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shy to manipulate the same image in the very same article, cross-article copying of figures or including manipulated unpublished images stored in the gel-docs might be widespread.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]

Rhythmic delusions

Humans are always looking for brighter tomorrow, free from the problems of present. Every time there is a change in leadership in a country or an organization,  our expectations of better tomorrow are rejuvenated. However within a short time, the delusions are wiped off and  the same or the worser system pervade into our future too. In universities or science institutions in India, the leaders (VCs, directors, deans, heads etc) are, in my view, short-sighted with a vision limited to their own tenure period. They come and go with the least  improvement  in the system. This trend, however, has some exceptions. But, the exceptions/outliers are there in every system. Everyone is John Nash on this planet and everyone died in the road accident while returning from Abel award ceremony !  Following are my common observations on most science administrators:

1.  Their official email accounts are synonymous to event horizon. Nothing escapes to return back from this zone ! Some interpretations: i) Screw you, I don't care. You are just a  troll; ii) Come and lick my feet instead. Question: why do people take up the administrative positions when they think that they should not be accountable despite being in power?

2. Express a grievance, and you yourself will be assigned to solve the issue. Soft bullying? Interpretations: i) You got a problem, you solve it; ii) dont complain, else you will be loaded with the work.  Question: What does their office with all the staff do then? The mundane things like preparing time tables, broadcasting notices and circulars?

3. Nepoptosis (nepotism + apoptosis = programmed degradation of institution through biased treatment of employees).  Change in regime follows change in power-lobby compositions downstream. Interpretations: i) safeguarding their own tenure as pleasant and orgasmic as they want, ii) pushing their own, sometimes flawed, agendas;  iii) Feeling good about themselves by being flattered; iv) small initiatives for post-retirement plans.

My spirits take rhythmic swings,  while the delusional cycle continues...

Are we there yet? Not yet~~

My little angel likes this popular rhyme on CoCoMelon channel of youtube, while the second angel

feeds her. Over the time, I started loving this too. Perhaps, I find it soothing  and fetch some psychological comfort or perhaps it might have soothing effect on anyone.  The rhyme describes how kids got bored of long drive to picnic and how their parents engage them in fun.

Here is the rhyme:

Kids: Are we there yet? Parents: Not yet.
Kids: Are we there yet? Parents: Not yet.

Parents: Let’s play a game, Look at where we are
Won’t you look with me, And tell me what you see
Driving in the car

Parents: What do you see? Kids: A deer....

Parents: What do you see? Kids: A lake....
Parents: What do you see? Kids: A rainbow...
Parents: What do you see? Kids: A cactus...
Parents: What do you see? Kids: A tumbleweed...
Parents: What do you see? Kids: Rocks...
Parents: What do you see? Kids: A train...
Parents: What do you see? Kids: A windmill...
Parents: What do you see? Kids: A cow...
Parents: What do you see? Kids: A tractor...

Everybody:It’s so much fun, To drive so far
Let’s look outside, And enjoy the pretty ride
Driving in the car

As it radiates through our house, I feel as if this is meant for scientists or (may be for artists too or may be for everyone) who are often professionally dissatisfied with their present understanding, efforts and achievements. Everyday starts with the same intellectual dissatisfaction about what we are able to realize and an urge to know the logic or lack thereof in nature. What immediately follows is a positive vibe of how I should deal with my everyday's anxiety.  What I miserably fail to do is to enjoy the ride itself and rather hope impatiently for some elusive destination. For scientists, a piece of new information is a source of joy, which is often difficult to unearth ourselves from our own science. However, we focus too much on the discovering the truth ourselves, despite realizing that the truth  takes its own sweet time to unravel itself to us. What instead we should do, and supposedly many of us are already doing this, is to teach ourselves the new truths discovered by others: the literature reading. We often fail to read literature everyday and even if we read, we are not guaranteed to learn something interesting and appealing.  Good news is that one interesting information serve as food for thought for several days and seems perfect replacement to our anxiety . What we should make sure is that we feed our mind new, interesting and important information as regular as possible. It has worked for me at least.  

The most absurd time in scientific publishing

Denying the evidence on the face, blacking out the key findings and dismissing the novelty for no genuine reason seem routine response from science journals to me. It is very difficult to understand why and how the scientific community has become so hostile to their own colleagues. I am amazed by the innovative ways the reviewers and the editors find  reasons to reject the manuscript.  In one instance, the editor dismissed our findings by just focussing on the 1st two lines of the abstract (which are generally of introductory nature) and completely blacked out the main findings written thereafter.  Despite my arguments, the editor held on to the argument that the role of conserved noncoding elements in development is well known, while that was never the claim. The claim was that the lineage specific position-effect of CNEs, without any sequence divergence, in mammalian genome can impact the developmental trajectories of brain development and showed a link with the loss of cortical gyrations of rodent brain. I challenge if any one finds any literature evidence in that context. Nevertheless, arguing further led to editor's formal stand of applying for a formal appeal along with the a note that addressing appeals is not their priority and can take indefinite time: a trick to finally convince the authors to withdraw their submission altogether.  Consider another example: One of the reviewers argued that our finding was not novel and instead of citing the evidence or data, he/she shamelessly projected some supplementary excerpt of casual and extrapolative nature from a paper. Irony was that the other reviewer clearly mentioned that there is no literature available on such an analysis and considered the manuscript for a revision. Yet, the editor decided to go by the reviewer who had negative and rather misleading comment. How lame is that the editors do not bother of checking some facts themselves and how uninformed they can be. Reviewers hide behind the the confidentiality clause of referee's comments and lie shamelessly.   I can  project numerous more examples similar to the aforementioned ones. 

Take a break and think of converse. Often, I see articles with non-novel, expected and rather unconsolidated observations, but are published in top journals.  This is even bigger a mystery to understand. Most people reason that social ties, nepotism and lobbies fetch such outcomes. Really? Is science publishing  that worse?

There seems some serious problems with the peer review system. Why this confidentiality clause for reviewer's comments? Why I can't I copy paste those comments on social media to expose the editors, reviewers and the cooperate publishing houses? Why do journals' policies decide where my fight against editor and reviewers should end? Why don't we have an independent judiciary for science communications? And, more importantly, who should decide whether a paper should be accepted/published or not? Should these be 2-3 people on this planet? Why can't we have it opened to the community  similar to biorxiv and then open it for  review by the scientific community, cross-communications with the authors, addressing of comments and get a score for each article. Such a score can simply be a indicator of article's impact.

Your own Sansarpur?

If you think Williams sisters, Wough brothers, Tendulkar-Kambli, Boxers from Cuba are the great examples  of childhood friends/siblings playing all the way to the international levels, take a break and consider a moment when 7 childhood friends played in the same Oplympics, of which 5 represented only one country. This happened in Mexico Olympics, 1968. A total of 7 players belonged to the same small village  of Sansarpur  (Punjab) with a population of ~4000 only. Five of the 7 players played for Indian hockey team and 2 for Kenyan. In total, this village contributed 120 hockey players at national and international levels and of which 15 were Olympians. Is there any match? Unfortunately, Sansarpur is a forgotten legacy now.

(Image: 7 players from Sansarpur played in the Mexico Olympics, 1968)

Recently I thought of looking at my own Sansarpur. Where are my college mates now? It's an interesting exercise that any one can do in leisure time. With the deep connectivity of internet, I easily found mine Sansarpur:

1. Ram Pratap Singh: Gastroenterologist (MD, DM), Midland Heathcare, Lucknow 

2. Shiv Pratap Singh: Deputy commissioner, customs and central excise, department of revenue, ministry of finance, GoI

3. Vaibhav Sinha:  Senior Director, Head of Global Marketing Communications at Carl Zeiss Microscopy GmbH Jena, Thuringia, Germany

4. Rohit Anthony Sinha: Scientist at Sanjay Gandhi post graduate medical college, Lucknow.

5. Chanchal Kumar: Associate Director, Head of CVRM Bioinformatics, Astra Zeneca, Stockholm, Sweden.

6. Vidyendra sadanandan: Chief Technology Officer (CTO)), Molecular Connections, Bangalore.

7. Harkewal Singh:  Manager at Kaneka US Innovation Center, California.

8. Rahul Yadav: Engineering Manager at Strand Life Sciences, Bengaluru Area, India

Seems like a success story? But hey wait a minute, the list is biased because successful people are anyway more visible on the web.