Research out of spite?

The post I started out to finish today got hijacked when I came across a barely legible quote in an old notebook of mine.

A couple of years ago, I sat in a committee meeting as part of the defense of a student’s dissertation proposal (it served as the PhD oral comprehensive exam). We sat around a make-shift conference table in a drab university classroom with no windows. After about an hour of discussing the work she had already done and where she planned to go, I asked her to back up and describe to us why she had originally chosen the dissertation topic — where did the original motivation come from, how had the topic changed, and why? Her research origin story involved her questioning a comment made by another person on the topic. More than just questioning, she found herself disagreeing with the view and wanted to investigate it using research. This sounded like an honest, and time honored, way of arriving at a dissertation topic. She questioned the conclusions or assumptions of others — in an academic and philosophical way. I’ve always felt we don’t spend enough time on graduate committees discussing how to generate research ideas and how to move theories and ideas forward. Instead, our conversations tend to stay very methods-focused. In this case, she had used her creativity, critical thinking, and expertise to independently identify an interesting research question and then proceeded with the hard work of figuring out how to investigate it. I was feeling good about the question and where the discussion might head.

Then…

The full professor in the group took the floor, and with what I remember as a wry smile, said “Out of spite! You really wanted to win an argument. I admire that.” There was a general obligatory chuckle, but I was shocked. So shocked that I immediately wrote down the exact words she said — which is what I found in my notebook today. Is choosing a research topic out of spite to win an argument really something to be admired? [Note: I do not think a sense of “spite” was actually conveyed by the student.]

There is a lot to reflect on relative to the reasons the phrase was, and still is, disturbing to me. But, today I want to focus on considering the potential impacts of such attitudes on science. What does such a comment imply about admirable reasons for doing science and what unintended consequences might it have?

Bringing spite in as a motivator attaches a pride factor to the work. It creates an “I need a particular outcome from this research to win the argument and not damage my own pride” sort of attitude. Admittedly, there is always some pride factor involved in research, though we typically work hard to convince others it’s not there (we can substitute other p- words like promotion factor or publication factor). Explicitly laying spite out there as an admirable quality for motivating research seems to move things well across a line. We [should] strive to honestly investigate questions by inserting as little of our own desire for a particular outcome as possible (again, arguable for how effective we are in that). It is quite possible that without the comment the student would have subconsciously influenced the results of the study because of her a priori views and a potential vested interest in a particular outcome. But, I feel confident she would not have been proud of this and would have tried to limit it. She certainly would not have celebrated or publicized such motivations as if they were admirable.

I guess one could take the more cynical view that the professor was simply being more honest than the rest of us and stating out loud what is actually happening in our scientific culture. I’m used to taking a pretty cynical view, but I have a hard time swallowing this one. In my view, by turning the research into an exercise of spite and winning an argument, the professor was telling the student to firmly take one side and accept that winning was tied to a particular research outcome. And this is in conflict with setting out to investigate for the sake of gaining knowledge (regardless of how it turns out). I can’t help but believe there are huge implications in sending such messages to students as they embark on their careers in research.

My regret for that day is that I stayed silent. I felt fear at speaking up — which was confusing to me, but very real at the time. Now, time has allowed me to reflect on the situation and better understand why I felt compelled to write down those words.

The word “spite” doesn’t have to be included in a phrase for us to subtly (and most likely unconsciously) push our graduate students toward believing there is only one outcome of their research that will be deemed a success. Setting this tone is just asking for our human faults to disrupt the process of trying to do good science. Motivations for favoring particular outcomes are high enough due to current incentive systems in scientific culture — we don’t need to add admiration of spite.