Rationality on ransom and morality for sale

Epistemic rationality and ethics/morality are tightly linked, implying that the lack of former might impact the latter.  Being in academia, we often take the practice of rationality, particularly the epistemic one,  in granted. Ironically, lack of rational and moral behaviour  in academia is as much missing as anywhere else. I earlier attributed this irony to the competition for resources and the self interest of people excessively passionate for their goals, often materialistic ones. 

In one of the recent incidents at institute, nuisance by the present generation of students (so-called GenZ) as well a few faculty members breached most checks of rationality and morality I ever encountered. Students blocked a key road connecting the main gate to the faculty housing. Reason? They wanted to resolve their issues on their terms. This includes an utterly ridiculous conditions like the deans should resolve their issues by meeting them outside in the area where they were protesting, not in a meeting room. If not the deans must resign.  Did they elect the administrators by their votes? Can they summon the deans? When deans denied the meeting at the protest site, the students strategically planned and choked a junction  that connected 3 independent roads converging to faculty housing. Several faculty members suffered. Some had to go pick their kids from various schools/coaching centres.  Some had toddlers sleeping inside their vehicle and had to carry them walking in the rain. Some had flight to catch, others had appointment with the physician. 

A few faculty members did not bow down to this unlawful blockade and in the process of slowly driving through this blockage their vehicle touched past some students, which was later mal-projected as 'faculty cars ramming into students', shamelessly name-dropped, and demanded an apology from faculty.  Chutzpah ! What were they doing in the middle of the road at first place? Someone's fundamental right to move freely is not at anyone's discretion. 

A few faculty members wrote to them and held them accountable for the unlawful acts, which surely qualified as violations of a dozen of IPC sections. The students' representative conveyed an apology for 'any inconvenience caused' as if it was an inadvertent artefact. They appeared convinced that act was not a harassment and conveniently cleared themselves of any wrong doing.  They claimed the act as their last resort, despite the fact that their 1st protest started a few hours before the said unlawful act and they had ample of time to plan their next course of action lawfully. 

As if this was not enough, the protesting students sieged on the faculty residence in the mid of the night with their loud slogans and chants. My child woke up scared. In curiosity, she peeked outside the window and got  frightened by the view to an extent that she could not sleep whole night. Since fighting with the admin became too hard for the protesters, it appeared that they then shifted the strategy to harass any one in arms' reach.  One needs to be  amnesiac or schizophrenic to mistake faculty, another victim navigating the same stubborn administrative maze that students claimed to struggle with, for perpetrators and architects of  their  grievances. Targeting the families of faculty does not make them revolutionaries, but a problem of a different kind. Attacking another victim to spite an arrogant administration does not qualify as activism, but as failure of logic and basic empathy.  Had they shown the same enthusiasm to attend their classes, they could have made a better choice. 

A few faculty member claimed the 'kindness' of students since their relatives, who were wheelchair bound, were allowed to pass the blockade. This felt like a classical case of Stockholm Syndrome. Does one has to be medically unwell not to be harassed unlawfully? Moreover, these were merely momentary exceptions, which they thought could trivialise the gravity of the situation.  Ironically, another faculty member called to take pride of students because some of the issues raised by them related to campus greenery and hygiene. These issues  were anything but the  discovery or the initiative of students, and had been recurrently raised my many in the recent past. A call to take pride could perhaps wait for an appropriate occasion.

Interestingly, some students and faculty approached media to broadcast their versions. None of the media houses verified and cover the complete truth. If lapdog media is bad,  the watchdog media is not doing good either. The former does not need and the latter is too lazy to do ground reporting. 

On APC (अहं प्रभु छविः)

 

As an independent computational biologist, I generally do not bother the administrators for funds every other morning. Consequently, I cherish the privilege of escaping fakery of smile, flattery of complements and flaunting of fleeting loyalty. Nevertheless, they always succeed to find one occasion when they feel that  I am on their mercy. On the great occasion of arranging Article Processing Charges, popularly known as APC.  It is an "अहं प्रभु छविः" (I am God's reflection) moment for the administrators. Most of the extra-mural funding agencies do not have a clear provision of accommodating APC. This grey area serve as administrative tool to harass the ones they don't like.  They sit on the papers to make sure the invoice expires a couple of times. The same administrators promptly process twice costlier APCs of their own or dear ones' articles.  Ironically, they go after the PIs to finish the leftover funds towards the end of the financial year.  A serious case of intentional amnesia !  

Some of my colleagues suggested that I do not sufficiently visit the administrators to earn their goodwill.  They label it as ego.  It took me sometime to realize that by 'ego' they referred 'me'. Chutzpah ! I thought they implied satisfying the egos of administrators who expect me to flatter them. Why do I roam around in the offices, which are no less than maze puzzles? What explains those unanswered emails for appointments then?  A relatable question I asked in the midsem exam of a statistics course: 

Q1. Institute's administration responds to emails at a lightning speed of  0.1 per day. Consider this as constant and answer the following:

a. Your colleague Mr. Chatur, a seasoned observer of institutional functioning, argues, “The average wait is 10 days. We have already waited 20 days. The reply is overdue!”  Dissect Mr. Chatur’s reasoning statistically?

b. Mr. Chatur further decides that if no reply arrives within 30 days, he will write a public email exposing the administration. From a probabilistic standpoint, how rational is this step?

(Image ref: https://macrolingo.com/justification-for-article-processing-charges-apcs/ )

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.