Advice For Aspiring Researchers In Vertebrate Paleontology, Part 5: You Are Not Writing To Yourself

Science is a community effort, and the goal is to build a common knowledge base for all mankind (or at least the three or four people that care about whatever esoteric subject you work on). You can do the most scrupulous and detailed research based on the best possible evidence, and come to the most solid and well-supported conclusions, but if you don’t share it with the scientific community, or if you communicate it so badly that no one understands your arguments, you have FAILED. Your contribution to science amounts to exactly dick. You need to write, and you need to write well. Almost as importantly, you need to publish through peer-reviewed books and journals.

Why is peer-review so important? It is often said that science does not operate by consensus. Well, all right…except that actually, it kind of does. Yes, the popularity of an idea does not guarantee that it is correct, scientists should always be willing to think outside the box, be open to new ideas, always be prepared to rethink even the most deeply entrenched theories, etc. Nonetheless, there are an awful lot of smart and open-minded people in science, and if reasonably intelligent folks who are also well-informed on the relevant subjects have carefully read your arguments and evidence are not swayed, you probably ought to at least rethink things.

For example, scientists oppose teaching creationism in public schools partly because of its blatant religious and social agenda, and partly because it grossly misrepresents the scientific theories and models it seeks to replace. However, we also oppose it because it has completely failed to sway the vast majority of biologists and paleontologists, who overwhelmingly accept that evolutionary theory (or theories) is so well-supported by the evidence that we have no real doubts about its factual reality. When we cite polls like “Project Steve”, we are in fact making arguments from both authority and numbers…of degreed scientists who actually study living and extinct organisms, far more of us accept evolution than don’t, and we think this is a relevant point to make. Intelligent Design may appeal to a lot of theologians and philosophers, but if the vast majority of biologists haven’t bought into it, why would it get equal representation in a high school biology class?

I’m meandering again, but the point is that science is a methodology for figuring things out founded on the principle that people are inherently fallible (I’ll be doing a series of blogs eventually on science and religion that will talk about this). Getting peers to critically review your work is an important scientific tool for helping to catch your screw ups, and getting you to rethink your own evidence and reasoning. In this sense science does kind of operate by consensus. Armchair paleontologists (see my second blog) will sometimes say ridiculous crap on the VertPaleo and Dinosaur mailing lists like “well, I don’t care if anyone agrees with me or not.” News flash: anyone who broadcasts a claim to hundreds of people on a mailing list cares if people agree with them or not. If not, they would find their time more productively spent writing their own self-published literature, which I also guess they wouldn’t care if anyone read.

An additional point needs to be made about peer-review that is sometimes missed by people who disparage it or try to bypass it: it is not just important for critically reviewing ideas and evidence, but QUALITY OF WRITING. You are not writing for yourself. You already know what is in your head. Your goal in writing a paper is to get that information and line of reasoning into SOMEONE ELSE’S head. As I said at the outset, if a reasonably intelligent and well-informed reader can’t understand what you are trying to tell them, you have failed as an author, even if your ideas are 100% correct. This is one reason why a negative peer review does not necessarily guarantee rejection of a paper; it may just be that you need to re-write it to make it more clear. If someone reads your paper and criticizes something, and you think they missed or misunderstood an important point, that may be your fault as a writer, not theirs as a reader. You might need to consider re-wording an argument, or restructuring the paper to make absorbing the information easier. If the reviewer missed the point, so might other readers, in which case again, what is the point of even publishing?

Reviewers sometimes really are dicks who are out to get you because you contradicted their work, or ignoramuses who don’t understand what you are writing, or who are uncomfortable with new ideas. However, most of the time they reasonably bright and well-informed people who are just trying to improve the quality of science and scientific writing by ripping apart your precious manuscript. If this is also your goal, it means they are trying to help you. Let them.

If you goal is NOT to improve the quality of science and scientific writing (but, say for example, just trying to rack up a longer list of publications than anyone else), please get out of academia. The rest of us are going to have to devote our precious careers to fixing your mountain of bullshit.

(On second thought, stick around. We can devote our precious careers to fixing your mountain of bullshit.)

LNJ