study also highlights indirectly (and probably not intentionally) that focusing on species once they are red-listed is too late. We need to think about the threatening processes driving biodiversity decline right now. Currently common species, if they show signs of declining, give more immediate feedback on our actions than if we wait for these species to get red-listed – which may take 50 to 100 years from when their initial decline starts.