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When incentives collide
Today I am wondering how to change the academic world so that researchers are rewarded for actively telling people about their work. Or, to be grumpy about it, so that they are punished if they do not share their research results more broadly.
I’ve been fortunate enough to work for two people who care very much about adding to the world’s store of knowledge. This means that they say “Yes” when asked to participate in research projects.
Having these folks as models is good for me, because most of my personal experience of researchers is negative, and left to my own devices I would probably be politely unavailable.
As it is, I try to accommodate the requests I get. There aren’t too many, and they’re not very onerous, so I’m not making a big sacrifice.
Recently it was a public health student. We met in a coffee shop, where I gave him a sixty-minute monologue. He scribbled while I worried about whether the noisy backdrop of rock music and coffee machines would interfere with good notetaking.
A few months later I got an invitation to the presentation of his thesis. This was remarkable on two counts: first, he’d apparently finished something, and second, he was bothering to tell his research subjects. I was slightly impressed.
There were seven people at the presentation, along with two unopened boxes of donuts. I sat through 40 PowerPoint slides with a better-than-usual narrative flow. It helped that the researcher was personable, and that the topic is relevant to my work.
Afterwards I asked about his plans for disseminating the results. Had he translated it into another language (this being a major point in both his research and his final recommendations)? Well – sheepish grin – no. Had he made arrangements to speak with the school district, local elected officials, or other policymakers (all governing some aspect that was addressed in his research)? Well, no. He had invited a few here today, but….
Was he going to speak with any community members, through mosques or churches as he himself had recommended? Well…it was better to leave that to community leaders who command more authority and respect.
I figured that was it, but then a man got up and introduced himself as the student’s advisor. He asked the student to leave the room, and then asked the audience to evaluate his work. Apparently our comments were to inform the advisory committee’s grading of his thesis.
Most people said nice, slightly generic things. I began by noting how scrupulous he had been in his interview process. Then I said if it were up to me to grade this project, I wouldn’t give it a grade until an effort had been made to share its results more broadly. I gave a few specific suggestions-masquerading-as-examples.
The student was summoned back and a condensed version of the comments read to him. I was moderately surprised that the general point about dissemination was mentioned.
I walked away feeling somewhat cynical that anything much would happen. It seemed that the advisors had to submit a grade quite quickly (it already being late May) in order for the student to graduate.
Moreover, there was a distinct lack of energy among both student and advisors about the ideas proposed. Visit a church to present your data? Meet with community members in someone’s living room? Approach the school board? Give a background briefing to legislative staff? I might as well have asked him to sew his own graduation robe – he quite clearly saw it as not his task.[1]
At first I was angry, as much at the sheer wastefulness as on moral grounds. Then I started to think about why this response might be natural given the way the academic system is set up.
Whatever praise, rewards, money, or prestige are to be found in academia are bestowed by other academics. They are the audience that matters. Academia is not so much anti-practitioner as indifferent. With limited time and limited energy, students will focus on doing things that will gain them the respect and approval of professors. Which is only natural, since these folks will be hiring and firing them.
Except – why should it be this way?
Researchers go around asking for something for nothing. I gave my time and expertise because I thought it was worthwhile to have a formal examination of this topic. He’s lucky that I did, and luckier that older and more experienced people gave their time too. For his results to be locked within a university’s walls[2] is unfair, and ultimately counterproductive.
Without our generosity, he wouldn’t have a project, or a thesis, or a degree – or, perhaps, a career. But the sum total of his moral obligation to give back appears to be minimal.[3] Worse, his advisors seem to be uninterested in the potential impact of his work.
Imagine what it would mean to parents to be able to show a school official hard data on student assaults in their child’s school, or how it might affect legislative staffers to hear when mental health issues show up among war survivors. Imagine what it would mean if a policymaker knew the difference in health outcomes (and costs) for patients who had interpreters versus those who had none.
I am sure there are good reasons for researchers to throw up their hands and say: “Here it is! I’m not hiding anything. I just don’t have time to go on a speaking tour.” But not-hiding is not enough. Who has the time, energy, and smarts to dig deep into a university’s website to try to find useful data? What tired health-clinic doctor is going to go searching, on her own time, for a master’s thesis that tells her something about her patients that she suspects but cannot prove?
Forget about a speaking tour. How about an ironclad requirement that nobody can graduate unless and until he or she has made a half-dozen community visits? Posted a link to research results on two neighborhood blogs? Handed out fifty copies of a summary sheet? Provided testimony or background to three policymakers?
Requirements are the least of it, of course. What has to change is the culture. Why is this morally acceptable to universities and their students?
- There is an interesting digression here about whether researchers, like journalists, worship a false god of objectivity. This delusion of neutrality leads them to say “I can’t talk to policymakers” because they perceive that as taking sides. But that’s another post.↩
- The presentation was held on campus, not near the area where the people being studied actually live, during working hours. The thesis is available through the university, if you know where to look and who to ask.↩
- As implied above, just by finishing a project and holding a presentation, he did a better job than many researchers I have dealt with in the past. That is a low bar.↩
Lisa, thanks for the pointer. Yes, there are definitely folks out there who are individually fighting the good fight. Every little bit helps. I’m most interested in the structural piece — how to change the culture/incentives of the academic world. The wiki seems like an interesting element of that.