Moral Dilemma

Let me start off with a story. I have totally made up this story but it is, as you will realize, inspired by some real life events. I wont be surprised if a lot of you can relate the story in part or full to some event you know of. May be at least some of you also share the same moral dilemma as me.  

"N" is the new guy at the local high school. He is a very smart young man who comes with excellent grades and recommendations from his old school. But for all the great academic record that he had, he was popular only with his teachers and never with the other kids. N is determined to change that at the new place. He will do whatever it takes to be popular with both the teachers and students. So he takes on "B", who is the local boxing champion and the reigning school popular guy. N starts to verbally bully B; taunts him about his average grades; makes snide remarks on how he looks older than other kids; calls him a "muscular sissy" when N warns about taking the matter to school Principal etc, etc, etc. Short of getting physical, N does everything possible to hurt B's ego. When things get so far that B can take it no more, he resorts to what he's good at and beats the hell out of N. Now that there is some blood on the floor, everyone around takes note. B is roundly criticised by everyone around for getting physical and using violence to settle a dispute. "Why can't you respond to verbal taunts in kind? Words should be countered with words, and not fists" is the most common counsel that B got. B is suspended from attending classes and representing the school at sporting events. And N gets everyone's sympathy for being the weakling who was beaten up by a physically stronger bully and becomes the new popular guy. 
My moral dilemma is not about what N or B did. N did whatever he thought was needed to achieve his objective. And B, being a person of limited smarts, resorted to the best possible method he knew to protect his fragile ego. But I am not so sure about the conduct of all the others. While B was criticised for losing his composure, N was not only let off despite his provocation of the violent act but he also got everyone's support. No one seems to have paid attention to the fact that N is as strong as B, if not more. Only that it was in a different faculty than B. Why is it that the society seems to think that physical power is somehow stronger than mental power? Why is physical violence more condemnable than mental violence? Isn't N as much responsible for the violent act as B? If so, shouldn't N too be condemned and punished? Or should N be let off because, after all he was only exercising his right to free speech when all that he did was to state facts about B, however offensive those might be? If freedom of expression includes a right to be offensive, why is intellectual offence any less worse than physical offence? 

Getting 'em and Keeping 'em

For all their scams and scandals, the "recently-voted-out" UPA government in India needs to be credited for getting a few things right. Increased investment into improving the standard of higher education and research is one of them. An important part of these efforts was a concerted campaign to woo scientific talent from abroad to man the newly established, as well as the well rooted, institutes and universities. As a life sciences researcher, I am acquainted more with the various initiatives to recruit quality faculty in Biomedical sciences, but I am sure there were similar efforts in all the other STEM disciplines as well. Unlike most other initiatives of that government, at least some of these efforts seem to have borne fruit. An increasing number of foreign-trained faculty have been joining the higher ed institutes over the last few years. Some of the factors that could have encouraged these scientists (some of them already holding faculty positions in foreign universities) to return to India are an increase in the number and amount of research funding; improved availability of quality chemicals, instruments and other infrastructure; a more liberal and collegial atmosphere in the new institutes and of course, a large pool of very smart students. Apart from all these, there is another important factor that might have clinched the deal for a lot of them. That is, an ever improving ecosystem of high quality researchers in the country. Research today, more than at any time earlier, is a highly collaborative effort. And having a decent pool of researchers working on similar problems in your close vicinity gives you a chance for better exchange of ideas and collaborations. More good researchers you have, the more will come. That's the reason why universities and institutes in countries like USA, Japan and Germany keep producing consistently  high quality research work.   
Despite all these efforts to recruit new talent into our universities and research labs, one area that, in my opinion, has not got much attention is on retaining the existing and incoming manpower (and womanpower, of course). Over the last few years, our elite, extremely well endowed institutions have seen some high profile departures. A couple of these that I know of have been from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), probably the best biomedical research institute in India. G.V. Shivashankar, a well accomplished biophysical scientist, had moved away a couple or so years back to NUS, Singapore. When I first came to know of this, I was left asking myself, why? And now, the news is that another young researcher, Yamuna Krishnan, will be moving out of NCBS soon (She was recently included in a worldwide list of 40 under 40 by the journal Cell). Why would two very successful and brilliant scientists, working at an institute that probably has the best talent in the country and probably gets more funding than any other institute, decide to move out? May be because the new place offers even better funding, opportunities and ecosystem to support their work. Admittedly, there is very little that the government or administrators can do immediately to address the concerns about a limited ecosystem to support and nurture their research activities. It is a slow process that will take a long term effort to bear fruit. But there are some other issues, salary and benefits for example, that the government can help resolve. There might be other issues involved that I am neither aware of nor am capable of imagining. Whatever those might be, the concerned authorities should be empowered to do all that it takes to find solutions and retain the best scientific minds in the country. Otherwise, all the various efforts to recruit high quality talent into our research labs will be like trying to fill up a leaky bucket.   

PS:
I do not, in any way, wish to give an impression of criticising these two extremely good scientists. They have all the right to make the most of their talent and ability. And they are the best people to decide on which place and setting gives them that opportunity. This post is just intended to share my pain at seeing such high quality research talent leaving the country. And also, highlight what could be a blind spot in the way higher ed institutions are administered in our country.

Talking about Talks

In popular culture, the stereotype of a scientist is that of an introvert and a recluse. I do not know if this is based on the observation of real life lab-rats or its the product of a writer's imagination. Either way, it has come to be accepted by the larger populace outside the academic world. But, from looking at my own colleagues and the wider research fraternity, this stereotype is as bad as every New York cab driver being an Indian. The fact is that the reclusive, loner scientist is probably an endangered species being driven to the brink of extinction by a growing culture of academic cliques and the increasing prominence of collaborative research. It is now important that you network with the right people, employ the appropriate jargon and attend the popular conferences. The funding agencies and grants' review committees tend to be more sympathetic towards projects with an inter-disciplinary character which might require that you need to have at least a working relation with folks who have an entirely different way of looking at a problem. Then there are the hiring committees that ensure that you humour and stay in touch with every supervisor and every committee member that you had ever worked with, so that you can furnish some 10 or 15 reference letters with your application. So, in this new and improved (?) world of academic research, being good at communication is as important (if not more) as knowing science. And one of the most important means of scientific communication is to talk about your work. You give talks at lab meeting, at departmental seminars, at student/post-doc association meetings, at conferences, at job interviews, etc etc etc. Considering that giving talks is such an important, and frequent, part of an academic's life, its a real surprise that many researchers are not good at it. 
As a graduate student, I worked at an isolated, multi-disciplinary research centre and had very few opportunities to listen to talks from external researchers. But when I started my first postdoc position at a medical college in the Tri-Institution area of New York, it was like going from being starved to being obese; there was at least one (but usually more) talk every week. I have attended talks by some of the best researchers, working on almost every possible problem in life sciences, sitting in the same room with Nobel laureates, sometimes more than one (as a grad student, I remember going to a seminar by Sydney Brenner and being so overwhelmed at seeing a Nobel laureate that I didn't hear anything he spoke). Now, as a postdoc at a conventional university with all the different faculties ranging from humanities to engineering, I get to attend talks on such variety of topics from the effects of Indian residential schools to monitoring bike traffic to develop a better signalling system. Of the hundreds of  talks that I might have attended, there are only a handful that really had my attention throughout. But this is in no way a comment on the quality or novelty of the work discussed but on the style of presentation. Recently, there was a "job seminar" in the department (I really look forward to attending those as an opportunity to collect tips for my own performance when the time comes). I was a little extra interested since the candidate had an Indian name, was from Harvard and had done some excellent work. But during the seminar, she looked nervous and overwhelmed by the occasion and overall the performance was a let down. On another occasion, the candidate's talk was so monotonous and understated that it was really hard to feel the excitement of the work. Recently, there was another seminar by a very senior scientist. Again the work was excellent but for some reason, the presenter tried hard to avoid eye contact with the audience; most of the time he looked at some empty space towards the end of the seminar hall. Good writing or talking may not make up for bad work, but bad writing or talking can certainly let down some really good work. That was the lesson I learnt from that experience. Whenever I myself give a seminar on my work, I try to keep the presentation the way I like to hear; informal, without too much jargon, assuming no one knows anything about my work and overall having the feel of a conversation rather than a sermon. My first real research presentation was during the first meeting of my doctoral committee. I had made what I thought was a bunch of good powerpoint slides, reviewing a lot of literature on the Gap Junctions (a lot of which I only barely understood then) and describing the plans for my PhD project. In my mind, I had a clear picture of how I was going to talk and explain my project. But I was so nervous that as soon as I was asked to talk, I could not recognize anything from the presentation I myself had prepared.  At the end of that disastrous presentation, my supervisor gave me an advice that I still use while preparing for a seminar to this day. Preparing for a talk is not about making powerpoint slides. Its about planning what you are going to say about each figure on each slide. A good way to do that is to write down or type down exactly what you are going to speak about each slide. This helps to keep the talk compact by staying focussed and to stay away from rambling about aimlessly. The one mantra that has served me well through the many academic talks all these years is that "good talks are well practiced talks". 

Update (5:10PM 16 June 2014):

Wanted to add a quick note. Whether the science in your talk is good or not, whether your presentation is good or not, it is always important to watch your manners. I had once attended a workshop at IISc, Bangalore. Most of us  participating were grad students. One of the workshop speakers was a young professor from JNCASR, Bangalore. During the seminar, while he was still talking, raised his leg onto a desk, placed his foot facing the audience and started tying his shoe lace. I do not know if he was in some unbearable discomfort that he needed to retie his shoe laces then and there. But I thought that was improper and extremely arrogant behavior from someone who at least at that time was like a teacher for us.