The F word in physics… Fraud

When it came out earlier this month, I immediately picked up Eugenie Samuel Reich’s book about the Hendrik Schön scientific fraud case because my graduate work began as part of the Minnesota efforts to reproduce some of Schön’s results (there are a few pages on the Minnesota collaboration in the book). Being touched by the fraud personally, I found this book provided a satisfying look at how it all happened. Although you can never get into Schön’s mind, I began to understand how fraud of such magnitude could unfold, namely Schön asked others what they would expect to see, and then created results that matched those expectations. That he aimed to meet people’s expectations, combined with his quiet and amiable personality, meant that the red flags didn’t go up immediately.

One theme that Reich kept raising was whether the self-correcting nature of science worked in this situation. Personally, I found this to be a distracting framework in which to place the Schön case. I consider the self-correcting nature of science to refer to the back and forth of different researchers, theorists and experimentalists, as they try to arrive at the correct understanding of a particular physical phenomenon. Researchers often begin by putting forth what turn out to be incorrect interpretations. As others consider the work, the interpretations are refined and refuted until consensus is reached about what is the appropriate description. To me, this is the self-correcting nature of science. I don’t think the primary purpose of this process is to catch people who are trying to dupe the system, and to ask whether the self-correcting nature of science worked in the Schön case is not an appropriate question.

I was also interested to learn about Schön’s graduate work, which showed an early tendency towards sloppy practices. The book mentions the graduate student Schön fiddling to produce a line of best fit that matched the scientific literature better than what he would have gotten without fudging, and Reich also finds an early example of data manipulation in published work related to Schön’s dissertation. Is it a slippery slope towards fraud? Do we convey forcefully enough the importance of good record keeping and honest practices, even at the undergraduate level?

I’ll admit that starting my graduate work chasing fraudulent results has indelibly shaped my view of the scientific endeavor. I think I am somewhat more cynical about science as a result. I also tend to be wary of the flashy results that show up in Science or Nature, appreciating the more in-depth technical papers appearing in Phys Rev B that actually require significant discussion of how results were obtained and what they might mean. Nevertheless, I recognize that science is ultimately about trust, and I’ve got to trust that most scientists are dedicated to the advancement of science over personal advancement.

The question of whether there is a way to prevent this type of fraud in the future is worth considering, and I generally agree with Steve at Complex Matters that for the most part the system works, although there is always the chance that someone will come along and take advantage of a trusting system. (Of course, I can say this because the Schön episode only impacted the very start of my graduate career so I didn’t get burned badly. Those whose careers were seriously damaged might feel differently.) I did walk away from Reich’s book wishing it had more discussion of the role of the journals, reviewers comments, and editors decisions in potentially helping or hindering fraudulent work.

Georg at Life on the Lattice wonders if the open science movement would have prevented Schön’s fraud. Of course, more transparency is always better, but despite the trusting nature of scientists, there is still a tendency to play things close to the chest for fear of being scooped and to maintain an advantage for continued priority of discovery. When in the trenches trying to replicate Schön’s work, missing information about experimental techniques regarding the deposition of aluminum oxide was problematic. There were e-mail exchanges in which Schön happily dished out information about what he supposedly did, but ultimately, we decided he used some experimental trick that we didn’t. I’m not sure tricks of the trade will ever be freely shared when researchers are hotly competing with each other to be the first to get results.  But then again, maybe that’s just my cynicism coming through.

I’d be interested in hearing others’ thoughts. Do we simply live and learn with each fraud case? Or can we do more to prevent fraud in the future? Is science too trusting? Or not trusting enough?

Doing diversity

As you might gather from my various posts, making sure that science, particularly at the undergraduate level, is welcoming to all who want to pursue it is important to me. As a faculty member, my interest in enhancing diversity in the sciences has lead me to think more broadly about diversity in higher education.

Ever since I was a graduate student, various people have warned me with different degrees of bluntness that my interest in diversity would be a detriment to my career and decrease the likelihood that I would ever be taken seriously as a colleague. The harshest warning came when someone told me, “Under no circumstances should you ever be engaged in diversity work with regards to women in physics until you either 1) have become a full professor or 2) want to throw your career under the bus and in the process maybe make some small change.” Despite these warnings, I haven’t given up my commitment to diversity. In small ways, I’ve been involved in discussions and efforts to address diversity both in the physics community and at Carleton, but as a junior faculty member, my primary focus must be on teaching and research.

Nevertheless, observing faculty members I know at a variety of institutions, who are engaged in diversity issues, I find myself wondering about the nature of this engagement, which seems like a calling for some and a reluctantly carried, but grudgingly accepted, burden for others. These efforts are often unrewarded, and the work is almost always shared inequitably, but it can lead to significant changes. My growing awareness of the challenges I’ve observed led me to pick up the book, Doing Diversity in Higher Education: Faculty Leaders Share Strategies and Challenges.

The first thing that struck me when reading this book is that diversity challenges in higher education are unique to each institution and, at the same time, universal. Doing Diversity makes it clear that diversity work is challenging, and it provides glimpses into what diversity is and what diversity work means at a variety of institutions. Faculty at Spelman College, a historically black college for women, face different challenges than faculty in the University of California system, who have had to find new ways to promote diversity after the passage of Proposition 209. Nevertheless, I found it illuminating to see the common threads.

The weariness, frustration, and ever-present setbacks associated with tiny victories were palpable in many of the essays. I thought the chapter by Castro, Fenstermaker, Mohr, and Guckenheimer at the University of California Santa Barbara described well some of the reasons for discouragement faced by those who engage in diversity work:

“Rarely does an action lead to an immediately successful outcome. Far more often, the work of faculty leaders involves endless meetings that may not yield discernible results; writing applications for grants that may never be funded; arguing with colleagues over the meaning of ‘academic merit’ while hiring and admissions committees continue to implement default selection principles; mentoring individual students whose sense of academic satisfaction may eventually translate into a more welcoming campus climate for students of color even as they recount ways in which the institution has failed them. Mixed in with a few programmatic successes are many individual failure and frustrations; indeed, it appears that the former are in some way fundamentally dependent on the latter.”

Although diversity work is often viewed as “service” work, the level of intellectual and emotional engagement is different from other kinds of faculty service. Institutional structures don’t reward service work in general, and the price of professional activism with regards to diversity can be particularly high both personally and professionally. The chapter by Hart, Brigham, Good, Mills, and Monk at the University of Arizona summarizes the challenge effectively. “In institutional terms, the definition of success is based exclusively on quantitative measures such as resources and research. Less tangible qualitative measures, such as diversity or respect, are not rewarded or seen as successes.”

If diversity work requires significant sustained effort without immediate payoffs, what prompts faculty to get involved? The reasons are varied, but several writers describe the engagement with diversity work as having an ethical or moral dimension for some faculty. The chapter by Ackelsberg, Hart, Miller, Queeney, and VanDyne exploring departmental microclimates at Smith College and examining how to enable all faculty to take ownership of and feel like valued contributors to the college highlighted one of the reasons why I find diversity work compelling.  The authors found that “a sense of shared purpose in faculty work” was important in creating a positive climate for faculty, and many faculty found that shared sense of purpose in college-level service. As a woman in physics, I often feel out of place, and being involved with diversity issues provides me an opportunity to find like-minded individuals, connect to a wider community, and contribute to changing the situation. These personal benefits of diversity work have made me reluctant to give it up despite warnings of the potential negative impact on my career.

The take home message I got from Doing Diversity? Supporting those faculty who choose to engage in diversity work by acknowledging that these efforts can be a meaningful extension of the faculty role, and not a distraction from it, would be a valuable change in the discourse around diversity work.

Coaching group communication

Small group work is an inevitable part of a college science student’s academic experience–study groups, lab groups, project groups. Faculty often promote the importance of learning how to work with a variety of different people as a team. In addition, I like to think that working in small groups encourages students to connect with each other and helps to create a comfortable peer learning environment. Nevertheless, group dynamics are unpredictable (and often unseen by faculty members), and I know of several instances where students have negative small group experiences that cause them to reconsider persisting in the sciences. Sometimes the negative experiences are blatant, but I was interested to read a Tomorrow’s Professor post last month, “He Said, She Said: Gender-Typical Speech Can Sour Teamwork,” which addressed one of the subtle elements that impacts the quality of small group interactions.

The post by Joanna Wolfe and Elizabeth Powell considers student teamwork in engineering disciplines. Wolfe and Powell studied how students reacted to speakers’ gender-specific communication styles. They found that male students, particularly those in the most male-dominated fields of engineering such as mechanical and computer engineering, drew negative conclusions about speakers (male or female) who used female-typical communication styles. These female speech patterns included “self-belittlement by admitting to difficulties or mistakes” or making indirect criticisms (as compared to direct criticism, which is a male-typical communication style).

Powell and Wolfe write, “Women have some control over perceptions: Something as simple as curbing tendencies to admit weaknesses can benefit them.” While this may improve how female students are perceived by their peers, the suggestion seems counterproductive if one wants group work to be an opportunity for peer learning and teaching. After all, how can students learn from each other if it isn’t acceptable to say “I’m having trouble with this”? I also worry that promoting such an external front of invulnerability might contribute to an internal crumbling of self-confidence.

That negative impressions of speakers using female-typical speech were most pronounced in engineering fields that were the most male-dominated indicates to me those fields need to change the environment so that it is acceptable to admit uncertainty or ask for help. Let’s not coach women to fit into the male-dominated environment, rather let’s coach all students to create an environment where it is expected that people will ask each other for help, acknowledge mistakes, and treat everyone with respect.