Science Magazine publishes "opinion" piece targeting a specific student w/ sexist "critique" and then won't publicly discuss what happened or what they will do about it

Well, I can't even begin to explain how disappointed I am in AAAS and Science Magazine over their actions recently. An "opinion" article was published last week in the "Working Life" section of Science which was stunningly inappropriate for Science Magazine. I first found out about this when I saw a Tweet from a colleague and friend Rebecca Calisi Rodriguez.

I recently had a great experience publishing in @sciencemagazine's Working Life section on supporting mothers-in-science. Angry to see this now published- a personal, sexist attack on one woman (who is actually AWESOME at #Scicomm). A step back for #WomenInSTEM. Good thread here: https://t.co/KdVSqll3Rg

— Rebecca Calisi Rodriguez (@BeccaCalisi) March 15, 2018

And when I started to dig into the story I was nauseated.

 To sum up - the article was by a student who was apparently trying to express some thoughts about #SciComm activities by others that she did not like. And in the piece she named and mocked the activities of another PhD student at her own institution who does SciComm in ways she does not feel comfortable with. Fortunately, when I started looking at social media responses to this, they were overwhelmingly in support of this targeted student - Samantha Yammine who does really quite phenomenal SciComm work. (See for example her Twitter feed and her Instagram feed.

 I am really thrilled and proud of the community that came out in support of her.

There have also been a few news stories related to or directly about the topic which are worth reading.

• For example T. Ryan Gregory pointed me to this one Meet the PhD student who makes science accessible through social media 

• There is also this excellent piece in The Verge by Angela Chen "Scolding female scientists for embracing Instagram doesn’t solve the gender gap in STEM"

Also some of the Tweet streams about this are really worth reading. For example, this one from @christineliuart is a must read:

NEWS FLASH: my self-expression does not exist for you. Do not police the way I choose to interact with others and share my existence because it makes you bitter. You do you, but don't write an op-ed about why you dont want me doing me.
https://t.co/kAMulZJ6vV

— christine liu ✨ two photon art (@christineliuart) March 15, 2018

Storify of Discussions About Shameless Behavior by #AAAS Relating to #Ebola Papers

Replaced with Wakelet

Does #AAAS care about #Ebola anymore? Nope. And probably never did. #ClosedAccess

In October I wrote a blog post criticizing AAAS (and ASM) for trying to give themselves a pat on the back for making a few papers about Ebola freely available: The Tree of Life: No #AAAS and ASM you do not deserve good PR for freeing up a few papers on Ebola.  The whole thing was a publicity stunt.  And AAAS in particular tried to play up how they were doing this for the benefit of humanity.

So today I decided to check back and look into whether AAAS was making new papers on Ebola freely available. So I searched for the word Ebola in the title or Abstract 

The most recent seemed interesting:

Lessons from Ebola: Improving infectious disease surveillance to inform outbreak management 

• Mark E. J. Woolhouse, 
• Andrew Rambaut, 
• and Paul Kellam

Sci Transl Med 30 September 2015: 307rv5. [DOI:10.1126/scitranslmed.aab0191]

• 
  Abstract
 
• Full Text
 
• Full Text (PDF)

Surely AAAS must still care enough about Ebola to make new papers freely available right? Nope. $20 to rent for a day

How about #2:

Ebola vaccines face daunting path to approval 

• Jon Cohen and
 
• Martin Enserink

Science 18 September 2015: 1272-1273. [DOI:10.1126/science.349.6254.1272]

• 
  Summary
 
• Full Text
 
• Full Text (PDF)

Seems useful and worth reading if one works on Ebola.  Free right?  Nope: $20/day

How about #3:

Why infectious disease research needs community ecology 

• Pieter T. J. Johnson, 
• Jacobus C. de Roode, 
• and Andy Fenton

Science 4 September 2015: 1259504 [DOI:10.1126/science.1259504]

• 
  Abstract
 
• Full Text
 
• Full Text (PDF)
 
• Supplementary Materials

Seems peripherally relevant to Ebola but I would not mind if more Ebola workers read this.  Free right?  Nope.  Guess how much? $20/day

And so on.  A few in the first 10 were, at least for now freely available.  But overall it seems, AAAS and Science have decided Ebola is no longer important.  So much for helping the world.

YAMMA - Yet Another Mostly Male Award - AAAS Public Engagement Award

So - I saw an post on Twitter about the AAAS Public Enagement with Science Award

The AAAS awards for public engagement with science are open for nominations! http://t.co/NHeB6a3NJM #scicomm

— Jon Tennant (@Protohedgehog) July 28, 2015

And I went to check it out since, well, I wondered - how could I win that.  And so I thought - I should look at how I compare to previous winners.  And in one way I compare really well. I am male.

Below is a list of past winners (via AAAS). In yellow I highlight those that appear to be male and green those that appear to be female. I note I base my assignment on appearance and names and descriptions of the people including the descriptions from AAAS. I realize that determining someone's gender is not always straightforward and that there are people who do not fit into this binary gender division and I apologize for any mistakes made.

• 2014 James Kakalios 
• 2013 Steven Strogatz
• 2012 Richard B. Alley
• 2011 Nalini Nadkarni
• 2010 J. John Cohen
• 2009 May R. Berenbaum
• 2008 Kenneth R. Miller
• 2007 Neil deGrasse Tyson
• 2006 S. James Gates, Jr.
• 2005 Jane Lubchenco
• 2004 Eric S. Lander
• 2003 John Allen Paulos
• 2002 Bassam Shakhashiri
• 2001 Ian N. Stewart
• 2000 Vaclav Smil
• 1999 Lawrence Krauss
• 1998 Christopher Wills
• 1997 Barry T. Peterson
• 1996 Alan J. Friedman
• 1995 Carl Sagan
• 1994 Edward O. Wilson
• 1993 Science Theatre
• 1992 Farouk El-Baz
• 1991 Stephen H. Schneider
• 1990 William L. Rathje
• 1989 Robert D. Ballard
• 1988 Anthony M. Fauci
• 1987 Philip Morrison

The totals are 24 men and 3 women (and one group).  Or, for those assigned to a gender, 89 % men and 11 % women.  Could this all be about merit?  I don't think so.  I think there are many examples of areas in which AAAS has problems with gender bias.  For example, consider the recent letter (of which I am a cosigner) regarding AAAS' reinforcement of "damaging stereotypes".

Why I Tweet and Blog: Captured by Beryl Lieff Benderly

You know, many people ask me - why do I talk to science reporters so often.  They ask this and then claim that science reporters are just all kinds of evil because they always get quotes and facts and concepts wrong.  Well, that has really not been my experience.  Sure, I have my examples of problems.  But overall, I have been impressed and pleased more often than not.  And here is a great example. I was interviewed a while back by Beryl Lieff Benderly about my somewhat obsessive experimentation with social media for communicating science.  And then, of course, I forgot about it.  So I was exceptionally pleased when I saw the story come out today: To tweet or not to tweet? | Science Careers.  Beryl did a remarkably good job in capturing the essence of my thoughts about Tweeting, Blogging, social media, and science communication.

If you want to know what I think about how to not get overwhelmed with Twitter, how to not spend too much time on social media, and what I think abotu aboutb social media, you don't need to wait for me to try to write my thoughts on the topic down.  Read what Beryl wrote.

No #AAAS and ASM you do not deserve good PR for freeing up a few papers on Ebola

Saw a PR from AAAS about how they were freeing up all of ~ 20 papers on Ebola

In light of what has become the largest Ebola outbreak on record, Science and Science Translational Medicine have compiled over a decade's worth of their published news and research. Researchers and the general public can now view this special collection for free.

OK. More access is good. But alas, they did not even free up all papers in #AAAS journals with Ebola in the Title or Abstract.

And then I started thinking. What about HIV? TB? Malaria? And as I started Tweeting about this, I saw that ASM also was hopping on the "free Ebola" bandwagon (actually I do not know who did it first).

AAAS - Blocking Access to the Scientific Literature Even When They Say It Is "Free"

Today, I wanted to show someone a PDF of a paper of mine that I co-authored in 1999.  The paper was, I think, kind of cool.  It reported the sequencing and analysis of the genome of Deinococcus radiodurans, an incredibly radiation resistant bacterium.  Alas, I did not have a copy on me, and the only electornic device I had with me was my phone.  The person I wanted to show the paper to had their computer, a device with a strange little red trackball and running some sort of Windows operating system, so I looked at it and panicked and said "Maybe you should drive" (as in, maybe they should be the one controlling the computer).

So this person, who shall remain anonymous mostly because of the ancientness of their computer, did the kind of obvious thing, and opened a web browser (don't even ask which one) and typed in "Pubmed.Com".  OK - that would work.  I might have preferred going to Google Scholar, but I use Pubmed about as frequently.  And though I do not have a Windows machine or the weird web broswser they used, I have recreated what happened next.

A nice Pubmed window.  And I said, type in "Deinococcus Eisen." and seven papers showed up.

AAAS and SnapChat collaborate to develop SnapScience to publish scientific papers transiently

Just got this in an email and thought it should be shared.

Washington, DC. August 15, 2014.

Kent Anderson, the newly appointed Publisher of AAAS (see http://www.aaas.org/news/aaas-names-new-science-publisher) has announced his first action as Publisher - a partnership between AAAS and Snapchat (https://www.snapchat.com).

Anderson said "Although I will not officially assume the role of Science publisher until 3 November, this was too important a task to not carry out immediately. AAAS has always been looking for new ways to reduce the public availability of scientific publications. AAAS approached Snapchat a few months ago and in secret developed a new App "SnapScience" which allows the transient publication of scientific articles. Article longevity can be set to 1 minute, 5 minutes or 15 minutes."

Anderson followed this with "This kind of thing I had always hoped to do in my role as president of the Society for Scholarly Publishing but the technology was just not available. Snapchat has developed the perfect platform for the future of AAAS and scholarly publishing in general with its ability to allow readers a glimpse of a scientific article but not allow them to keep it or reread it or redisplay it."

AAAS CEO Phil Lesher said "We have had serious issues recently with the public demanding access to articles in Science and other AAAS published journals. And in addition, we have published a slew of papers that have needed to be retracted shortly after publication. This solves both issues. First, all papers will only be transiently available, so their there is no need for retractions. Second, even scientists will only have short term access to papers so the public cannot possibly demand access for themselves."

Anderson also said "We think SnapScience is the perfect way for me to step into my new role as Publisher of the Science family of journals. It is cutting edge. It is exactly the type of thing that publishers have been looking for. And it will be fun."

AAAS hopes to roll out updates to SnapScience that will allow researchers to also publish data and protocols only transiently as well.

Why I don't like to pre-submit slides for talks - lessons from #AAASMoBE meeting

So - I gave a talk at a meeting on Thursday.  The meeting was called "Microbiomes of the Built Environment" and it was sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and run by AAAS.

The meeting organizers, as is often the case, wanted me to submit my slides a few days in advance, in theory to make sure they were loaded into their system and that all worked OK.  Well, as usual, I did not do this.  I like to make my talks fresh - just before the meeting so that I can incorporate new ideas into them and so that they do not have that canned feeling that a lot of talks do.

My talk was to be 15 minutes long and was to focus on my Sloan Foundation funded project "microBEnet: the microbiology of the built environment network" (see http://microbe.net for information about the project). I figured, I would work on the talk on the plane - five plus hours to edit a talk I had given relatively recently on the topic of this project.  And all would be good.  Plus, United had told me there would be WiFi on the plane so if I needed any new material I should be able to get it from the web right?  Well, the flight took off on time - 8 AM on Wednesday morning.  And I opened my laptop once allowed and paid the $15+ dollars for the WiFi and got to work.  Then, about 10 minutes later, the WiFi died and despite heroic efforts by the flight attendants, it never came back. And I plugged away at my slides doing some edits of the following presentation.

Talk about microBEnet (http://microbe.net) from Jonathan Eisen

Better late than never - video interview of me from #AAAS2012 - Evolvability, the Built Environment and Open Science

Well, better late than never. An interview of me by Stan Malloy at the AAAS Meeting from February 2012 has been posted at MWV Episode 72 - Jonathan Eisen - Evolvability, the Built Environment and Open Science.  From their site

On this episode, Jonathan talks about "evolvability," the probability that organisms can invent new functions. To do this, he has been using genome data in conjunction with experimental information to try and understand the mechanisms by which new functions have originated. 

Another area of interest for Eisen is the "built environment." We live and work in buildings or structures which are non-natural environments, new to microbes. These "new" environments represent a controlled system in which to study the rules by which microbial communities form. 

Jonathan is interested in these environments as basic science vehicle and he shares the importance of studying the built environment for science and human health.
Finally Jonathan explains his interest in "open science," the ways in which science is shared. At it's core, Eisen wants to leverage cheaper technologies to accelerate the progress of science in a positive way. 

This episode was recorded at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia on February 18, 2012.

 See the interview via Youtube below:


 

Notes from my trip to #AAASMtg #EarthMicrobiomeProject #Storify

I am hoping to write up some more notes from my trip to the AAAS meeting in Vancouver. But for now these pics and this Storification of tweets and related posts will have to do ...

Slideshow version of Storification

Slideshow w/ audio of my talk on "A Field Guide to the Microbes" from the AAAS Meeting #AAASMtg

I recorded the audio of my talk on "Towards a field guide to the microbes" from the AAAS meeting on Saturday AM. Here is a slideshow of the talk with audio synched to the slides (I did this using Keynote on a Mac with the "record Slideshow" function).





My slides from the talk are available at Slideshare.

Jack Gilbert @gilbertjacka clarifies comments at #AAASMtg re: opening windows, cleanliness & microbes

Just got this to post from my college colleague Jack Gilbert in regard to some comments he made to the press at the AAAS Meeting a few days ago.  He sent this in part in response to some news stories that came out of the press conference we had at the meeting (e.g., see Florence Nightingale approach 'could help fight infection in ..., Open hospital windows to stem spread of infections, says ... and others).  And I encouraged him to consider whether or not he needed to clarify some of his comments - and here is his response.

---

A confession, lesson and retraction
By Jack A. Gilbert

At the AAAS 2012 annual meeting on Friday, I was involved in a press conference to announce the initial results and ideology for the Earth Microbiome Project (http://www.earthmicrobiome.org). Following the press conference we went to another room, where we were openly discussing these concepts with the reporters. Several reporters asked me to comment on the potential impact of this research in the medical sphere. At which point I started to discuss some excellent research by Jessica Green (http://biology.uoregon.edu/people/green) regarding her recent evidence that improved ventilation in hospital wards reduced the airborne abundance of organisms that were related to pathogens. I showed these reporters the paper
(http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ismej2011211a.html) and asked them to discuss this with Jessica Green.

w/o a doubt the best aspect of #AAASmtg - giving my kids science schwag #GoScience

Calling on AAAS to Deposit all Archives of Science in Pubmed Central

Much has been written recently about a call to boycott Elsevier due to their outrageous policies regarding academic publishing.  I support the boycott but I also agree with many others who have said it perhaps unnecessarily singles out one publisher over others who also have publishing policies that could, well, use a bit of work.  And one such publisher is AAAS - the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Today, the annual meeting of AAAS begins today in Vancouver.  I was supposed to be there by now, but thanks to some technical problems at Alaska Airlines, I am back in Davis for the day.  AAAS has some policies regarding openness that I believe are unnecessary and not in the general interest of scientific progress.  One is the strange "talk embargoes" I have written about recently.  Another, which is much more problematic, is the fact that Science Magazine (published by AAAS) does not deposit archival content in Pubmed Central.  Now, mind you, I think all scientific publishing funded by taxpayer money should be openly and freely available immediately. But that is not going to happen immediately.

One helpful tool in making scientific literature freely available is Pubmed Central.  Most scientific societies I know of deposit published material in Pubmed Central after some initial delay of 3-6-12 months.  But for reasons that are not entirely clear (to me at least, or to a Google search), AAAS clings to their archival material making it only available through their own web site.  Sure - they do allow authors to deposit their version of their manuscripts in Pubmed Central after a delay.  But most alas do not do this.  And I note - this option is only open to NIH and Wellcome Trust funded work.  So much material cannot be deposited anyway.

AAAS's policy seems unnecessarily closed accessy and limits the impact and spread of the knowledge contained within papers in Science.  I note - this policy is yet another reason to not publish in Science and to instead choose either fully open access journals or ones that at least release their stranglehold on the papers after a short delay.

Today I call on AAAS to make archival literature from Science Magazine available in Pubmed Central.  And I call on others out there, such as those at the AAAS meeting, to pressure AAAS to do this.  Write blog posts.  Call and email AAAS members and leadership.  Email AAAS.  And so on.

Ideally everyone would just publish in fully open access journals and the journals would deposit material in archives.  But until that happens, we need to make every effort to increase the amount of literature getting into Pubmed Central and other archives.  So - pressure AAAS.  And while everyone is at it, please deposit whatever you can in preprint servers, in various repositories and in Pubmed Central.  Every little bit helps.

Dear #AAAS, I am NOT embargoing my own talk & I plan to record it and post afterwards #embargowatch

Just got another email from AAAS regarding their big meeting in February in Vancouver where I am scheduled to talk:

----------------------------------------
This request for materials is from the AAAS media relations team and is separate from any you may receive from your symposium organizer or the AAAS Annual Meeting office.
----------------------------------------
Dear AAAS Annual Meeting Participant:


Thanks to all of you who uploaded materials to the AAAS Virtual Newsroom by Jan. 16. For those of you who have not submitted materials or want to submit additional materials, you may do so right up through the meeting. The materials will be available online to reporters, although we can no longer guarantee that we'll be able to copy new
submissions at our expense for placement in the on-site library of speaker materials. We will try to include materials received in the next several days in our copy order, however.

AAAS meeting - is this one for embargo watch?

Giving a talk at the AAAS meeting in February in Vancouver.  I have avoided AAAS meetings previously because I do not like AAAS's position on open access issues.  Given that AAAS is at least indirectly a supporter of the recent Research Works Act I am pondering whether or not I will boycott the meeting.   While I ponder that -- I thought I would share the presenter instructions I just got from AAAS (see below).

Apparently, my talk is "embargoed" - though I am not sure I understand how that works for a talk (see the part I highlighted in yellow which, well, I almost certainly will not be following).  I do not understand actually what a talk embargo means - am I supposed to not share with people what I am working on so that every piece of data I present at the meeting will never have ben seen by anyone?  Or am I just not supposed to show my talk to anyone?  What exactly is a talk embargo?  And what will they do when I do not follow it?  Maybe Ivan Oransky knows.