On Being Unnerved – Get out your Velcro

Posted on April 29, 2023 by Athene Donald

Not infrequently I find myself having to give after dinner speeches in my College: to alumni as well as to different parts of the student body. The first time I had to talk to the Freshers, I suspect I was as nervous as they were, only in my case it was regarding my speech rather than worrying about which knife to use that preyed on my mind. I kept clear of most of the alcohol on offer that evening, as the idea of tripping over my words appalled me. After eight years, such speeches no longer seem so daunting, but I haven’t forgotten the nerves. It is all part of what seems to be a recurrent theme in my life, as in most people’s I would guess: doing something for the first time always has the potential to be nerve-wracking. I don’t think those of us of a mature age should be ashamed to admit it, or to remind the nervous young, that this is a feeling that can assail anyone at any stage of their lives. What changes with experience is that you may build up more confidence that, if things do go wrong, you’ll be able to pick yourself up without it wrecking everything for evermore.

For scientists, embarking on research, something similar applies. The first time one does research, it probably isn’t nerves so much as not knowing what one’s doing coupled with that same fear that things will go wrong. I recently came across a (quite old) commentary highlighting a not dissimilar problem: that of feeling stupid because research does not come easily, while assuming it does for everyone else. If one survives the first years of a PhD, and possibly a postdoc, then it gets to seem more natural that research is challenging and to realise that if the answers were obvious, you wouldn’t be doing the research anyhow. But that takes time, and many people feel that time could be better spent in some other sphere and consequently leave research completely.

This has all been brought back to me this week when I’ve been at a conference where an after-dinner speech from me was required. This was to a very different audience from undergraduates – one where wit rather more than exhortations to get enough sleep was required – and my nerves were reawoken, I think very obviously. I was once again moderate on the alcohol front as a result. It all seemed to go OK (no one laughed in the wrong place at least), and I hope when I have to do a repeat performance next year (in my capacity as chair of the organising committee), I will have a little more confidence. We shall see. I don’t think it should be as hard next time, or at least I hope that will be the case.

However, I am conscious that any compliments I am paid this year on the back of my words will have been erased from my memory by next. An article I read last weekend expressed this very clearly, albeit in the context of stress of a different kind – jumping out of an aeroplane.

“There is a great metaphor for this which borrows from the material technology of Teflon and Velcro. Most of us have minds like Velcro for the negative aspects of stress, which stick with us long after high-pressure events. In contrast, our minds are like Teflon for the positive aspects, which can slip away all too quickly.”

You don’t have to be a materials scientist to recognize what is meant. Switch the words ‘negative aspects of stress’ for ‘criticism’ and ‘positive’ for compliments and the message is clear: any words of criticism, from referee 3 or over Twitter or wherever they emanate from, will stay lingering unhelpfully in the mind for months if not years. The upbeat compliment that gave 30 seconds of pleasure and a sense of well-being will, as often as not, evaporate in a trice. Certainly, that is how my mind works, something my mother used to bring to my attention right back in my teenage years. Age has not transformed that propensity.

I think – just like discussing impostor syndrome – an old hand like me should point out to the rising stars the reality that life will continue to throw up challenges that are unnerving; that many of us are not so arrogant to believe we are always on top of our game (although unfortunately perhaps too many academics are, victims of the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which people greatly overestimate their own knowledge or competence). And that any new challenge may provoke anxiety, however much one may be up to the job required. However, it clearly also behoves those of a nervous disposition to keep hold of that Velcro/Teflon analogy, so that the positive words of referee 1 at least do something to compensate for referee 3’s vitriol: whether or not the paper is ultimately accepted, at least someone found something good to say. There will always be people out there trying to score points or salvage their own ego by deflating someone else’s. Sometimes their words may be unkind but their conclusions correct, and sometimes they’re just plain wrong.

However, no one ever said research was easy – or indeed giving an after-dinner speech (I cannot comment on jumping out of an aeroplane, but it doesn’t sound like my idea of fun). It is good to push oneself, and to learn from criticism, but not to the extent of letting it eat you up inside, even when there are plaudits as well as Velcro-inducing negativity tossed in your direction.

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What does the Raab episode tell us about Academia?

Posted on April 22, 2023 by Athene Donald

The resignation of Dominic Raab in the latest Government bullying scandal, and the manner of it, demonstrates many of the challenges surrounding accusations of bullying in any sphere. Bullying is hard to define precisely; one person’s robust retort is another’s unacceptable hostility. This fact applies to science and academia as much as anywhere. I suspect many senior scientists will be well aware of others in their institution about whom rumours of bullying swirl. Yet it is hard to pin down, not least because the recipient(s) of the bullying may be too frightened to make a formal complaint. Administrators will only too easily hide behind – as was initially tried in the Raab case – the fact that nothing formal has ever been put on paper.

Whatever the case in Whitehall, in universities there are, I believe, actions that can be taken short of depriving someone of their job, which might make an enormous difference both morally and practically. I can immediately think of two professors in different departments in my University (neither my own) about whom rumours of inappropriate domineering behaviour abound. Of one of these I was told by a former researcher in their team, that he was ‘neither a misogynist nor a racist, he just bullies everyone’. I believe investigations had been initiated about this particular person – of course one never knows the detail – but nothing apparently transpired as a result. That word ‘apparently’ is important. Maybe the investigations found nothing, maybe they couldn’t go anywhere in the absence of a formal complaint, or maybe something was done but, because of the need for confidentiality, the actions taken were entirely below the radar. It’s impossible to know, although many may attempt to guess which applies.

The trouble with confidentiality (without any need for anything as formal as a non-disclosure agreement being required) is that it is hard for colleagues to have any confidence the matter has not been swept under the carpet, whitewashed, airbrushed out of the picture or simply a denial of wrong-doing has been accepted, if there is no visible sign of action. For that reason, I feel there is a lot to be said for visible action of limited scope being taken for what, to use the terminology of Scottish law, might be termed ‘not proven’ bad behaviour. This verdict in a criminal case implies that a jury believed the accused to be guilty but did not think the prosecution made their case beyond reasonable doubt. One can imagine many situations of bullying in the lab which could usefully be described in this way, and for which – since an HR process does not need to reach a criminal standard of proof – some lesser sanction could be applied.

For a professor in the sciences, one obvious response I’ve heard discussed, but never known be put into action, would be the refusal to let the individual supervise research students for some years, perhaps coupled with some requirement of attending certain courses. I did once hear of someone who was sent on an anger awareness course (though they were indeed someone who got very angry very easily, rather than someone who bullied, which was something I don’t think they were accused of). An academic who was no longer able to supervise students might well have cause to think harder about their actions and behaviour. Certainly, the department could then have a clear(er) conscience they were not sending a fresh graduate into a lion’s den to be humiliated and reduced to tears, or have their dreams of a research career shattered in front of their eyes.

I believe, far from civil servants – or researchers – being snowflakes, we have over the decades created a system where bullies thrive. This I suspect is as true in academia as in Whitehall, but specifically in the former we have a world where (s)he who shouts largest, hogs the equipment and departmental money and terrorises their students so that they are too frightened to do anything but obey their supervisor’s every whim, gets furthest. There are exceptions, of course there are, but far from winnowing out the bullies at an early stage in their career, we instead allow incipient bullies to thrive under their bully bosses, and then to be tapped on the shoulder to move on to higher things, while other more meek but brilliant researchers get pushed aside.

So, can academia collectively think of a range of actions that are readily within departmental control that might drive better behaviour amongst domineering academics?  The positive aspect of removing students from a bully’s direction is that it not only acts as a penalty, but also protects the individual students. It would also be a very public statement of the fact that the behaviour in question has been judged to fall short. Of course, said academic would still be expected to teach, to examine and to serve on departmental committees ie do the rest of the bread and butter of academic life.

Should such a person be allowed to apply for grants? The reality is the bullies are often extremely successful at pulling in the cash, but a department might like to think it was more important to nurture future generations than solely acquire more research funding this year or next. Simply putting the brakes on an academic for a year (with a threat of a longer interregnum if their behaviour did not improve) might focus their minds without being utterly disruptive. After all, time was when the EPSRC introduced a system of ‘three strikes and you’re out’, whereby academics who submitted three successive grants that were judged of too low a standard were barred from further submissions for some period. It was an extremely unpopular policy which did not last long, but why shouldn’t a department introduce a different policy of barring applications?

I would like to think institutions would collectively examine their consciences about what they permit to go on within their buildings merely because it is more convenient to look the other way. This very public defenestration of Raab might just be a pivotal moment for academia to stop pretending it doesn’t have a problem. But I’m not holding my breath.

 

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Waiting for Publication

Posted on April 16, 2023 by Athene Donald

As I get my hands on the first copies of my new book Not Just for the Boys: Why we need more women in science (publication date May 11th), and prepare for my first talk specifically about the book on April 22nd at the Cambridge Literary Festival, I’ve been reflecting on what it took to get here. Obviously, a lot of time for the actual writing, but also years thinking about the subject, reading about the subject and – not infrequently – blogging here about the subject. Years that built up long before the book itself formed itself in my mind. Even when I’d reached the idea of a book, it didn’t shape up to be the book it is for quite a while.

Last term the College hosted an event, consisting of myself and my OUP editor Latha Menon facilitated by the College’s Director of the Archives, Allen Packwood, discussing the experience of producing a book from our different perspectives. No doubt every author tackles the actual writing in their own way: for me it required significant chunks of time for me to be productive. I found the summers of 2020 and 2021 excellent for this, when College business was quieter and travel, indeed any kind of activity outside the house, severely limited (certainly in 2020). Not for me the style of a friend of mine who manages to sit down and churn out 1000 words in the most unlikely places (I spotted him doing it in New Orleans airport once, as we returned from a conference). Or how Vaclav Smil approvingly described Ernest Hemingway’s way: ‘You get up and the first thing in the morning, do your 500 words. Do it every day and you’ve got a book in eight or nine months.’

But the actual writing is obviously only part of the challenge. There is all the earlier spadework, the thought that goes into the book’s construction and shape before the text starts to flow (or doesn’t, when writer’s block hits). There’s the endless chasing of facts, quotes and data that you remember reading somewhere, but all the power of Google won’t produce the requisite material if you can’t remember it well enough to come up with a sensible set of key words to search. This was often a deeply frustrating experience. Then there’s the inevitable rewriting once the editor gets their hands on it. Latha, thank you for all you did, but there is no doubt you took strong exception to some of the original material, a deeply depressing experience at the time, however much it improved the book. I should put all this into context with one of the stark facts Latha brought up at the College event: that 99% of all book proposals are turned down. I’m not sure if this is her personal hit rate or an average over the trade. Even whether it’s a very precise number or just a general sense. Whatever, it is a somewhat terrifying statistic and one I’m glad I didn’t know before I started on this enterprise.

One of the final tedious tasks I had no appreciation of beforehand, was that of producing an index. As we all know, a good index is invaluable in any serious book, but how such were ever created before the invention of a search engine I cannot imagine. Even with one, it was something of a soul-destroying, time-consuming activity, but one that had to be done at speed. I tried to make things easier for myself by producing all the keywords/phrases while I waited for the arrival of the final proofs, so as to make the task speedy – as it needed to be – when the actual proofs arrived. It was still utterly tedious and, of course, subsequently the index too needed to be proof read. This activity was all part of the learning experience, demonstrating one is never too old to learn new tricks whatever the adage says, but it was not an experience I enjoyed.

One of Latha’s frequent comments to me was that the book read too much like a blog. Perhaps that no doubt valid criticism has had some impact on the frequency with which I’ve managed to write on this blog over the recent past, as undoubtedly those words made me think harder about how I write. I am hoping that that infrequency may change now the book has sped its way into the public market (or will in a matter of days). However, what I am most conscious of now, is the lull before people get to read the book. As I have written about many times before in the nearly 13 years I’ve been writing this blog, doing things for the first time is always scary. When it comes to a book hitting the bookshelves, though, all I’ve read about authors suggests that even at the nth time this moment is at least as scary. And so, I will admit to a fair degree of trepidation right now. I have learned that my blog has hit the mark for some readers, some posts more than others. But a book – as Latha pointed out – is a very different beast. What works well in 1000 words may work much less well in 100,000. I will have to wait and see, with fingers and toes crossed as I do so.

I am pleased to say that I have a variety of book and festival appearances already lined up, and I will try to keep a list about these appearances (in print or person) up to date on the blog ‘Pages’ (always visible at the top of the blog and here). There are also already 5 podcasts you can catch up with on the web. These respectively look at the whole book in outline; a chat with Lisa Jardine-Wright, fellow at Churchill but also Vice President for Education and Skills at the Institute of Physics, to talk about the impact of early years on the choices children make; the Guardian’s science correspondent Hannah Devlin and I discussed the representation of science in the media; Paul Walton, professor and former head of department in York’s Chemistry Department and I explored what he did in his department that led to it being the first department in the country receiving an Athena Swan Gold award; and finally, economist Diane Coyle (also a fellow at Churchill) and I discussed what parallels there are between our subjects, given both have a distinct lack of women at the top.

So, here I sit anxiously waiting for May 11 and what happens thereafter…..One is never too old to be apprehensive.

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Diversity and Inclusion in STEM: What Will it Take?

Posted on March 30, 2023 by Athene Donald

Last week the Commons Science and Technology Select Committee produced its report into Diversity and Inclusion in STEM. It states in no uncertain terms that ‘Action must be taken that truly moves the dial’, recognizing that the issue of diversity is a problem of long-standing, yet evidence and recommendations from previous studies and analyses have not transformed the landscape. It has to be hoped that this is the report that finally does shift things, so that STEM is a genuinely inclusive environment whatever one’s gender, skin colour or familial background.

I wrote previously about the evidence Katherine Birbalsingh gave to this committee, in which she claimed girls didn’t like hard maths and that this was the reason so many chose not to study Physics at A Level. Her remarks at the time were not well received (see e.g. this write up) and do not get significant coverage in the final committee report, which states guardedly in the summary that

‘The evidence our inquiry received offered no consensus as to the reasons for this difference—male dominated-environments, and pre-existing societal expectations being suggested causes.’

Nothing about girls not liking hard maths there.

The original call for evidence was broad, but the bulk of the report focusses on school years rather than what happens in universities and thereafter. My own (written) evidence covered both stages in an individual’s life, but only the former was raised at the in-person evidence session I presented at last May.  It is very clear that the Committee perceives significant limitations in the current school system when it comes to encouraging anyone and everyone to see themselves as a potential future scientist. As it puts it

‘In our view, it is important that all children are able to see themselves in what they learn from an early age. A diverse national curriculum—that contains female scientists, for example—is one low-cost way of ensuring this. Similarly, the careers advice and support pupils receive from the earliest years should promote diverse and inclusive role models.’

I would like to think this report will get attention and traction, but it isn’t clear to me that that is usually the fate of such Select Committee reports. However, it is high time the lack of diversity in STEM gets sorted, to resolve all the downstream impacts on innovation for our economy, good decision-making by scientifically-trained policy-makers, not to mention a healthy education system and fairness and opportunity for all.

Not just for the boys

I discuss many of the same issues (albeit with a specific focus on the issues women face rather than the challenges for other minorities) in my upcoming book Not Just for the Boys: Why we need more Women in Science, which is due out from OUP in May (August in the USA). I am certainly hoping this book is read, not just by those who are in the midst of traversing the tricky career ladder of science, but parents, teachers and policy-makers. As Birbalsingh demonstrated in her remarks to the committee, many a (head)teacher seems unaware of the assumptions they make, assumptions that the social science literature simply does not support. The IOP has spent many years trying to make clear just how much the ethos of the school impacts on choices children – boys and girls, around different disciplines – make. But still far too many schools persist in treating boys and girls differently, with the result we see few female engineers and few men entering English degrees.

I believe the problems start right from the time a child is born, with societal expectations imposed on them in the toys they play with (read Let Toys be Toys various studies and blogs to exemplify this), or the clothes they wear. The explicit message that ‘I’m too pretty to do math’, once emblazoned on a T shirt for sale, I think has been eradicated, but implicitly that message remains and is heard by many a girl. Of course not all schools or families pursue such gender stereotyping, but far too many do and, it would seem, including Birbalsingh’s own school (Michaela, in North London).

And, as numerous posts on this blog have pointed out over the past decade and more, the experiences of women as they move up the academic ladder pile on to these early years’ experiences to make many a woman question what they are doing in science, and whether they belong. The boring familiarity of attending a conference or meeting where the men are introduced with their proper academic titles and the women reduced to a plain Mary Smith may be trivial in one sense, but it is demeaning and highlights that women aren’t fully recognized in the groves of academe. It is equally likely to occur when experts are lined up in the media, when somehow the expertise of the woman is frequently downplayed while all the honorifics of the man are enumerated.

The Commons Select Committee report highlights many of these issues at school and in the scientific professions. Diversity requires we, collectively as a society, do better. I hope that the report receives the attention it deserves and stimulates action. As I anxiously wait to get my hands on a hard copy of my own book, and to see how it fares in the public eye, I have to hope my own contribution in this space will also help to ‘move the dial’. Society needs many more people to become aware of the systemic problems still facing women and other minorities in STEM fields. This is not only or necessarily to take blame upon themselves for being misogynist. The situation is more nuanced than that in general, because it is the whole culture we bring our children up in that is at fault, damaging both boys’ and girls’ life chances in working out what they really want to do, and what their talents are best suited for. Only when we resolve these challenges will society derive the maximum benefit from all its members in solving the numerous huge problems that the world faces.

 

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Renaissance Man?

Posted on March 5, 2023 by Athene Donald

This week the sad news of the death of physicist and erstwhile colleague Tom McLeish was announced, a soft matter theorist and committed interdisciplinarian – as well as a committed Christian. He is particularly associated with developing theories for the flow of polymer melts, theories he would illustrate with interesting demonstrations (often involving his arm and a sleeve to show how polymer chains of different shapes would move, if I recall correctly) and a fruity vocabulary. Not, I should say, improper language, but involving raspberries, for instance, to describe the associating polymeric structures that formed in certain melts, impacting on their flow; I am sure there were several other foody descriptions that now escape me.

What follows are personal recollections, and they may well be blurred by the passage of time. For instance, when did I I first meet him? Was he still a PhD student or had he progressed to being a postdoc? He spent time working on the flow of polymers at Courtaulds, looking at instabilities in spinning fibres. I wrote a couple of papers with him, the second some time after he had left Cambridge, looking at the motion of polymer chains in the glassy polymers I studied experimentally. I also remember introducing him to my collaborator of the time at the late lamented blue chip company, ICI. Tom subsequently built up a long term and highly successful collaboration of his own with the company, which led to much improved computer visualisation of flows in the complex geometries of a polymer processing factory, work he did as part of a large consortium which he led.

Tom moved from Cambridge first to Sheffield as a lecturer and, when still very early in his career (or as we said at the time, at a young age) moved to Leeds to take up the chair recently vacated by Ian Ward. Ian had been a key early mover in the mechanical properties of solid polymers (and wrote a book of that name; my own copy of this is well-thumbed) but was very much an experimentalist. Tom’s arrival in Leeds necessarily involved something of a reorientation of the work there in the Physics Department, including as part of the IRC (Interdisciplinary Research Centre) in polymers, set up in 1989 before Tom came and which was joint with Durham and Bradford. I think it must have been daunting for Tom to take on such a leadership role when only in his early 30’s, but I don’t think I ever heard him fret about it, although he did talk to me before he formally accepted the job.

Tom spent many successful years in Leeds before he moved to Durham to take up the role of PVC in Research there. Whilst there his enormous range of interests became much clearer. I know how much he enjoyed having an ‘excuse’ to visit departments far removed from his background and to interact with a huge range of colleagues, without ever ceasing to be a physicist. But he took enormous interest in the medieval Bishop Grosseteste (Bishop of Lincoln, who died in 1253) and his theories of light and, when he moved to his final position at the University of York, once his stint as PVC was over, his title was explicitly not that of your average 21st century physicist, instead taking the (historic) title of Professor of Natural Philosophy, but holding it in the Physics of Life Research Group (like me, over the years his interests had moved from synthetic polymers to those of living origin).

Looking at the York website, though, it is clear how diverse his interests had become, including being a Member of Management group for the Centre for Medieval Studies and a Member of the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies. His Christian faith became ever more visible too, including in the 2014 book he wrote using the biblical Book of Job as its basis, Faith and Wisdom in Science. His last book, published in 2019, Poetry and Music in Science, has a wide sweep, as suggested by its subtitle: Comparing Creativity in Science and Art. He, like me, did not believe in a ‘two cultures’ approach to life. He served on the REF2021 Physics sub-panel, and was very exercised by how interdisciplinary research was being treated: he chased me to make sure that I was paying due attention to it in my role as Chair of the Interdisciplinary Advisory Panel for the exercise.

I am sure that his faith was hugely important to him in the months leading up to his death, once pancreatic cancer had been diagnosed last summer. I last saw him at a conference in the spring, when he still seemed to be in fine form. He kept on tweeting during the months after his diagnosis (which he publicly disclosed over Twitter), and it was obvious how much solace he derived from music – he played the French Horn – with frequent comments on the BBC Radio 3 offering. Indeed, my last exchange with him was about something on Radio 3.

He was only 60, cruelly young to die. From the comments I have already seen (for instance over Twitter) it is clear how many people he helped, mentored and developed scientifically. His range of collaborators, within the UK and far beyond, was extensive. At the Royal Society, where he had succeeded me as Chair of their Education Committee, his passion for science, education and outreach was remarked upon to me this week as we all mourned his loss.

RIP Tom. You will be missed by so many.

 

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