Levering open narrow minds with a crowbar

I've had a cluster of recent encounters with academics who have remarkably narrow views of what psychological research is all about.

There is, for example, a peculiar breed of psycholinguist who is suspicious of any suggestion that language is not the pinnacle of evolution and the entire point of the human brain (such individuals can often be found at conferences in those talk sessions that see little passing traffic through the doors).  In a very distant corner of this metaphorical conference from hell, there are also some antisocial social psychologists who prefer to talk loudly about how utterly pointless it is to study human cognition without taking interaction into account.  If it weren't for the huge chip on their shoulders, they might find out that not everyone disagrees with them.  Peering superciliously at passers-by from the conference bar are the clinical psychologists who like to condescend in conversation because, obviously, working with non-patient groups is so trivial.  At the other end of the bar are the über-logical reasoning people, who firmly believe that humans are all rational agents despite the behaviour at play around them.

It's not subfield-specific, of course.  A closer look at the conference floor will reveal methodology subgroups.  You have the raters, who will trust a consistent difference of opinion over a 30 ms response time difference any day of the week.  They don't talk much to the milliseconders, who look askance at anything as subjective as ratings on a Likert scale.  Different groups of cognitive neuroscientists make snide comments at each other about who has the biggest, shiniest, most expensive machine, but nobody else is really paying them any attention.  And then you have the Luddites, who are always one or two steps behind the particular technological advances of the moment.  When software made it possible to randomise trials, they stuck adamantly to blocked designs; when neuroimaging began to be used in their research area, they refused to cite anything beyond behavioural experiments.  Most people tend to leave them to cite each other.

While the aforementioned groups are all very real, they are, thank the great flying spaghetti monster, a definite minority.  Most psychology academics are happy to acknowledge that their way is not the only/best way to study the science of the mind.  But my rather varied background has left me with a very "big-picture" view of research.

All is one.  Well, almost.  I can make most people's research topic somehow relevant to what I do (a sanity-saver in conferences when choosing a talk based on title alone has horribly backfired).  The downside is that the narrowmindedness I sometimes encounter leaves me frustrated and incredulous.

Psychological science should not be insular.

And it should not be possible to build a successful career with that attitude, but that notion will have to wait until I rule the world.

The scrabblings of a demented spider across the keyboard

What is a university lecturer meant to teach?  Subject-specific knowledge?  Or basic literacy, spelling, grammar, sentence structure, etc.?

I recently marked a batch of essays that were written by second year students.  These students got at least AAB in their A-levels (two As and a B in three separate subjects).  In first year, they got classes on essay-writing and plenty of practice in written composition with the plethora of lab reports they submitted.  They were all native speakers of English, as I ascertained when I met them for a tutorial in advance of writing the essay where I brought them through further exercises in structuring an essay argument.

So why can some of them still not string a coherent sentence together?

These were not hand-written essays scrawled under time pressure, for which I am prepared to allow some leeway as even the best of us can make grammatical and spelling slips when racing to beat a clock.  Rather, they were typed essays, prepared with all the spellchecking and proofing benefits of a word processor, and some of them were still absolute rubbish.

I offer the following as an example:

In 2001 [Researcher X] investigated weather the effect was right in a new experiment. By using stimuli she had controlled better. He found [the effect] and this proved [Researcher Y]'s (2005) theory was right.

Where should I start?  "Weather" is not a conjunction.  Effects can't be "right".  "By ... better" is a fragment, not a sentence. Researcher X changes sex from one sentence to the next.  A 2001 empirical paper disregarded temporal dynamics to prove a 2005 theory correct.

Ye gods!

Grading research ability

Female Science Professor writes on a topic close to my own heart today: A-grade versus B-grade students and whether grade quality translates into researcher quality.  The general thrust of her argument is that it does not - some top students make poor researchers and some second-rate students make good researchers.

I'm biased here.  My control freak streak has meant that my academic past is strewn with As, first-class honours, distinctions, etc. and I'd like to think that I'm also a good researcher.  I don't find it easy to separate the two.

I always did well in English and other written expression, which is invaluable when trying to convert a complex dataset into a clear and persuasive theory of how a particular process in the mind or brain operates.  I also always did well at Maths, Science and technical things, which means I'm not afraid to wrestle said datasets into coherent submission.  My undergrad project was both collaborative and huge in scope, so even tenacity and teamwork were at some point graded.  Most of the skills and abilities that are useful to my research were formally assessed (even if in nascent form) during some part of my formal education.

So what's left?  What do I need as a researcher that was never graded as an undergrad?

• Creativity?  Being able to come up with good studies, and good lines of research, that are more than just incremental developments of someone else's work.  Being able to see through unexpected patterns in results to deduce what processes might be bringing them about.  My PhD was the first time I had to build these skills and the zen-like feeling of being one with the data is possibly unquantifiable.  Unless you give me an fMRI machine.

• Multitasking?  Dealing with planning research, writing grants, reviewing grants, creating studies, designing experiments, developing stimuli, training research assistants, supervising research assistants, collecting data, analysing data, interpreting data, reading papers, writing papers, reviewing papers, sitting on committees, going to research group meetings, organising events, giving talks, going to talks, brainstorming ideas with collaborators, designing courses, writing lectures, creating assignments/exams, giving lectures, marking assignments/exams, creating student projects, supervising students, tutoring students, giving pastoral care to students, recruiting PhD students, advising PhD students, examining student theses...  At times, I fit in eating and sleeping.

Now that I think of it, these last two qualities are possibly the most important.  I can easily imagine FSP's "A-grade students who make crap researchers" being clingy and anxious because they lack these qualities.  Equally, the B-grade students who make great researchers might have these qualities in buckets, even if they lack more classical academic ability.

So...  

Wanted: Research Assistant for busy psychological science lab.  Must be able to generate ideas from nothing and juggle up to 20 roles per day.  Grades unimportant.

And now for something completely similar

I have one more "a lot learned, more to learn" item to add.

Solo or Collaborative Grants?

I now know that I find it easier (faster, less stressful) to put together grant proposals on my own than with a collaborator. The original drafting, then revising according to comments from colleagues, is much less effort when I don't have to bounce the documents back and forth with a co-investigator or two.

• Should I focus on writing grants by myself or with other people? I'm bursting with ideas at the moment: all feasible, some very good, and many of those seem highly fundable. I can write up two or three of these into a grant proposal in the same time it takes to settle on and write a collaborative proposal. Is it better to fire out solo grants as fast as I can write them? Or take the time to set up potentially valuable collaborations that the grant bodies might be more likely to fund?

Here comes the New Year, better than the Old Year

Happy New Year!

After an extended xmas break that featured such excitement as setting up other people's webcams, transporting paintings on ferries, and building Ikea flatpack furniture, I'm now back in my (underheated) office to tackle all those projects I didn't want to start last month.

Not being one for New Year's resolutions (starting on a Tuesday in February works better for me), I've instead been reflecting on what I've learned about academia in the past year and what further insights I hope to gain.

Research Grants or Publications?

I now know that it's perfectly possible for me to do good research on the cheap (i.e., without external funding) because most of what I do does not require expensive technical equipment or support and can use undergraduate students as participants.  In other words, I can get papers published in good journals with my time and brain power as the only cost.

• What is the optimal balance of grants versus papers?  If I can run a study and write it up in the same length of time that it takes to make a full grant application, which should take precedence?  Obviously, I need both on my CV, and one grant will lead to multiple publications, but at this early stage of my career I feel I should be prioritising paper-writing.  At the moment, I have something like a 4:1 papers:grants submission ratio but is this balance right?

Following or Ignoring Local Research Directives?

I now know that my university and faculty issues consecutively conflicting directives on a regular basis.  Only apply for research council funding!  No, apply to whichever funding source is most likely to give you money!  Stop writing books or chapters and only submit to high-impact journals!  No, publish in whatever outlet will be most highly cited in your subfield!  Collaborate with people in other university research groups!  No, collaborate with people inside your own research group!  No, collaborate with people outside the university! 

• Should I pay any attention to these directives?  To date, I've been following a policy of nodding and smiling at the relevant people but then blithely continuing with my carefully-planned research programmes as if nothing had happened.  Will this have negative repercussions in my career progression?  As an early-career, fairly disposable lecturer, should I toe the party line even if it keeps changing direction until I'm in a more senior position?  Or is the only sane policy to ignore the nonsense and do whatever is best for me?

Shotgun or Rifle Publishing?

I now know that short papers are faster to get out than long papers.  Yes, it can take more time to run and write up three separate studies than a series of related experiments, but the reviewing process is snappier for brief papers.  In sum, shorter papers hit the presses in shorter time, longer papers in longer time.

• Is it better to target research towards a selection of short studies or a single, long monograph?  Short papers mean a longer list of publications and have a better chance of being cited in passing if they report an interesting empirical result, but can seem rather minor and throwaway.  Long papers mean a detailed theoretical position can be presented that can potentially make a major contribution to the field, but they can be ignored (and not cited) if the theory doesn't open up interesting avenues for other researchers.  When taking into account personal effort, reviewing/publication lag time, and potential for scientific impact, which type of output will most benefit this stage of my career?

Sometimes I wish my university had more than a token mentor system for junior academics, but then I can't quite imagine anyone in my department being in a position to advise me on these very subject-specific issues.  The only person to know enough about all the relevant variables to make these decisions is ... me.