The Perils of Procrastination

Posted on April 29, 2015 by Athene Donald

Voter registration in the UK showed just how many people are good at procrastination, with nearly half a million people registering on the last possible day. My email inbox is also a good indicator of people’s expectation that we are all procrastinators. How many emails do you get a day headed ‘Last chance – fantastic offers end tomorrow’ or ‘Final Days to Register for…’. We are presumed to respond to these last minute opportunities, rather than opt for something in a stately and timely manner well before the deadline.

Does this matter? We’ve all been guilty of engaging in some variation of this from time to time. Students turning up with a piece of coursework 24 hours after a deadline is a familiar occurrence which, not even 5% automatic mark loss per day late seems able to counteract. Or academics who put pressure on institutional administrators to process major grant applications within a day of a funder’s deadline; we don’t take kindly to being reminded that the organisation’s rules require a week’s notice particularly if, as a consequence, the institution refuses to sign the grant off. (Although I suspect many administrators would not actually feel empowered to throw a hot-shot professor’s application back in their face in that way, however reasonable such behaviour might be.)

But what if the only person who gains or loses by the procrastination is oneself – what are the pros and cons then? It seems to me that there are times when a task is so tedious the only way that one can motivate oneself to do it at all is to leave it to the last minute. That can apply to writing numerous letters of reference for students you don’t know very well; or reading the paperwork for some committee that merely feels like an exercise in drudgery and pointlessness, or that you feel you have been stuck on as a makeweight and you actually have little you feel qualified (or interested in sufficiently) to offer.

The other group of tasks that, it seems to me, we are prone to put off and put off are the ones that are the complete opposite. These are the tasks that are so important they feel horrifyingly daunting. Challenges such as the big talk you’ve got to give at an international conference for which simply recycling a previous one with some tweaks and updates will not suffice; or the new lecture course that has to be delivered to 400 keen (or not so keen) first years. Some of these tasks you know about so far in advance that they seem remote so that it is easy to put off week after week. Until suddenly, the talk is only next week, or the 24 lecture course next month. Then, perhaps, the adrenalin will surge and fear will prompt a sudden flurry of activity. The danger is that time will still run out. A talk (or lecture course) will be written, but it won’t be honed and polished to perfection. At that late moment it may remain rough around the edges. Afterwards you will curse yourself for not devoting the tender loving care to your thoughts and slides that you know they deserved.

I well recall when I was invited to give a big lecture, on a topic of my choosing but specifically not simply about my research and for a general university audience. I had around a year to think about this and I read extensively, broadened my range of reading material significantly, thought about all kinds of topics that I had barely considered before and had a huge amount of fun and stimulation. But did I write the talk? No of course I didn’t. The ideas were floating around in a vague amorphous mess but not a slide did I construct. I had files of useful articles and quotes but they were all jumbled up metaphorically and literally. A couple of weeks before the talk my husband asked how it was going. That gave me a jolt! I hope I did the topic justice; I do know that I had more questions (about half an hour’s worth) than on any previous talk I had ever given and they only stopped because everyone’s tongue was hanging out waiting for the drinks reception. Nor were these hostile questions but searching, deep ones which made me believe (wishful thinking perhaps) that I had got through to the general listener. But it doesn’t alter my perception I could have done better if I had started the actual talk construction (rather than merely thinking about the ingredients) further in advance.

Nevertheless, the real problem arises when you leave things to the last moment and then something goes wrong. Not quite along the lines of ‘the dog ate my homework’, more typically that you have flu or your computer crashes. That I suppose is what has prompted this post. Trying to tidy things up in advance of going off to a conference for a few days, I was copying what I needed off my desktop computer so that I could take material with me. I just had a brief interval before rushing off to a student event in College and that, of course, was when my computer crashed. It just sat there blinking forlornly at me refusing either to reopen programmes or shut down. Fury, despair and panic ensued. Luckily I extricated myself (and it) after only about 10 minutes, but it reminded me of the dangers of not being well prepared. Had I allowed a proper amount of time to accomplish the needful, I would have expended less nervous energy on the trivial task.

Reader, beware of putting yourself in this same position. Regularly. Do not procrastinate as no doubt you, like all of us, do.

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The Myth of the ‘Myth of Women in Science’

Posted on April 21, 2015 by Athene Donald

If you skimmed through some articles about women in science recently, you’d be forgiven for thinking ‘problem solved’. A recent study by Cecil and Williams, published in no less august a publication than PNAS, claimed women actually had a 2:1 advantage over men when it came to hiring at tenure track level. Isn’t that fantastic! Hence CNN ran a story claiming it was now ‘the myth of women in science’, implying that those tedious whinging women could now shout up (other outlets ran similar write-ups).

However. Yes, there’s bound to be a however. This claim, which many women would be hard pressed to believe from personal experience, was sure to be scrutinised. If you want an analysis of why the study is not as robust as its abstract (and the CNN article) suggests, take a look at this. This deconstruction of the study highlights a number of shortcomings , not least the fact that respondents being asked if they’d hire someone knew full well the CVs they were sent were not genuine. Why not show how impressively unbiased you are by choosing the minority candidate when absolutely nothing hangs on it?

Now the plural of anecdote may not be data, and indeed hiring decisions could in fact be completely independent of the microinequities people feel justified in making day by day (see Jenny Martin’s recent blogpost if you doubt such things are still ongoing) but nothing I have seen suggests we have yet reached a point when we can relax and think equality has been reached in science. Study after study suggests that women leave the profession at a faster rate than men and that, whatever percentage of women start out at undergraduate level the percentage falls at each successive stage, although the numbers vary between disciplines.

It isn’t the first time Ceci and Williams have published a study suggesting discrimination in hiring is essentially a thing of the past (see this earlier study where in essence the blame was put on women wanting to become mothers). It is of course true that overt discrimination is not common, but subtler forms undoubtedly still occur. The sort of thing covered by a suspicion that a woman of child-bearing age wearing a ring might be a risky appointment in case they want to take time out for a child or an undefined sense that someone might not fit in as well as the candidate who looks like everyone else already in the department

Hiring is of course a crucial stage in any individual’s career, but it isn’t the only moment that matters; possibly not even the most critical. If the community is led to believe that they can relax because all is completely hunky dory when it comes to hiring, then collectively I am sure there will be an inclination to stop looking at the wider problem. Yet the problem is not one-dimensional and there are multiple factors that may cause the attrition in numbers of female scientists. That is why recognition of the sorts of pervasive microinequities that Jenny Martin describes is so important. The PhD student who feels bullied, ignored or treated as no more than a dumb blonde is not likely to want to stick around (see here for my discussion of a study highlighting these issues specifically in chemistry). The female post doc who wonders why it is always the blokes who get encouraged to go to conferences to present the group data or who is only the second author on a paper describing what is actually her own work may feel there is little point in applying for a fellowship or faculty position. You cannot blame an appointment committee for failing to appoint the women who don’t apply because they’ve been systematically discouraged before they reach that point, even if none of this discouragement is explicit. Yet Ceci and Williams seem keen to load this blame for not applying onto the discouraged women.

That is why I think investigations that are being carried out into the data on success rates by career stage and gender for grant applications are so important; I know my own university (and maybe several others too) are carrying out this analysis together with several funders. As I’ve written before, working out why women aren’t applying for Royal Society URFs in the numbers represented in the pool and why they are less successful when they do is an important step forward. Since URFs – and their equivalent from other funders – are an important staging post in an aspiring academic’s career, grasping and solving this problem would be an important milestone towards equality.

But if we have a study, which in itself can actually be heavily criticised, allowing institutions to wriggle off the hook by permitting them to kid themselves there isn’t a problem, then we are likely to end up with a lot of complacent deans and chairs of appointment committees. A similar point was made here where a careful deconstruction of some of the additional claims made in the Ceci and Williams paper is made. More importantly, though, this piece by Marie-Claire Shanahan spells out just why the discourse being created by Ceci and Williams is potentially so dangerous: it implies it’s the women’s fault (by not applying for positions) because it certainly isn’t the hiring committees’ fault if they don’t get hired. This puts the blame on women in a most unhelpful way. It isn’t that women are wimps who don’t apply because they believe there is bias in the appointments, it is that too often they get deterred and derailed by a whole range of different factors along the way. Feeding a misleading message to the media, as appears to have happened around this article, is at best unhelpful.

Personally I fear that by putting the blame on women it means that the ‘establishment’ will sit back and wait for the women to ‘man up’. Articles like the latest Ceci and Williams one and the hype surrounding it run the very real danger that some of the encouraging trends we’ve been seeing will unravel. Actions such as requiring panels to take unconscious bias training will be put into reverse and more thoughtful and thorough approaches by search committees will be allowed to lapse. In other words, equality will be set back. I sincerely hope people will not allow themselves to be deluded back into inaction by this PNAS article.

 

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On the Need for Shiny New Facilities

Posted on April 16, 2015 by Athene Donald

I’m off to open a new block at Brighton and Hove Sixth Form College tomorrow. A shiny new building to provide fresh classrooms and additional study space, something many schools would dearly love to have. A decent working environment is undoubtedly contributory to children finding it easier to learn – rather like Virginia Woolf’s Room of her Own. Dark, dingy classrooms with poor ventilation can only hinder concentration. Too many schools have to operate under such conditions.

When considering the future of the science base through the students being educated, an important consideration needs to be the quality of the laboratory facilities provided to permit appropriate practical work to be carried out at every level. At primary school a lack of teachers feeling well-qualified and/or confident to teach such work does not help, although the actual cost of required equipment may be relatively modest. Things get worse at secondary school where there may be teachers with the right skills but who lack the requisite apparatus. A 2013 SCORE study of the school budgets assigned to practical work highlighted the dire state many teachers have to operate in. How can you carry out exciting work in a lab to stoke the curiosity of a child if only 75p pa per capita is assigned to practical work (this was the lowest figure quoted in the SCORE analysis)? The average in the state school sector was around £10 pa per capita to be contrasted with an average of £27 in private schools. That’s a big difference in money which can’t be expected to have zero impact when it comes to the enthusiasm with which a child approaches the school laboratory.

Practical work may not be going to count in assessments under the new regime, or at least in the way it traditionally has, an outcome many organisations have complained about. But that does not mean it has no worth – which is why its obliteration has been so fiercely contested. There is no doubt for many children it is precisely this practical element of work, getting their hands dirty as it were, which sparks curiosity. Finding out how things work (or how they don’t work, even why they don’t work) is an important part of getting to grips with science, whether or not the child has aspirations to further scientific study. More money into school buildings and school resources more generally are desperately needed. I hope the politicians have this firmly in their sights as they speechify up and down the country this month.

Of course the other part of my role tomorrow is not just to celebrate the clean walls and pleasing architecture, but to act as a catalyst for thought in the children who attend. I am still unclear (as I believe is the evidence in the literature) of the specific importance of role models. In particular it isn’t obvious to me that some woman nearly half a century older than the pupils is likely to inspire any particular excitement or positive identification. Sometimes it worries me that I could have a negative effect of making the future as a grown up merely seem inconceivably remote. I can’t help feeling that someone closer in age to them is more likely to enable them to believe that their career is a path they might wish to emulate.

On the other hand, experience counts for something. The kind of messages I like to give in such pep talks include:

  • Don’t be fooled successful people have never had setbacks;
  • Or that they’ve always known exactly what they want to do.
  • Don’t believe confidence is necessarily more than skin deep.
  • Realise that opportunities are there to be seized
  • And that missed opportunities often leave a worse taste in the mouth than trying something new and failing at it.

I am sure that some mixture of these bullet points will feature in what I have to say before I unveil the plaque. I hope I do this more successfully than a previous ceremony I attended, carried out by a junior minister and which used to show up on Auntie’s Bloomers. I leave you with this image forever burned into my mind, featuring Edward Leigh as he opened the new laboratory I was presiding over at the Cavendish at the time (1992).
edward leigh 92

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Leadership (Churchillian style) and Policy

Posted on April 12, 2015 by Athene Donald

Churchill is often seen as the supreme leader, a man whose very voice inspired a nation and who held the country’s nerve during the Battle of Britain. Less often discussed is his leadership and behaviour at other times, although increasingly there are biographies that are far from hagiographic, one notable example being by a Churchill College Fellow, Nigel Knight. The title of his book – Churchill: The greatest Briton unmasked – gives his thesis away. There were many periods of Churchill’s life when his behaviour was not quite so heroic or successful as during those crucial 2nd World War years. My own grandfather, a clerk in the House of Commons after the 1st World War, could not forgive him for ‘crossing the floor’ by switching parties (twice in fact).

One man with whom Churchill dealt with a great deal during the years of the 2nd World War was General de Gaulle, from 1940 the leader of the Free French in London, operating out of a house commemorated now by a plaque in Carlton Gardens, a mere 100m or so from the Royal Society. As part of the events marking the 50th anniversary of Churchill’s death, the Musée de L’Armée in Paris in has put on an exhibition simply entitled ‘Churchill – de Gaulle‘. It charts their individual lives and how these became inextricably linked during the 1940s and ’50s.

I was fortunate enough to attend the inauguration last week at a formal event at the museum , an event well supplied with champagne courtesy of Churchill’s favourite supplier Pol Roger. At the associated formal lunch I had the pleasure of meeting members of de Gaulle’s family as well as a trio of Churchill’s own descendants: Randolph Churchill, Emma Soames and Celia Sandys (good friends all to Churchill College). I also had a tour of the exhibition courtesy of the College’s archivist Allen Packwood. The College Archives had supplied many (I believe around 60) of the exhibits on show and Allen and his team have been heavily involved in the curation and catalogue preparation. He gave us a fascinating insight into their lives and times. I would encourage others who find themselves in Paris to pay a visit to the exhibition.

Churchill and de Gaulle did not have an easy relationship. Churchill said of him

“He felt it was essential to his position before the French people that he should maintain a proud and haughty demeanour towards “perfidious Albion”, although in exile, dependent upon our protection and dwelling in our midst. He had to be rude to the British to prove to French eyes that he was not a British puppet. He certainly carried out this policy with perseverance”.

This suspicion cut both ways and there was much tension and disagreement between them, De Gaulle remarking

“When I am right, I get angry. Churchill gets angry when he is wrong. We are angry at each other much of the time.”

The suspicion on de Gaulle’s part was well-founded, as Churchill had indeed wanted de Gaulle removed from his leadership of the Free French. In the iconic image, below, of the pair of them walking up the Champs Elysées in 1944, their body language says a lot about their relationship. Curiously, this is the image used to front the exhibition!
Churchill de Gaulle2

Continuing with the theme of Churchill and leadership, as its own part of the Churchill 2015 festivities, the College has been working with CSaP (Cambridge University’s Centre for Science and Policy) on a theme of scientific leadership and policy. This is a topic close to my heart that I initiated as the College’s contribution to the compendium of Churchill 2015 panels running during this year. This coming week will see CSaP’s annual conference, actually focussing on what the Humanities have to offer Government policy-making, followed by a panel discussion I will chair regarding the role of evidence and analysis in effective policy making. We are lucky to have Lord Peter Hennessy setting the scene with a keynote address and he will be joined by former Home Secretary Charles Clarke, Lord Richard Wilson (former Cabinet Secretary and Master of Emmanuel College) and Sir Richard Mottram (former Chairman, DSTL). Daunting company for me to be keeping but it should make for a fascinating discussion.

The second day will involve early-career civil servants and researchers in a policy professional development workshop led by senior researchers and policy specialists including James Wilsdon from SPRU and Churchill Fellow David Spiegelhalter. The latter has an enviable reputation in making sense of badly-reported statistics and has recently been much in the news regarding his new book on statistics as related to our sexual habits. My role is again at the end of the day, when we try to pull things together to consider road blocks in linking scientific advice to policy making and how things could be improved.

As my inner impostor reminds me, my track record in anything looking like science policy is relatively short in duration. But these matters are really important. Just last week I wrote over at the Making Science Public blog

‘Some scientists, some of the time, most certainly should [worry about political science communication] or our government will have an even weaker evidence base on which to build when it comes to key decisions.’

It is important that junior researchers and civil servants have a chance to learn from each other so that there is some hope this science-policy interface will improve. But our House of Commons is a sad reflection of our education system with its absence of scientifically-trained MP’s, who are too often also scientifically illiterate (not the same thing) and so may not be well-placed to receive and understand good advice if and when it comes from their civil servants.

Churchill himself relied very heavily on a single man, Frederick Lindemann (Lord Cherwell), but he had many other senior scientists working around him during the war years including this College’s first master Sir John Cockcroft. This group surrounding him certainly often did not agree with each other (take Lindemann and Henry Tizard as a case in point) but at least they were there, tossing ideas around and formulating crucial policies. We have little that is equivalent to that now. One consequence of this is that, whatever sound bites politicians may utter about the excellence of UK science, they do not believe in it enough to commit to keeping the science ringfence or provide any uplift in the budget. As I write in today’s Observer, fine words butter no parsnips when it comes to funding.

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Borrowing an Objective

Posted on April 5, 2015 by Athene Donald

Maybe it’s because I’m relaxed as it’s the Easter break, but when I received an email with ‘Borrowing an Objective‘ as its subject this week, my mind went into overdrive. I assumed someone was short of a goal, an aspiration or a target hypothesis for their grant – or even for their departmental mission statement. Much more boringly in fact it was because someone in the group wanted to borrow an actual optical component (viz. an objective) for a light microscope.

Nevertheless, my mind in meandering mode, I mentally developed the theme a bit further by wasting time reading objectives provided by different universities up and down the country. Many, I’m pleased to say, did not have them at university level (although they may well have had mission statements or equivalent). Frequently they had objectives which appeared under the Equality section; this is something I can understand and I’ll come back to this at the end. And of course, individual PI’s and larger collaborations often listed them but mainly in the context of their grant applications; also something that is perfectly logical. After all, this is typically required by funders when the application is put together.

What worried me was what I found under headline information about university structures and aims. If I give some examples (anonymised) maybe you’ll see why I found the statements so disconcerting.

  • Objectives for the ‘student experience’ (in itself that phrase sounds like a visit to a theme park, but let’s ignore that).
  1. Enhanced our student experience, working in partnership with our students;
  2. Reformed and developed our already high quality research-led and practice-driven teaching and curriculum;
  3. Increased the proportion of our graduates who get a first or upper second class degree;
  4. Increased the proportion of our graduates in graduate employment;
  5. Further enhanced participation and outcomes for students from low participation backgrounds.

I find it interesting these are all written in the past tense: have they already achieved all these objectives? However this bunch of ‘objectives’ is sadly lacking in useful content. They equate variously to motherhood statements, indicate what might come across as a desire to dumb down quite consciously (e.g. point 3) or need so many verbal contortions to put across the idea that, however wonderful things are already they are somehow going to get even more spectacularly wonderful (point 2). However point 5 does look like a genuinely worthwhile and, one would like to think, achievable aspiration.

A statement, this time from a Russell Group university, is at least as meaningless (because so obviously this is what a university should be aspiring to) as a set of objectives:

XXX’s Research and Innovation’s objectives are to support the University in achieving two of its strategic goals: excellence in research and excellence in commercialisation and knowledge exchange. Our particular focus is on engaging with our wider community, building strategic partnerships and collaborations, and advancing internationalisation.

I suppose one could argue that some institutions might not be quite so positive about commercialisation (excellent or otherwise), but given the current drivers within HE, notably REF, impact and so on, these sentences look completely self-evident. Another Russell Group institution has a very similar framework for its primary objective:

To deliver research in every discipline that addresses questions and issues with the potential to make significant impact on knowledge, people or the economy, or to enhance or change society for the better.

This is perhaps a little less-obviously money-grabbing than the earlier example and using ‘impact’ as no doubt research funders would like us to use it. Whereas another (non-Russell group) institution is more succinct and prefers the use of bullet points:

  • Creating a better future … going beyond.
  • Growing in stature and reputation.
  • Competing on quality through innovation.
  • Ensuring sustainability.

although what is beyond the future I am not entirely sure! (To infinity and beyond springs to mind).

I am quite sure these organisations could, as in my title, borrow each other’s objectives and practically no one would notice the difference. Enough. I’ve made my point although I pulled out many more similar examples of meaningless blather. And having done so I realise I am really reprising a previous blogpost by Philip Moriarty on the vacuity of excellence written a year or so ago. His take is very much the same as mine here, that many of the statements that universities so proudly proclaim on their websites are pretty meaningless. Either just about everyone would subscribe to the views expressed or they have very little genuine useful content. What makes this slightly ironic is that over at Physics Focus where Phil’s ‘excellence’ post was, he and I have recently been disagreeing about the importance of ‘leadership’ in universities. He says:

I didn’t become an academic in order to be led. Nor did I become an academic to lead others. I’m an academic because I want to contest, argue, debate, explore, and challenge the received wisdom.

Which is fair enough as far as it goes, but his tirade was specifically written after he had attended the meeting in Cambridge following on from the University’s book The Meaning of Success. I wrote about the aim of the meeting in advance of the actual day itself. Phil writes after the event, fretting there were too many vapid presentations (I didn’t notice them but we didn’t attend the same parallel sessions; perhaps I struck lucky). But, whereas I am content to let Phil rant about leadership from above not being needed to get your research heading off in a healthy direction I am not convinced by his arguments when it comes to progressing the equalities agenda.

Why? Because too many people have too many bad habits – as all the evidence shows, men and women alike are prone to unconscious (aka implicit) bias – which we need our faces rubbed in pretty often. We need those with the power to put cash on the table or change the criteria we use when recruiting and promoting to take the lead and do so. We need those leaders to lead by example (maybe we’ll see – male – VCs starting to share parental leave?). This isn’t the same thing as imposing targets, rules or payscales without regard to the views of others. I am all in favour of debate and challenge to make sure any ‘solutions’ proposed by the leadership genuinely solve the underlying problem. If you want to see my full reply to Phil it is also over at Physics Focus here. But, I do believe leadership matters when it comes to equality and diversity and setting some objectives in this domain really is a good, if not necessary, thing to do. Here are a couple of possible objectives to illustrate the kinds of statements I mean:

  • we will increase the number of women in senior leadership positions to XX%;
  • we will require all recruitment panels for faculty positions to demonstrate they have actively sought out a diverse field.

With examples like these, as long as the objectives are both concrete and challenging yet achievable, I’d be happy for some institution to borrow them.

 

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