Another cool, dewy morning today as I went out to pick gastropods. The wet grass brushing against my bare legs got at least some of that moisture from the slugs stretched along the blades.
Tomorrow morning I’m going to remember to put on jeans before I go out snailing.
With celebrity comes duties: Jenny McCarthy, Oprah Winfrey, and the ethical burden of a soapbox.
At White Coat Underground, PalMD explores the question of what kind of responsibilities might fall on celebrities, especially those who use their soapboxes in a way that exceeds the tether of their expertise. The particular celebrities under examination are Jenny McCarthy, who has used her celebrity to spread her views on the proper treatment and prevention of autism, and Oprah Winfrey, who has used her media empire to give McCarthy a soapbox with more reach.
Pal writes:
Jenny claims an expertise based on her personal experience. Whether one views themselves as an expert is largely irrelevant, unless others so christen them. In Jenny’s case, various fake experts have helped promote her status as an expert (making her a 2nd generation fake expert?) and she has embraced this status.
Being a public figure confers a certain status in our society, whether or not it should. It gives one great reach and influence. While Jenny’s putative lack of intelligence certainly makes her susceptible to having her status used by others, it does not absolve her of her responsibilities. She has made a conscious choice to use her status to spread a message, and has chosen to listen to some experts over others. The moral culpability is hers. …
When it comes to medical issues, the only thing consistent about Oprah is her own inconsistency. It appears that she christens experts based on her personal preference rather than any objective criteria. This is a problem. Oprah’s influence is inversely proportional to her ability to choose good experts, which is a troubling trend. One thing she is good at is picking a winner; Dr. Phil may or may not be a good therapist, but he’s great TV. Time will tell whether Jenny is equally lucrative, but Oprah doesn’t pick losers, so we’re likely to be seeing Jenny under Oprah’s banner for a long time to come.
Rather than hewing to close to the specifics of Jenny McCarthy or Oprah Winfrey, I’d like to raise the questions more generally:
Snail eradication (day 12).
It didn’t end up raining yesterday (so I didn’t get a chance to test my dedication to snailing by snailing in the rain). Today dawned cold and dewy.
Which meant I knew I was going to get some gastropod action.
The mechanics of getting fooled: the multiple failures in the fraud of Jan Hendrik Schön.
There’s an interesting article in the Telegraph by Eugenie Samuel Reich looking back at the curious case of Jan Hendrik Schön. In the late ’90s and early ’00s, the Bell Labs physicist was producing a string of impressive discoveries — most of which, it turns out, were fabrications. Reich (who has published a book about Schön, Plastic Fantastic: How the Biggest Fraud in Physics Shook the Scientific World) considers how Schön’s frauds fooled his fellow physicists. Her recounting of the Schön saga suggests clues that should have triggered more careful scrutiny, if not alarm bells.
Of Schön’s early work at Bell Labs, Reich writes:
Snail eradication (day 11).
This morning was cool, overcast, and very dry. There was no discernible dew on the grass.
In other words, not conditions in which the gastropods come out to play.
Cleaning up scientific competition: an interview with Sean Cutler (part 2).
Yesterday, I posted the first part of my interview with Sean Cutler, a biology professor on a mission to get the tribe of science to understand that good scientific competition is not antithetical to cooperation. Cutler argues that the problem scientists (and journal editors, and granting agencies) need to tackle is scientists who try to get an edge in the competition by unethical means. As Cutler put it (in a post at TierneyLab):
Scientists who violate these standards [e.g., not making use of information gained when reviewing manuscripts submitted for publication] are unethical – this is the proverbial no-brainer. But as my colleague and ethicist Coleen Macnamara says, “There is more to ethics than just following the rules- it’s also about helping people when assistance comes at little cost to oneself.” The “little experiment” I did was an exercise in this form of ethical competition. Yes, I could have rushed to the finish line as secretly and quickly as possible and scoop everyone, but I like to play out scenarios and live my life as an experimentalist. By bringing others on board, I turned my competitors turn into collaborators. The paper is better as a result and no one got scooped. A good ethical choice led to a more competitive product.
But how easy is it to change entrenched patterns of behavior? When scientists have been trained to take advantage of every competitive advantage to stay in the scientific game, what might it take to make ethical behavior seem like an advantage rather than an impediment to success?
My interview with Sean Cutler continues:
Cleaning up scientific competition: an interview with Sean Cutler (part 1).
Sean Cutler is an assistant professor of plant cell biology at the University of California, Riverside and the corresponding author of a paper in Science published online at the end of April. Beyond its scientific content, this paper is interesting because of the long list of authors, and the way it is they ended up as coauthors on this work. As described by John Tierney,
Snail eradication (day 10).
This was another cool, dewy morning following on the heels of a blazing hot day.
In other words, good snailing weather.
Snail eradication (day 9).
Yesterday was a super-hot day, and this morning was cool and dewy. Later, though, we’re expecting temperatures higher than yesterday’s.
So the gastropods were out enjoying the break in the heat while it lasted.