Francis Collins made a triumphant declaration about his plan to “end sexual harassment”! Hooray!
Read my @nature article w/Mike Lauer & @NIH_COSWD on ending sexual harassment in all #NIH-supported environments: https://t.co/OhsB9RwUxO
— Francis S. Collins (@NIHDirector) March 4, 2016
Only…it was initially published in a closed-access journal, Nature (the article has since been opened up). And, say, Nature is a UK journal — why is the head of the NIH publishing his grand proposal to end all harassment in NIH supported institution there? It struck a lot of people as weird and tone-deaf.
And then I read the “article”. Rarely have I read something so empty outside of administrative memos from high-ranking academic bureaucrats. It’s truly impressive. The physicist will be jealous that the biologists have managed to create the most perfect vacuum known to humankind.
Here it is, sprinkled with a few annotations from yours truly.
As the leading US government funder of scientific research, we at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are deeply concerned about sexual harassment in science (Nature 529, 255; 2016). With the help of colleagues in government, academia and the private sector, the NIH aims to identify the steps [Isn’t “aims to identify the steps” kind of an empty way to say “do something, but we don’t know what”?]necessary to end this in all NIH-supported research workplaces and scientific meetings.
In September last year, we restated our expectation that organizers of NIH-supported conferences and meetings should assure a safe environment, free of discrimination (see go.nature.com/zmukk8).
Over the next few weeks to months, we plan to work with governmental, academic and private-sector colleagues to identify potential steps [“we don’t know what”] to translating our expectations into reality. An important first step will be to gather as much data as possible [“we’re going to flounder around for a while, trying to figure out what we’re doing”] to more fully understand the nature and extent of sexual harassment among scientists. These data should guide us in determining what kinds of policy and procedure are most likely to help. [“not that we have any policy, obviously”] We will also work to determine what levers [“We’ll figure out something to kick some butt, but we don’t know what”] are already available to influential stakeholders — us as funders, as well as university administrators and departments, journal editors, and organizers and hosts of scientific meetings.[stakeholders=buzzword for everyone involved. “We don’t even know who we’re going to work on yet”]
We owe this [What do you owe?] to our colleagues and the public, who trust in our ability to make the biomedical research enterprise the best that it can be.
Yeah, that fluff was a great use of page space in a high-ranking science journal. How about sparing us the finger-flapping until you’ve actually got something to say?
Now, be fair, at least he didn’t directly go — and charge 18USD to read such dribble.
Did he just plagiarize that from Weird Al’s Mission Statement?
As Father Ted would say:
http://www.irishbloke.net/dablog/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/6-Down-With-This-Sort-Of-Thing-IMAGE.jpg
I half expected to hear “and our policy will be Yuuuuge! The best! We have the best people–wonderful people, the best people–working on it, and I can tell you, it’s going to be magnificent. And the Mexicans will pay for it…”
How to say nothing in 500 words! Thanks, Francis – this article is as empty as your theistic evolution.
It’s not nothing, and it’s clear enough.
Succinctly, it’s saying “Sexual harrassment at NIH-supported environments is a problem. We [NIH] want to fix the problem. We don’t know how to do it yet, but we will start by finding out what needs to be done and how it may be done. It’s expected of us.”
So, the intervening six months was spent on what? Planning to plan?
LykeX, to state the obvious, the connotation is that (As the leading US government funder of scientific research, we at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are deeply concerned about sexual harassment in science (Nature 529, 255; 2016).) was when they became aware of the problem.
(Citation provided!)
And it took them six months to come up with “gee, maybe we should think about what we could do”? Shouldn’t this have happened the following Monday?
I mean, it’s nice that someone has finally gotten their shit together enough to at least get the ball rolling, but this smells a bit like an organization dragging its heels. I wonder how much internal resistance there has been to doing anything about this. I hope someone has been taking notes on who wasn’t being cooperative.
If you want to deal with sexual harassment, make it a priority. Six months of nothing isn’t a priority. Let’s hope it becomes one now. However, given the history of large organizations, I’d like to see some action before I start cheering.
The six month delay is a red herring. I’m more impressed with the entirety of the defense that he is shocked, shocked to find that there is sexual harassment going on in the workplace. Because what, up to six months ago there was no evidence of it happening anywhere?
Hell, the AAS was collecting and reporting data on this so long ago that the executive officer at the time has since had time to change from an astronomer into a biologist.
I dunno, I see it as a start. Far better this than the people who claim harassment is a non-issue. It does seem more like an op-ed than something to publish in a journal, though.
@3 Steady now.
@John Morales, #6:
Oh, goodness gracious, really?
This is most patently NOT saying that, if by “saying” you mean anything other than “here are some words that Collins strung together in a row.”
Reread this:
Bullshit. We all know the problem of too much data. Remember Total Information Awareness? It wasn’t merely critiqued for being invasive of privacy. Nor is torture critiqued on the assumption that everything a tortured person says is a lie.
For similar reasons, you don’t go about simply piling up data with a plow. You do a fucking literature review first. You determine research questions first. And, surprise, surprise, there is quite a bit of research on different strategies to confront sexism in the workplace. There is data to compare strategies and, surprise, surprise they have actually done the comparison analysis for many strategy combinations. Actuaries and liability analysts have some of the most mathematically rigorous schemes you can imagine for such comparisons, and even put them in terms of return on the dollar.
“We’re going to make piles of data! Those piles are going to be huuuuuge!” is not a plan to move forward, because you’ve got all those data and still no good research question. When they come up with a research question, will the data they’ve gathered even be relevant, or will they have to fire up the data plows again?
The USA Republican party’s highest elected officials, and even party officials like Priebus, have frequently said that we need “as much data as possible” on Climate Change.
However, they give every appearance of ignoring the fact that mountains of data already exist, that competent people already have developed rigorous and revealing methodologies for investigating climate change, and that they have no fucking research question.
I see every reason to give Collins the exact credibility on sexual harassment in bio-med research spaces that I grant Priebus on climate change in the atmosphere & hydrosphere.
Crip Dyke, it’s more an anodyne statement of intent than a plan, and not much of either, true enough. But not nothing.
(Perhaps an indication of social climate change? ;) )
*This is exactly* what should be expected of all people in leadership positions – to take a clear and vocal stand – that sexual harassment is not acceptable and that they intend to do everything possible to eliminate it.
What’s worrying is that Lauder and Collins don’t seem to know much about this subject and seem unaware of that. As Crip Dyke says, there already is a wealt of information available.
The authors’ first step should be finding competent person(s) within or from outside who would be responsible for creating a plan and follow-through for their institutions; it’s not something they should do themselves. Sexual harassment is one of the subjects where people too often assume that just their ‘common-sense’ knowledge and good will are enough.
In the article:
This would be good if *competent* persons would be appointed to be in charge of the undertaking.
I don’t think it’s possible to tell if this is an honest (if slightly inept) attempt at doing good or if it’s just a “let’s form a committee to investigate for a century so we don’t have to actually do anything” fig leaf to shut up any critics. It wouldn’t be the first time an organization worked very hard to figure out how little they can get away with changing.
Yes, I’m cynical. You know when I’ll stop being cynical? When they actually DO something.
The question I ask myself when reading a statement like this is: Could I, a random outsider, have written it myself? The answer is yes. There is nothing here that requires any special knowledge of the situation, knowledge that Collins would (and should) have. It is long on rhetoric and short on details. For all we know, Collins hired a PR firm to write it.
Hasn’t the problem been yanno, already identified. I mean, I remember reading tons of articles and papers in the last 5 years alone detailing the various problems of harassment in the sciences and the suggestions on how to fix it that bring in information from harassment responses in other fields?
Hell, there’s already informal systems of advice from women in the sciences to women in the sciences on how to deal with this ubiquitous problem of harassment:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/06/opinion/sunday/she-wanted-to-do-her-research-he-wanted-to-talk-feelings.html?_r=0
So, yeah, the lip service about, “no, no, honest, we’re totally going to look into it sometime, eventually, yanno, but we’re waiting for data cause it’s just so inscrutable you guys” rings especially hollow here. Moreso because we know that we’re only getting this much because stories about this have been making international news.
So yeah, it’s not even nothing, it’s the sound of someone putting their fingers in their ears and hoping to “lalala” until either all the women leave their precious little man-domain or the media and their fellow academics stop noticing and reporting on the problem.
Ok, it’s very likely that the authors are dishonest.
Even so, it would seem that they are now inviting follow-up questions from reporters and imput from others in the organization, which maybe could pressure them and their successors to at least make *some* changes.
Come on, PZ – you know full well that, above an impact factor of 1.0, there’s no such thing as “a UK journal”. Collins clearly wanted to publish in the Number-One Journal, the one with the largest readership among scientists, and he succeeded in that.
Still, it’s a valid criticism that Nature is paywalled! I spent a few years at a major, famous institution that didn’t provide online access to Nature (or Science, the Number-Two Journal), most likely because it couldn’t afford to do so.
I’m also with comments 4 *bows before Cuttlefish* and 16.