Incompetence at the Top?

Posted on August 26, 2013 by Athene Donald

Last week an article entitled ‘Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders?‘, published in the Harvard Business Review, was brought to my attention (thanks Kate Bellingham!). Written by a (male) Professor of Business Psychology at University College London (UCL), Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, it included many choice phrases. Examples that took my fancy were

  • we (people in general) commonly misinterpret displays of confidence as a sign of competence
  • manifestations of hubris — often masked as charisma or charm — are commonly mistaken for leadership potential
  • arrogance and overconfidence are inversely related to leadership talent

with the characteristics of (over)confidence, charisma and arrogance being perceived as stereotypically male. Chamorro-Premuzic linked his arguments to some published articles if you want to check out some of his conclusions; I’m not going to attempt to analyse his piece in a scholarly way. But it struck a chord with me and clearly with the many individuals (male and female) who retweeted the link, such as the male PVC who replied ‘ The problem is they don’t become leaders but other men appoint them to management jobs (especially in HE!).’ So, when I wrote previously about Leadership Stategies to deal with Jerks, maybe I should have recognized that some of the leaders are the jerks themselves, narcissistic and full of their own self-importance.

Clearly, to identify some of these characteristics as ‘male’ is far too simplistic. Perhaps, to move away from a crude divide by sex, a more important message from the piece is the concept that what gets people to the top are not really very helpful attributes once you’ve reached the dizzy heights of leadership: traits such as the ability to talk fast and bluster or a tendency to concentrate on self-serving tasks rather than good citizenry. Nevertheless, anyone in academia (or, I guess, business) will recognize that these qualities do often get you rather a long way, as is manifest by considering some of the high flyers – the jerks – I wrote about before.

Nevertheless, even if that male:female split is crude, it is clear that many of us do think in those sorts of terms. And what does that mean about women reaching the top? The THE ran some articles about female VC’s in their most recent issue, highlighting their paucity and the issues they have faced.  Again some comments raised by male leaders in this context struck a chord, or perhaps I should say a sensitive nerve.

  • Women are more caring and [are] therefore better suited to and naturally drawn to teaching duties
  • It [was] not male bias that prevented more women from leading universities but women’s refusal to ‘play the games’ needed to reach the top
  • They [the males] wanted to spare women the ‘rough and tumble ‘ of leadership –  referred to in the article as ‘a typical example of ‘heroic, paternalistic masculinity’

Those comments, read alongside the Harvard Business Review article, make strikingly similar points from a rather different perspective. The males are admitting that the way they got to the top is by ‘playing games’ rather than developing leadership potential and the patronising tone of voice of the last comment is rather terrifying. Furthermore, as Julia King (VC of Aston currently) confirmed, if you do join in the rough and tumble you end up being termed ‘frightening’ in tones far from approving, an attitude that Shirley Pearce (former VC of Loughborough) I know has equally experienced with annoyance. For many women the choice seems to be either be demure and restrained and get nowhere, or be tough and speak out and end up being hammered as scarey, fierce – or accused, as I was, of leaving scars.

So what attributes are assigned stereotypically to women in a complimentary way that could also lead to progression to the top? Last term I attended a fascinating talk by Michelle Ryan of Exeter University, who has come up with the phrase the Glass Cliff: in business too often it seems women CEO’s are the ones heading up failing companies. It is easy for the headlines then to scream that having women leaders mean companies fail (implying they are falling off the metaphorical cliff), but Ryan examined which came first – the women at the top or the company failing. It turns out that it is the very skills that women are perceived as having, again stereotypically, such as being compassionate for their staff or good communicators, are ones which are attractive to those in a position to appoint a new CEO when a company is already in trouble.

To test these conclusions, Ryan conducted various experiments in which study participants were given descriptions of mythical companies in various states of financial health along with the CVs of fictitious candidates for the top position, men and women with roughly equal experience. When companies were failing participants were far more likely to ‘appoint’ the woman than when the company was doing just fine. Drilling down into why this was it turned out to be precisely because stereotypical female skills were seen as valuable when morale within a company was low and it was tearing itself apart. If, on the other hand, all was hunky dory then the (stereotypical) confident/arrogant male leader was seen as right for the job. Again, you can find some of this research about the Glass Cliff described in an earlier Harvard Business Review article.

So, the moral of this story is twofold. First and foremost, we should all try to jettison crude stereotypes. There are plenty of articulate, compassionate men out there and plenty of confident, outspoken women. It is even possible to be both compassionate and outspoken; these aren’t either/or characteristics. It is not unreasonable to feel that different attributes may be appropriate for different leadership situations (just as a business may be in trouble, so may a university department – or indeed a whole university) but they shouldn’t de facto naively be associated with one sex or the other. Furthermore as we reject these obvious and unhelpful gender stereotypes we mustn’t unconsciously hang on to thinking that a compassionate man is somehow wimpish or that a forceful woman is frightening.

However we, or at least those seeking out and choosing new leaders, should think harder about the skills needed for those at the top of any type of organisation. Confidence may be necessary but arrogance almost certainly is a handicap. Playing games is only likely to be constructive if everyone else is being Machiavellian. Even if they are it may still be a mistake to try to double guess how many bluff and counterbluff moves are going on. In general thoughtful analysis, a clear articulation of the issues coupled with awareness of how decisions may impact on the workforce and simply playing it straight really may be a better strategy for genuine leadership. I hope selection committees will think a little deeper about what really matters and not stick with imagining tired old stereotypes actually fit the job description.

 

Posted in Education, Equality | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

A levels, Cricket and Resilience

Posted on August 22, 2013 by Athene Donald

It’s that time of year again when exam results are forthcoming, making or apparently breaking many a child’s future aspirations. GCSE’s today, A levels last week. It seemed to me that the A level media over-excitement seemed less this year, but as ever you can find stories of students who got umpteen A*s and didn’t get into the university of their choice (usually, but not necessarily, Oxbridge) or, by implication, the ones who did better than expected and were able to ‘trade up’ through Clearing this year.  Of course, A level reform is just around the corner which may change things yet again in another year or two. The education world is certainly not sitting still, with reform happening at essentially every level simultaneously.

However, my point here is not to discuss education reform, or even A levels per se, but more to consider the issue of things not panning out the way one wants. I will, perhaps to your surprise, tie these ideas in with cricket. It’s not as wild a connection as you may think (and given that England has just won the Ashes  – again – it’s good to sneak in a little pride for our cricketing prowess whatever the final Test may bring). In last Saturday’s papers Jonathan Agnew was complaining  that ‘Technology in sport may mean kids fail to learn life’s lessons‘. In this case he was referring to the introduction of technology to review umpiring decisions (something the FA will also be doing this year, I believe, with goal-line technology to determine whether a goal was scored or not, after some dodgy refereeing decisions in the last season). Unfortunately, in the Ashes as far as I can tell, the introduction of this new technology has led to more controversy, not less.  Furthermore, it is causing trouble because cricketers – by tradition that most honourable of players – are no longer behaving in an appropriately principled way: they aren’t ‘walking’ when they know they are out, since the umpiring decision may get it wrong in their favour so why throw their wicket away unnecessarily; additionally they are challenging decisions right, left and centre and not just accepting that the umpire’s decision is final. Well, it just isn’t cricket. Agnew argues that life is full of bad decisions and you might as well learn that from your cricket at school as anywhere else. Seeing adults not accept decisions in the full glare of the big screen at Lords, will do nothing to encourage youngsters to bite their lips and accept whatever fate/bad umpiring tosses their way.

And that’s why I think A level results bear some comparison. A level grades are increasingly challenged, but even without that not everyone gets what they feel they deserve. Maybe sometimes the marking does go astray, but additionally students go astray – they concentrated on all those topics that did not come up, they had a migraine (or worse were knocked off their bike or hit by a cricket ball, real life accidents that happened to undergraduate colleagues of mine) or their grandmother was rushed into hospital the night before. So many things can mar the crucial day and lead to unexpected problems. Equally everything may go splendidly, the ‘right’ questions come up, the student manages to pace themselves and suddenly they find they’re a grade or more up on expectations. This year for the first time there was a real opportunity for them to ‘trade up’ to another university if that was the way it was for them. This, in principle, should particularly benefit those students from less good schools, where traditionally teachers may tend to under- rather than over-estimate the grades earlier in the year. That ought to be good for access, although it’s far too early to say.

Nevertheless, looking beyond A levels (and cricket) there is no doubt that life doesn’t always turn out as expected. Anyone may fall at some big hurdle: a job interview, an exam, a grant proposal or a fellowship application. What Jonathan Agnew was trying to say is that it is good to recognize from an early age that it ain’t fair, it never will be 100% fair, and accepting this and making the best of any hand that is dealt is a useful skill to acquire at the soonest opportunity. Some people are better at picking themselves up than others, but I will say again, a point I have made previously on this blog, no one, however successful, has not been kicked in the teeth at least once and probably far more often. That may have been a fair kick or an extremely unfair one, they may not even know which kind it was, but kicking of some sort there will have been.  Setbacks come in many different forms; some take longer to recover from than others. It is worth patting oneself on the back when one has made a comeback from, or found an alternative path around some obstacle in one’s path and/or career trajectory. An alternative path may mean recognizing that you never will be the world expert in (insert field of your choice here) or get that mega-bucks grant you dreamed of, or even be accepted on your dream course at university. But perhaps you can succeed at something different, take on a new role or get satisfaction from something you hadn’t previously considered. Sulking for long periods gets you nowhere. Feeling sorry for yourself for an hour, a day, a week or even longer may feel justified but if it drags on it will ultimately hold you back. Being prepared to regroup, exhibit resilience and look out for the next but maybe very different opportunity that comes your way will enable you to seize the moment when it does come along.

So, just as for the students who didn’t make the A level grades that they expected, for all of us we have to remember that life may feel unfair, it may feel tough even when there is no hint of unfairness, but all will never go completely according to one’s imagined internal life plan. Think of someone you really, really admire for all they’ve achieved and I am convinced, if you dug down, you would find that their life was not without its (maybe only temporary) setbacks. It’s daft to believe otherwise. Some of them may bear a visible grudge – though maybe they’re not the ones you admire – but many more will just have put on a smile, even if not particularly fast, and soldiered on until they’d worked to achieve some other form of success. It most certainly doesn’t mean one shouldn’t aim high, take risks and retain an optimistic take on life. Equally, it doesn’t mean one should be prostrated by the disappointments when they, inevitably, come from time to time.

 

 

Posted in Education, Science Culture | 3 Comments

Why I Can’t Write Anything Funny about the REF

Posted on August 15, 2013 by Athene Donald

It’s the silly season, a time of year when many people are on holiday and usually big news tends to be in short supply other than the the annual excitement over A level grades. (Mind you, not so this year, when there is plenty of horrendous news to occupy the mind coming from Egypt.) Of course much of the world believes academics only work for about half the year anyhow, but for many of us this season is a precious time to regroup, catch up and generally think more deeply in a way the hurried pace of the rest of the year prevents. Additionally, there is the pleasure that a reduction in the email deluge brings, because so many people are away and by and large committees are not meeting. Now that I am not tied to taking breaks during school holidays, I suffer from the fact that the times I am away are much less quiet on the email front (July and/or September), but that is a relatively small price to pay for the locations I visit being moderately peaceful generally with lower numbers of tourists and cheaper prices.

This year, however, whatever the media may care to believe about Oxbridge academics, I have my nose to the grindstone with REF preparations. Having had the summer of 2008 destroyed by sitting on an RAE panel, reading what felt like an interminable number of outputs and attending multiple meetings in a rain-drenched Lake District, I vowed not to participate in another such panel. And I have stuck to that, although I did take part in the REF Pilot exercise in Physics. This was  a pretty moderate affair, with only a handful of meetings and limited paperwork to plough through, but it provoked a pretty negative impression of the process. Nevertheless, the downside of not serving on the actual REF panel is that I have the dubious pleasure of being the Chair of my university’s Physics and Astronomy local committee. So, whilst other people gad about, I am fretting about the accuracy of entries for all our outputs and composing the prose to accompany the submission documents covering both ‘Environment’ and ‘Impact’.

One of the more challenging conundrums of the format of this round of submissions is that the statements covering both environment and impact, as well as the actual number of impact case studies required, depend on the number of FTE’s (full time equivalents) submitted. This number is, unfortunately, a moving target – at least in a department as large as mine. People are still being head-hunted to move elsewhere and may need to be removed, we have one or two big names awaiting their visa paperwork being completed, and we will have a new batch of research fellows arriving at the start of the new academic year. We probably know about most of these fellows, but there will always be one or two who turn up unexpectedly due to a failure in communication somewhere along the line. As things stand, we hope we are sitting comfortably mid-band, so that we won’t be surprised into finding we suddenly need to start a new impact case study from scratch. But there’s many a slip….

It is in part for these reason that, unlike the horror stories recently reported from Leicester  implying there will be ‘consequences’ for eligible staff not entered into the REF this time around, Cambridge’s Code of Practice says the complete opposite and makes it clear that this will not occur in our University.  It is appreciated that if the addition of one more individual tips any department over into requiring a completely new case study, such an addition may make no sense whatsoever. So, the code of practice allows people strategically not to be entered and, in the interests of equity, there is no way this omission could be used as a black mark against any individual. I had understood other universities were also operating in the same way, so it is depressing to hear about the Leicester story (of course, there is always the possibility the reporting is inaccurate or misleading).

Having had my brains focused on the REF for some time I have been wracking my brains for how to write a further light-hearted blogpost on the topic, as I did just before Christmas. To be honest, it is no joke. Nothing I can think of could be regarded as the least bit light-hearted or amusing, as well as true and relevant. This is deadly serious and the work of preparation isn’t amusing either. It is necessary to be meticulous in detail (not always my strong point, but there are others in the department who are far better at that than me) and conscious of the guidelines to make sure every requisite point is appropriately covered. Sitting on the RAE panel last time it was only too obvious that the odd department had slipped up, omitted to mention some important point – student training, awards to Early Career Researchers or availability of technical support, that sort of thing which could so easily get overlooked in the grand scheme of things – and so were docked a metaphorical mark or two. As with examinations, answering the question as posed is all important.

So, no light entertainment for me over the REF, no anecdotes to spill, which might either give away too much or be meaningless and certainly no peace over the vacation. Instead, this is simply heavyweight, worrying stuff. The time commitment of many members of staff is very substantial, the associated cost of this time (of those of us who prepare the documents, of those in the University who vet them and of those on the panels who have to pore over them) doesn’t bear thinking about. No longer a light touch exercise, as it was in its initial manifestation in the 1990’s. Like so much in our society it seems to get more burdensome each time (see this recent account of what drove a new maths teacher out of the profession, where there is ever more paperwork required to satisfy accountability box ticking). Is it still serving any useful purpose? It’s hard to be convinced of that. I suspect that all this time and effort merely means we will end up with answers that could have been predicted with reasonable accuracy anyhow.  Time will tell, but nevertheless I know how awful I will end up feeling if any sloppiness on my part ultimately turns out to have let the side down in my own neck of the woods.

 

Posted in Research, Science Funding, Uncategorized | Tagged , , | 62 Comments

Standing up to the Bullies

Posted on August 9, 2013 by Athene Donald

The vile and criminal threats and harassment delivered to intelligent and outspoken women in the public eye through the medium of Twitter has been much discussed recently, from journalist Caroline Criado-Perez  to my Cambridge classicist friend and colleague Mary Beard.  Twitter has equally provided a medium to provide support for these women, with many emails of sympathy and encouragement flying across the aether. That, of course, is likely to be utterly insufficient to counter the internalisation of the abuse and restore equilibrium to the affected. Nevertheless, this support is important; in a much smaller way, I know how warming I found the sympathy expressed by strangers through Twitter messages in response to my last post about my eye problems. That kind of spontaneous support to someone suffering is immensely positive, even if it can’t alter the basic problem.

I don’t want to discuss the mentality of those who send such hate-mail here – there have been many column inches devoted to the subject already – or even what should be done, for similar reasons, but it is perhaps worth considering how support can be given within organisations such as universities to those who suffer from the much lesser offences of bullying and simple put-downs. Too often I suspect, the response to observing such behaviour is for the observers to look the other way. That is of course easier; anyhow frequently the bully may be the one with the power.  But whether that is the case or not, unless formal complaints are made – which is often a painful experience in itself – little is done, when I believe much could be done in small but effective ways.

Many years ago, when I was hardly junior but equally not particularly senior (at the about-to-be professor stage I think), I recall an episode which left me baffled and upset by the behaviour of those around me. Sitting on a committee my views were neutralised by a professor who accused me of not knowing enough relevant science to enable me to make a reasoned decision about an appointment. In reality, I was probably the one around the table who knew most and his attack came out of the blue and with no justification (it was certainly not his own field). When it happened I was completely gobsmacked but naively expected the Chair to step in. On the contrary, no one said anything (myself included, other than a swift intake of breath and mild exclamation of horror) and the debate moved on. My own contribution to the discussion was of course wiped out by the fact that I had been accused of being incompetent.

Some time later I discussed the incident at my appraisal. The reaction was equally gobsmacking: I was told I should go and eat humble pie with the individual concerned because he (who was already a professor) felt threatened by me.  Needless to say I did not! The story does at least have a happy ending in so far as some years later when I found myself needing to work closely with the ‘offender’ I found we actually made a good team and we were both able to put the past behind us with no trouble.

However, what should anyone present at the time have done? I would like to think, had I been the chair and had observed such behaviour of one committee member deliberately attempting to undermine another member and sabotage their contributions, I would have intervened. My professional abilities had been unsubtly challenged by someone without the specialist knowledge that might have qualified them to do so. Unfortunately, it is all too easy at times like that for others just to pretend not to have heard. That way the victim can be marginalised and silenced by others whose views differ.

These days I would (I hope) be able to deal with it more competently myself if it were ever to happen again; if I saw it happen to somebody else, I hope I would have the guts to say ‘excuse me, that is unacceptable’.  I am absolutely sure that at no point would I have given anyone the advice my appraiser gave me implying that I had been the aggressor in some way and the other guy was the victim. Find some common ground, I might say. Or maybe find an excuse to meet the offender and attempt to clear the air or at least have a civilised if not necessarily relevant exchange – not clearing the air can mean things can fester for a very long time and still be damaging months or years later when they surface again – but in essence to imply the victim had been at fault and so should apologise: no way!

In my view, if you observe outright bullying and do nothing, you are complicit.  Sometimes the hierarchy of power may make things very difficult for an individual to intervene at the time, but at the very least they can offer support to the victim even if it is only privately afterwards. Maybe they can even help them work out a strategy to prevent something similar happening again, or provide encouragement for them to take the matter to the appropriate powers-that-be. At the very least a third party can validate that the behaviour was unacceptable and that the victim had not been in the wrong.

I wrote before of how a Chair (of a very different committee) was stopped in his tracks when he tried to address us all as ‘gentleman’ for the second or third time. On that occasion, after the Chair’s first transgression I set out to enlist the help of some men on the committee to call him out, a strategy that worked excellently. Calling a committee with female members ‘gentleman’ may not amount to bullying (it could have been accidental after all, though I doubt it), but strategies that work in less serious situations such as that may also be beneficial in the worse kind. The crucial thing is that it behoves all of us to be aware of the dynamics of meetings – and they don’t have to be formal committees, they might merely be research group discussions –  and take action where appropriate.

The more people learn right from the moment they start out on their careers, in science or anywhere else, that bullying does not pay, the more we may end up with a working environment that is able to bring out the best in everyone. At least, I’d like to think we could reach that point, but this may be mere idealistic fantasising. Calling out one of the first trolls to abuse Mary Beard this past week, was a tactic employed by her that did indeed lead to a public apology. That has to be a first, if small step forward, even if in one sense it looked like feeding the trolls. In our everyday workplace, where there is not the same opportunity for abuse to be anonymous, whoever the protagonist may be there is no excuse for any of us to fail to challenge bad behaviour and/or support the victim.

August 13th 2103 This post has been cross-posted today on the LSE Impact of Social Sciences Blog.

 

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Eyeballing It

Posted on August 5, 2013 by Athene Donald

Luckily my experiences of A+E departments are limited, although I’ve spent plenty of time cycling across Cambridge to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in the interests of research.  The site is expanding rapidly, with new buildings for different aspects of biomedical research springing up, including the new LMB (Laboratory for Molecular Biology) which was opened recently, situated astonishingly close – to my mind – to the main railway line. The Rosie Hospital, the maternity unit, so new and impressive when I had occasion to use it all those years ago, is now obscured by larger, newer buildings.

However, as I discovered last week through painful personal experience, the A+E unit is still where it always was, although it appears to have had a makeover in the not too distant past. I had plenty of time, as I sat there, to scrutinise its décor, to try to interpret the dress codes of different grades of staff and to attempt to unravel the code for the keypad entry to the staff office by watching many fingers make swift work of entry. I have no complaint of the staff I met that afternoon, but 3 hours can feel like a very long time when waiting to discover how serious one’s condition is (spoiler: it wasn’t in the end serious at all, but more of that later on). 3 hours of trying not to think that perhaps one might lose the sight of one’s eye – or alternatively trying not to think ‘why am I still sitting here when the place is pretty empty and nothing much seems to be going on?’

Like a swan swimming, I’m sure a lot was going on behind closed doors (or screens), but it wasn’t like Casualty with paramedics rushing in with stretchered patients on drips pouring blood against a backdrop of constant wails of agony and hushed mutterings from the medical staff. It was calm, silent apart from tapping feet walking sedately backwards and forwards – and infinitely boring as I sat there. Why is it that a clear stretch of time like that prevents clear thought and the hastily gathered novel turns to metaphorical dust in one’s hands?

What brought me to this situation was what I can only describe as ‘visual disturbances’, although Googling that term hadn’t done me much good. It started off with the appearance of a peripheral black ring when I moved my head, followed by a general sensation of things lurking in my vision that had no business to be there just as I blinked. By the time, several hours later, that I had a strong sensation of walking through a swarm of flies – again all located in my peripheral vision – I felt I could no longer pretend this wasn’t happening. I had convinced myself it was no mere visual aura of a migraine and the only thing that approximately fitted my symptoms was a detaching retina (something I knew a family member had nearly lost their sight over). A phone call to my optician consolidated my decision: time to head off to A+E.

So several hours later, the doctor had established I was not having a TIA, which seemed to be what worried her if not me, and she had talked to a consultant ophthalmologist to book me in for an emergency appointment the next morning; I was all set to have a wearing evening and night continuing to fret. What made it all the worse, bizarrely, was by the time I got home the symptoms had significantly receded. Still flocks of insects out of the corner of my eye but the initial peripheral ring had vanished, so additionally I started fretting I was mad, a hypochondriac and wasting everyone’s time. A helpful notice I had read many times while waiting at the hospital had pointed out each visit to A+E by someone who needed no further treatment or could have been treated elsewhere cost the NHS £124. Was I causing over a hundred pounds of taxpayers’ money to be thrown away simply by being neurotic?

Anyone who has had hospital eye examinations will know that eye-drops to dilate the pupil are required. So the next morning I sat around for a further hour or so with pupils as big as millwheels and sans contact lenses so pretty blind and unable to read any interesting notices in the Eye Clinic. But when I finally saw the specialist the whole conversation was immensely reassuring. I had a condition known as a detached vitreous which apparently – for all I’d never heard of it before and nor has anyone to whom I’ve mentioned it – is very common.

Apparently a large number of people of my age and more have it, but for most it happens to them unaware. It can, however, lead to tears in the retina (which it hasn’t, at least so far, in my case) and should be checked out. If it doesn’t damage the retina itself, nevertheless the debris of the vitreous will continue to float around and may or may not go on annoying me (those swarms of insects that I had seen can still be spotted from time to time). The dried up gunge that is the vitreous will never go away but it should cause no additional problems.  So I was despatched home to spend the next 12 hours still pretty blind and miserable until my pupils returned to their normal size. No opportunity to work on my department’s REF Environment Template, which continues to plague me, nor read the thesis I need shortly to examine. With eyes like that there was little I could usefully do except continue to fret. I am not a good patient!

The motivation of this post is that I find it troubling this condition, that is apparently so common, had completely passed me and all my friends and relatives by. Had I known – had Google even hinted at this – I could have spared myself much grief, or at least some of it. The symptoms are close enough to those of a detaching retina that I was right to go to A+E to get myself into the ophthalmology system. But it would also have been reassuring to know that there were conditions whose symptoms would be transient and that therefore, as they faded, it did not prove I was going mad in thinking they were ever there at all, or that I was a hypochondriac for getting worked up about symptoms that passed. Maybe I just didn’t read far enough done the Google list to spot this condition, but fail to find it I did, although now I’ve located this very helpful write-up from the RNIB.

Since I am a soft matter physicist I’d also like to point out that there is some interesting polymer physics to be learnt from the eyeball. Some years ago I had tried, through a brief and ultimately unsuccessful collaboration with an Ophthalmology Department, to study eyeballs in the Environmental Scanning Electron Microscope. This was done with a view to studying the rather mysterious affliction keratoconus, in which the cornea changes shape and distorts vision over time and which often also causes much pain . Our aspiration was to be able to study the arrangement of the collagen fibres in healthy and diseased eyes, one hypothesis at the time being that the collagen network was labile and possibly less well crosslinked or well-oriented in the diseased eye and as a consequence couldn’t retain its shape well. I don’t remember by now quite what didn’t work, but certainly we could learn nothing from the preliminary images and the project ceased before it had ever really got going.

Like the cornea, the vitreous humour (to give it its full title) is largely a collagen gel. As in the development of wrinkles in skin and ageing in other parts of our collagen-rich bodies, collagen tends to form crosslinks (i.e. form bonds between neighbouring molecules) as we age, a phenomenon I first learned about when reading about morphology in rat tail tendon. In skin this means the elasticity decreases and wrinkles are the consequence.  I assume the increasing strength and connectivity of the age-prompted developing crosslinked network in the vitreous means that it develops an internal tension that causes it to shrink and ultimately pull away and detach from the retina.  So, it is indeed a natural part of ageing that polymer physics can rationalise. Surprisingly enough, though, that wasn’t what I was thinking about while I was sitting in A+E, or maybe I could have diagnosed my own problems and walked away.

 

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