What’s wrong with science today?

When has science become a “project”?

In his heartfelt TEDx talk, Professor Uri Alon describes the frustration he felt while working on his physics Ph.D.: “I felt like a pilot flying through the mist, and I lost all sense of direction”. Uri went through a small crisis — he wasn’t fitting into the “scientist” mold that was shaped in his head by years of studying other people’s results. Uri laments his incompatibility with the elegant-linear-scientific process implied from studying the results as reported in publications. “I wasn’t like Einstein or Newton or any other scientist whose results I had learned about; because in science we just learn about the results, not the process. And so obviously, I couldn’t be a scientist…”.

If you hadn’t already, stop reading now, and go watch this talk — it is inspiring:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1U26PLiXjM

We were all trained to think of science as a linear process leading to the coveted publication. We’ve learned to think this way by reading these publications. In them, there is always a story that starts with a question or a problem, and later there is a clear vision and detailed process. This is a problem because science isn’t supposed to be only about the end-result, it is supposed to be about the process as well. It is supposed to be about the question and the path (hardly ever a linear one) that one goes on her way to answer the question.

Over the decades the entirety of the scientific profession has embedded the publication in every single facet of its ‘operating system’. From individual appraisal, through the allocation of resources to the (arguably) very definition of the scientific purpose & process: the publication is sometimes erroneously perceived as the ‘end result’ — the fruit of the labor — the ultimate value unit which is the pinnacle of our work. This fact isn’t inherently bad, we have gained a lot and still do from the rigor of the scientific communications process, we need this quality assurance part of the work. Also, our funders and our non-scientific communities, are owed a demonstration of progress as a direct extension of the resources they have given to us. However, somewhere along the way the perception of the raison d’être as scientists started shifting from learners and explorers of the unknown, tasked with expanding the knowledge of our societies, to the producers and makers of ‘scholarly publications’. We have become workers in a huge publication production project.

But what about the lessons learned along the way?

We are now measured on how much we produce in units of value — publications, that do not capture a HUGE amount of work, knowledge, skills, and lessons laboriously learned by us. For example, nuanced data analysis aspects of how to treat edge cases, or how to capture data from a complex system, or what not to do to system X when Y happens. More often than not, this work, knowledge, skills, and lessons might be used someplace else by others, or even by us some other time. To some extent, we are violating the very core premises of science, we might still be learners when we do the work, we might still feel like explorers in the lab, we might honestly be excited and stare with awe at our results. But at the end of the day, we hardly ever share these fruits, we are not expanding the limits of human knowledge. Unless, of course, the work result or knowledge serves a purpose in advancing the narrative in a publication.

A vision of the world as it could be.

A few years ago, I’ve set out to drive change, with a clear vision of how things should be, and a clear idea of how to get there.

I imagined a world where technology aids the researcher in his pursuit of answers to his burning scientific questions. In this world — researchers can create, share, search, find and reuse work-units, that are far smaller than the ones currently available (namely — publications).

I imagined a world where this work is captured along with its richness of the contextual meaning, or provenance, the real secret sauce which turns data to information, information to results, and results to new scientific conclusions.

I imagined a world where a researcher can focus on her scientific work, with the peace of mind that every result will be reusable and accessible to her whenever she wants, with all the context that is associated with it.

I imagined a world where the researcher can elect to share her parts of data, information, results or preliminary conclusions, with peers, teammates or even the entirety of the scientific community, without spending weeks on writing a defendable manuscript, because this isn’t a publication.

I imagined a world where every result, dataset, piece of code is shareable, attributable, citable and most importantly — automatically captured in a secure, private workspace.

I imagined a world where a researcher will have the confidence that the things he shared will be attributable to him, citable by others, and with the ability to have others comment, re-use, add to his work, while he goes on with his research.

I imagined a world where the cost-benefit equation of sharing work that today might be labeled as ‘null results’, ‘negative results’, ‘a waste of time’, will be drastically skewed towards benefit. In such a world, researchers will open and share the details of their journey because doing so will be simple, fast, and even fun. And also generate value to the researcher.

I imagined a world where a traditional paper manuscript, will be written by wrapping pre-existing smaller units of value (gathered online from peers, or from one’s own ‘research timeline’), with the traditional ‘linear’ arguments. But where the entangled reality of the research process will be exposed by of providing access to the small steps that were created and collected along the way.

I kept imagining until it was time to start doing…

Treebute.io is the product of this journey… !

However — a lot has changed in how I get about achiving these imagined realities, more on that will be shared very soon.