Biblically inappropriate

 

Philosophy is meaningful if purposed to achieve something. No philosophies should be needed for idles. Rules, on the contrary, are the tools to limit or forbid. While rules have their own significance in keeping law and order in place, a powerful individual practicing rules more often than rationality is likely to be negator than facilitator.  How can rules supplement a desperate call for help, resolve an unforeseen situation, allow the whistleblowing, encourage the progressive moves  etc? Covid19 pandemic served an excellent example when countries had to withhold their rules in mass and made decisions driven by rationality, science, and ethics instead. 

Theoretician by curse

Those were the charming days, as we often view our past and curse the present. I was working in a biochemistry lab performing enzyme assays tirelessly. I often had to get up in mid night or early morning hours and run to the lab to pursue the time-course enzyme assays. During the breaks (incubation/treatment of samples), I used to follow a senior colleague of mine to learn RT-PCR, gel runs and my favorite part the 'primer designing'. Primer designing led me to further explore the area of sequence analysis and bioinformatics in general. I took a short online tutorial offered by Manchester university. I find it appealing, but my fear was 'coding', so I never viewed myself pursuing bioinformatics as career option. It was a mere coincidence of an honest advice and a sudden movement of my then PI to another city, which allowed me to re-set my career trajectory. The advice was straight forward. "many are doing RT-PCRs and enzyme assays, how many biologists are coding? The ones with knowledge of biology as well as coding can do something that none of others will be able to do. If you like bioinformatics, go ahead and learn programming. You will have the greater market value". I took this advice seriously, followed my interest in bioinformatics, and worked day and night to learn coding. Eventually, I became a bioinformatician, however with a cost attached. The cost was the label of "theoretician".

Once you know the coding, people will grab your neck to solve their problems and twist your arms to teach them what you know. Asking them to teach you what they know is a criminal offence because: i) They knew that their skills were pervasive and yours was unique and little scarce, ii) they consider you a programmer,  not really a scientist leading the projects, and they like this arrangement. iii) They presume that being a computer nerd you will not be able to hold eppendorfs  and pipettes, and it is going to be time -massacre for them to teach you. iv) They will be jealous of you sipping coffee at your computer desk.

In fact, it shocked me every time I heard from my seniors that the computational biology is not science, but merely a tool to assist, throughout my career. Some says that it is fantasy emerging from some data gimmicks, while others say it is computer/tool which is doing the analysis and not me as if pressing different keys on my keyboard throws various publication-ready results, just like a coffee vending machine. For a bioinformatics student, it will be very common that PIs from other labs will send their students to you to get their analysis done informally without giving you the due credit, merely because they think you did not put up significant effort. They forget that most bioinformaticians are biologists with no formal background of computer science. They had put up significant hard work to learn computer programming while managing their biology majors (wonder what were others upto, chanting the text from Lewin's 'Genes'?).  Now since they equipped themselves with an armor of significant value, it is taken as granted by others. A strange argument was thrown at me once when another student got the things done from me and when asked whether it will be part of some manuscript, the student shouted ''it is my data, I did the hard to work to generate it, you better dont bother about its fate". This was like you donate sperm and the oocyte for IVF and then deny the hospital bill saying that it was my (well.. 'our' being heterogamous..) sperm and egg, you just fertilized it!

I even heard some reviewers accusing us for cherry-picking. Chutzpah! The cherry picking is more invasive to experimental science than to data science.  The reason should be obvious. A bioinformatician/data-scientist is looking at data as a whole and supporting the hypothesis through multiple datasets and analyses, unlike an experimentalist picking a popular (to be safer) pathway or associated gene and establishing its relevance in their system through mutations/knock-downs. Interestingly, the recent trend is to look into the publicly available transcriptome or protein-protein-interaction data and pick some candidates which are likely to satisfy their hypothesis. What is it if not cherry-picking? The public availability of data and codes used/generated by bioinformaticians further endows reliability to their studies, the parallel in experimental biology is their lab notebooks, their own potty bags (for the sake of a word), with no easy way to be assessed for authenticity. It is not that I denounce the lab notebook culture completely, but rather highlight the + point of computational data centered biology.

I recalled how one PI discouraged me to work in the lab when I failed in my very first experiment. Another PI asked me what experiments I am planning and then got it done through other students. I was always asked to  better focus on computation.  This systematic discouragement throughout my student life left me with rather limited experimental techniques with hands on experience, despite having a craving to learn more. When I became PI, all my proposals, where I proposed experiments, were rejected citing that I have no experimental expertise.  Recently, my present institution came up with an official classification of scientist as 'experimentalist' or 'theorist', leaving no room for the ones intersecting both. In fact, there is a continuous grade of scientists between experimentalist and theorist, and it is indeed a bad idea to attempt to classify people just because it comforts the policy makers. The consequences of this classification are many. They may call a meeting of all experimentalists and take a decision which will impact you if you, being theorist, pursue your interest in wet-lab through collaborations or other arrangements. They may decide upon consumable money for themselves, leaving you out. They may allot you smaller space for your students. You will be under greater academic scrutiny because you can't get the kind of excuses experimentalists cite. They may not understand the genuine problems of your end. PhD intake policies may also go against you. Being in minority, you will have the least say in the meetings, which are generally overwhelmed by the issues faced by experimentalists. The last and the most important downside is the systematic discouragement of interdisciplinary science.

Sometimes, I think that I could have pretended as an experimentalist before embarking onto my academic career and kept my computational skills as a secret armor. I also wish if my colleagues could pretend as 'scientists' more often than the elite 'expermentalists'.

PS: It is likely that my experience is unique and others did not face the same. Any text above that seems of 'generalizing' tone should be considered as error.

Image courtesy: Hodgson, "A Certain Lack of Coordination."

The firing line of freedom of expression

The ‘freedom of expression (FOE)’ is perhaps the most over-used phrase globally in the last couple of decades. It empowers people to question or protest the ones in power, balances the world of views through counter-views, and full-fill the citizens’ sense of self-rule . A lot of hate content is increasingly being expressed in the public domain and most escape any legal suit and prosecution. Is it because the constitutions across democratic nations allow this abuse under FOE?

The article 19(2) of Indian constitution does not identify freedom of expression as an absolute right. In fact this is true across democratic globe. Most constitutions empower the states to restrict the freedom of expression in cases like extreme obscenity and racial/religious/ethnic discrimination of individuals (and other scenarios like national security and contempt of court, irrelevant to the present blog). Showing criminal acts or pornography to a juvenile can clearly be marked as obscene and indeed it is illegal in most countries. Hate/discriminatory speeches against a particular religion/community/ethnicity/race/caste are also prohibited under Indian panel codes like 153 (A) and 295 (A). Why do we then see so much of absurdness in the name of freedom of expression? One reason can be the ambiguity arising due to combination of words, and anonymity of ownership. Most, if not all, hate speeches that I have heard, are cleverly pre-planned so that the literal statement itself does not stand in the court of law. Some people cite analogy of  cartoons of religious entities,  which are offensive to a large number of individuals ad are yet protected under FOE. To many, examples like this give an impression as if FOE trespasses all kind of offence, including hate expression. This outlook of FOE emboldens some to go haywire in their expression. They do not distinct the hate speech from other offences and genuinely miss an important point that  the expression of discrimination based on religion/ethnicity/caste/sexual-orientation/gender is unlawful. The expression of disrespect of an ideology or religion is protected despite being offensive. This is to protect people's right to dissent from an ideology.

Coming to IISER-Mohali now. Some students here have innovated their own assumptions of rationality behind FOE. They conveniently presume that they are protected for expression of xenophobic discrimination too, possibly due to the same reasons cited above. They think putting up anonymous posters with xenophobic title against faculty/administrators is protected under FOE. Well, why not to identify yourself then? One may say that the anonymity of the posters might highlight their fear to be targeted by the powerful. Well, if you are so informed about your rights, no one will be able to touch you if you are within your rights. One of the flawed arguments given was that there had been several anonymous posters in the recent past, which can be tagged as offensive. Why then one particular poster is picked up? Well.. chutzpah ! I can give an elaborate answer to this, but for the sake of argument what if my morality (the trait that some students think is copyrighted to them) woke up last night only? By this rationale, their morality also woke up recently to protest against the genocide in Delhi, but was in deep sleep during Rohingya’s and Yazidi’s genocides. These are fallacious arguments. Get a life !

FOE, in meaningful sense, signifies “doing something through your expression”, not just literal expression ! To me, protesting within IISER campus on a national issue appears lame, though students have their right to do so. So is the ‘not protesting’ at all. The point is where does such protests lead to when you have no media presence inside, and the IISER activities, unlike those of some universities, have negligible visibility, despite photoshoots and tweets? This is relevant since they project that they care. One of the community member suspected this activity as mere adventurism, perhaps for the same reason as above. Want to really do this, take some laxative to get rid of constipation and show the world your power of expression by going full-fledged march in some popular tri-city area!

Inadvertent errors during figure preparation and foolish we

Pubpeer has been purging the literature successfully. While some of the posts can be genuine human errors, most of them seem intentional manipulation of the data. For example, if the same western blot is copied as it is, it can happen during copy-pasting of figures, wherein the clipboard was not flushed properly. This is a benefit of doubt that many authors have cherished when spotted. Imagine another scenario, wherein the duplicated images were distinctly compressed/stretched, contrast–tuned, flipped or captured with different exposure times of the same blot to make them look different. The most common phrase the authors cite is “inadvertently duplicated during figure preparation”. Chutzpah !  These are clear cases of data manipulation and should ideally follow retraction of articles, not the erratum, no matter whether it alters the conclusion of the article (another common response of authors) or not. The reason is the loss of credibility. These are “within-article” manipulations, which might just be the tip of an iceberg. If authors do not shy to manipulate the same image in the very same article, cross-article copying of figures or including manipulated unpublished images stored in the gel-docs might be widespread. So, why should one trust the other figures of the article?

The problem of duplicated western blots is the outcome of journals’ flawed policies that lacked the requirement of original complete blot images to be uploaded as supplementary data. Interestingly, this has been selectively asked only for genomics/high-throughput datasets because that adds to citation of the paper and boosts journal impact factor. The good news is that some journals are taking the matter seriously for the new submissions at-least. Before publishing they are now scrutinising the figures thoroughly. It would be great if they can do the same with the published articles too, leaving aside their conflict of interests and brand reputation. If not, hail Pubpeer.

Legacy of founding directors and the haphazard floating of IISERs

It is highly inspiring how a few intellectuals created IISc way back in early 1900s. Stories of how Jamsetji Tata, Swami Vivekanand, Morris Travers (founding director) and Sir William Ramsay discussed and planned the formation of institute are heard by many of us. Reputation and performance of IISc and its alumini over 100 years speaks loudly about its success. Having seen couple of founding directors myself, I am convinced that the founding directors (a Nobel laureate in this case) mark significant impact on the long term success of institutes. Placing of system and scientific/administrative standards by the founding director not only inspires the future leaders, but also sets up a culture (or a pressure) of keeping the reputation and success at par. The subsequent directors ofcourse have nontrivial roles in the success of an institute, however fixing the gold standard at the beginning itself has an early-mover advantage since good institutes attracts the good people (rich gets richer phenomenon). To add up, there are few other examples where the legacy of founding directors is undeniable. Late Prof. PM Bhargava of CCMB, Prof. Lalji Singh of CDFD, Prof. GN Rao of LV Prasad eye institute, Prof. Samir Brahmchari of IGIB (transformed CBT to IGIB) and a few others are known for their vision and leadership abilities.

When several IISER/NISERs/IITs/NITs were floated way back a decade ago, various voices were heard. Some strongly supported the move, others labelled the move as experiment deemed to be doomed. Personally, the news was very refreshing to myself, particularly when I see how government realized the importance of science education and research for nation’s future after a void of almost half a century. I had been critical about many things in newly set up IISERs, though many of those problems existed in many other established institutes. A more specific criticism of IISERs came to me naturally over the time. One thing, which is deeply appreciated about IISERs, is the undergrad/postgrad education tied with the research. A simple re-look at this statement would remind you  atypical ‘university’ job, which is now rebranded. The obvious motivation for these new brand universities is the efforts and planning needed to correct the existing universities. Ignore the mess created, and rather create the fresh ones, only to be messed systematically again. In my view, the founding directors of IISERs/NISERs/IITs/NITs were rather uninspiring individuals. I am not questioning their scientific credentials when I do not have any knowledge and experience in the areas these professors worked upon and were awarded the Bhatnagar awards, madly celebrated as Indian Nobel prize. My view is solely based on a key leadership quality: the ability to inspire others. One reason of not having inspiring leaders placed in these institutions could be the haphazard set up of >20 such institutes in a rather short time. Several top appointments made in haste opens up a window for genuine errors as well as for nepotism. In contrast, a single such setup attracts many eyes to ensure the quality of top positions, the scientists, the students and the fundamental infrastructure. I am not predicting that IISER model has failed or will fail, but it is clear that a few of them will do well while most will remain mediocre, and perhaps, none of them will match IISc. Perhaps a better approach could have been a sequential time bound plan of setting up these institutes with utter care and focus.

The warden award

Some academic institutions present ‘warden award’ on every 5th of Sept, though deceptively announced as the best teacher award. I know an example, where the stark correlation of best teacher also being the hostel warden will break the binomial test to smithers. The criteria for the award are non-existent and are likely influenced by a few people’s opinion. It’s not about individuals accepting the self-pleasing orgasms, the idea of this award is outdated, childish, and is based on fallacious presumptions. The popularly cited motivation behind this award is to boost morale of the youngsters for teaching (the fundamental job that they are anyway supposed to do). Chutzpah! A well-deserved award can be the one for an extra significant mile above one’s responsibility, not the routine job you are being paid for. An award motivates one, but has power to demotivate the group. The award can demotivate the intrinsically motivated individuals due to continued ignorance and insensitivity. Awards of this form spread the emotions of inequality and unfairness in a group. An informal praise in a peer-to-peer environment should work better than ceremonial awards. And, ofcourse, like others this award can also be gamed by learning the past patterns and logistics: be a hostel warden, get adopted by deans, and give good marks to all students etc. Is this the motivation the administrators look for? To create crackheads out of teachers? To make it worse, the award has age limit: an expiry date after which you should not be the best teacher. After this age limit, the rationale of motivating the employee is disposable. I would argue that the people on later side of age need more of such motivation, otherwise what explains the outsourcing of their teaching job to the post-docs and the junior faculty?

In the end, why the teaching is being considered as individualistic job, while theres is involvement of several individuals in many of the courses. Moreover, you can't be good at teaching unless some taught your students the prerequisites. The team nature of teaching is least appreciated and in fact being discouraged by recognizing individuals.

Are these stubborn and uneducated ideas really inescapable?

(Interesting reads in the context:
https://www.alfiekohn.org/punished-rewards/
https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/the-dirty-laundry-of-employee-award-programs-evidence-from-the-field)

Dominance of dump and dumpest

Cancer does not respond to the control signals, so is human absurdity. The most searched question on Google is "What time is it?". Fake news spreads like fire. States are hijacked by idiots and criminals. Democracy has become illusionary.  Mediocrity seems inspiration to present generation. Creativity of movies is officially  at all time low. Science has become repetitive. Scientists are becoming managers (perhaps 'harassers' fits better). Managers  are becoming comedians. [some improvisations: comedians are becoming vulgar brats. Brats are becoming singers. Singers are becoming thieves. Thieves are becoming politicians...]. Ideas are redundant. Claims are obvious.

The evil of digital media is undeniable culprit to this. While we grew up singing rhymes, engaging in origami and clay-art,  the present generation kids, unfortunately, are growing up imitating negativity and dumpness served on the immortal TV sets.  The nasty rappers are  today's inspiration. The pornography has pervaded every cell phone and computer. Dump movies and rubbish cartoons are giving misleading lessons to kids and teens.

It's high time that we rediscover the thinking, creative, innovative, and positive human beings in ourselves. Perhaps the first step to that is to unscrew those dishes on our roofs and delete the entertaining apps from our smart phones.

[Image: kids imitating ISIS,  snapped from my window]