A new, already highly controversial, article by Professor of Chemistry, Neil Hall, proposes a “satiric” measure that maps the popularity of scientists on Twitter versus their impact factor (the number of publications in prestigious academic journals). He calls this the “K-Index,” named after a woman celebrity, Kim Kardashian. Why Kardashian? This index is meant to show that social media is as shallow as Hall deems this woman celebrity. Published in the renowned peer-reviewed journal Genome Biology, and unsurprisingly given his premise, Hall finds that scientists with a high impact factor score have a low value on the K-Index. This is mean to be a good thing, according to Hall, who sees scientific communication as being too important to be left to social media.
Scientists who have a high publication record have had longer careers, established under a different, and better funded system. They have published more by virtue of the longevity of their careers and the opportunities that come with tenure (long-term and secure academic employment). They are often older and, as I will show, more reticent to use social media. The fact that they have a low K-factor should be a surprise to no one. Early career academics are more likely to be using social media because it is part of their everyday lives. They do not neglect publishing in peer reviewed journals; they do both, but, being more likely to still be studying, or being employed in the early stages, they will not have racked up as many publications. Scientific publishing and social media do are complimentary to the public communication of science.
It is clear that Hall’s K-Index attempts to demean the outreach work of scientists by pitting academic publishing against social media. I want to focus on the hidden narrative of gender and science morality in Hall’s article.
K-Index and Women’s Sexuality
Other researchers make a strong case for why social media increases public engagement with science. Communicating science on social media means throwing away the jargon and making science both interesting and educational for lay audiences.
And so it’s interesting that Hall, a male scientist, made a point to begin his article with two examples of women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) who were ignored by scientific institutions in their day: palaeontologist Mary Anning (“I expect you have never heard of her,” says Hall) and mathematician/computer science pioneer Ada Lovelace. He writes: “It may be no coincidence that all of these overlooked heroes were women.” Interesting too that he does not name contemporary women scientists nor are they from his own field of genomics. Hall then sets up the “K-Index.”
Hall manages to mention Kardashian’s sex tape, and derides her position as a business woman. In the space of two paragraphs, he has managed to play into the Madonna/Whore dichotomy, which is a social science concept used to examine the rigid stereotypes in which dominant culture places women. It’s a no win typology. Women are either saints or sinners when judged against sexist ideals.
Hall laments that revered women in science were paid no attention in their day. As mentioned, he names two women (woah, he must really be into this equality stuff!). It is no accident that Hall sets up these two saintly women scientists in contrast to Kardashian. What’s the point of comparing two historical women of science to a woman from present-day popular culture? It’s nothing more than old-fashioned sexism dressed up as pompous science posturing. And who loses in this comparison? Everyone.
In Hall’s article, scientists using social media are tarnished with the same brush as Kardashian, who must be a worthless person because she dares to make a living off her fame in an industry that is not science. There is an elitism here that is not benign. Scientists and reality TV stars serve different functions and are not in competition for attention. The public, believe it or not, are allowed to like different things, and some people even enjoy popular culture as well as science. To set up a false dichotomy saying otherwise is disingenuous. What Hall is actually saying is that some scientific practices are not worthy of the public’s time and that scientists who use social media must solely be motivated by fame-seeking. Actual scientific research does not bear out this poorly conceived hypothesis (which Hall has not actually tested).
Who else loses in the Madonna/whore Kardashian/Lovelace comparison? The public, that silly horde who sometimes follow scientists who don’t have a high publication rate in high-impact science journals. Social media used for public engagement is therefore by comparison equal parts frivolity, not worthy of attention and the intellectual equivalent of promiscuity. Because having sex and fame are two Very Bad Things, right? Apparently so if you’re a scientist who came up with a pseudo-scientific measure to demean public outreach for “just a bit of fun.”
Setting aside Hall’s attempt at slut-shaming, and regardless of whatever anyone thinks of Kardashian’s fame – Hall’s article is problematic on many levels, even if it is, wink, just for fun.
White Male Privilege in Academia
Hall says he “tried to pick a randomish selection of 40 scientists” who are big in genome research. He’s already in violation of research ethics (it’s not that hard to try to work out which scientists may have been included in the sample). He seems to be motivated to ridicule a specific sub-set of scientists whom he clearly thinks are not deserving of public engagement.
His “analysis” is presented as a tongue-in-cheek with only three references including Wikipedia and two news sites. But it’s not just a bit of fun, is it? It’s moralising about what science should be and how scientists should spend their time. The author concludes:
“In an age dominated by the cult of celebrity we, as scientists, need to protect ourselves from mindlessly lauding shallow popularity and take an informed and critical view of the value we place on the opinion of our peers.”
Hall then tries to make a “serious” point about gender. In his non-random sample of scientists, only one woman had a high Twitter following. Eleven out of 14 women he included in his sample had low Twitter counts. “Hence, most Kardashians are men!” proclaims Hall. Plot twist! As if only women are vapid creatures whom we might expect to be debasing themselves in the superficial world of social media. He then argues his “study” (his quote marks) does not prove women’s low standing in science.
Nice try. But here are some actual science facts that speak to the blind-spots of White male privilege that Hall has indulged in. On the one hand, we have the reality of social media use. Young people, women and urban dwellers use social media more often than older men. Young educated people of colour also use social media at a relatively higher rate. Twitter users are generally highly educated and predominantly use social media for news information.
On the other hand, consider women’s place in science publishing. Women are less likely to be published in prestigious journals and they are less likely to be sole authors, but they also collaborate more. Women’s research is less likely to be funded; women are less likely to be hired for science jobs; I could go on. The correlation between male scientists having a higher social media following simply conforms to other patterns in science studies showing that women’s contribution in STEM is devalued. Research suggests that more women academics are blogging and using social media, but this work is not deemed as prestigious as other forms of academic work like publishing in high impact journals. Hall is buying into this idea, which actually perpetuates the de-valuing of women’s scientific achievements.
Science & Social Media
Most scientists writing about science on social media do so with zero professional benefit. In fact, we do it in our personal time. And in the grand scheme of things, we are the minority. Studies have shown that academics remain overwhelmingly cautious about using social media. Academics fear privacy, abuse and that their work may be de-valued if they use social media, but they also see that it’s valuable to connect with other researchers through social media.
Despite Hall’s rudimentary musings, research finds that highly cited researchers do use social media, albeit sparingly. It makes sense that if they do not use social media consistently, they are unlikely to build a strong following. Hall has missed a major point about the function of social media, and the fact that the word “social” is there for a reason: you don’t get awarded followers by virtue of who you are or your publication rate. The scientists who build up strong following have worked hard to engage the public.
Since students are high adopters of social media, it makes sense that scientists use this as a medium of public engagement and education. One study shows that faculty members want to use social media more but they have concerns about privacy and they lack confidence/knowledge in technology.
Hall’s K-value plays into all the academic fears of new technologies without adding anything new, save for some sexism thrown in for good measure. He presents himself as a vanguard of pure scientific pursuit, evoking the name of women in STEM without putting his tirade in context to the real barriers women and younger academics face. He does nothing to address the benefits of social media, such as offering women, minorities and early career researchers a place to find a support network and an audience for their research. He fails to neglect to mention that many scientists are using social media to talk about science that mainstream popular media ignores.
Social media, it seems to Hall, just gets it all wrong. It lauds the wrong kind of scientists. So Hall has helpfully included his Twitter handle in his article, in case you want to follow a scientist he deems worthy of your attention.
Moving Forward
This blog post was first published on Google+, where you can also read a spirited discussion with other scientists from many fields. There, I noted that the full responsibility of Hall’s sexist and elitist “satire” does not fall solely on Hall, but also on the editors and publishers who allowed this piece through their hallowed peer-reviewed process. Someone suggested the editors should be fired. I answered the following: I agree there should be consequences and a sincere public statement of apology based on reflection. At the moment all we have to go on is silence from the publishers and denials of “I didn’t mean it like that” (Hall insists it was satire and therefore not meant to do harm). I don’t think anyone should be fired over this particular incident because we need a culture of reform in STEM. What would be useful is if everyone involved commits to in-depth gender and diversity training for starters. Not a one-day “sexual harassment is bad” performance, but an intensive and ongoing discussion of case studies on the nuances of inequality in STEM, as informed by social science.
Sexism came through in this example, but so did age discrimination. Hall’s article chastises the social media practices of early career researchers who lack power and who bear the brunt of funding and political pressures in STEM (insecure employment, lack of employment, having their interests not be supported by higher education, including outreach).
As such, it would also be helpful if the journal invited rebuttals on how and why social media strengthens STEM publishing and science communication, and what we can do to make this even better (recognition of this as science work for example). A statement on where the Journal stands on social media would also be useful. Similarly, encouraging gender discussion within the journal is also paramount. The editors would be wise to revise their publishing policies and to put together explicit guidelines to authors about the types of damaging and exclusionary attitudes that will not be tolerated, as well as clearly illustrating to the public how the publisher and editors will deal with similar issues in future. My colleagues and I outlined similar issues and recommendations on STEM Women.
As we’ve discussed on STEM Women, this sort of gender exclusion keeps happening in science publishing because not enough people in power are taking diversity seriously.
Notes
Note: This blog post was first published on Google+ on the 31st of July
Learn More
Read more constructive discussion on the K-Index
- Anthropologist Kate Clancy shows how Hall’s article is both sexist and demeaning to the social sciences.
- Astrophysicist Katie Mack leads an excellent cross-disciplinary discussion on Hall’s academic elitism on Twitter. I especially liked the response on applied science by Astrophysicist, Catherine Q (below).
- Red Ink uses wit to actually satirise Hall’s sexist logic.
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The Other Sociologist 
Excellent write-up Zuleyka Zevallos, I didn’t go into the gender/morality aspect of it because I didn’t have the expertise to, apart from a vague feeling of ‘that doesn’t feel right’. Thank you for illustrating exactly how and why that didn’t feel right 🙂
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Thanks for inspiring this post Buddhini Samarasinghe! As I’ve said in other forums, this is the true value of social media; the cross-disciplinary exchange or “cross-pollination” of ideas. I doubt I would have picked up a post on a genomics journal/website if I wasn’t following you on social media. If it wasn’t for social media, scientific ideas would flow less easily between disciplines, much less rebound this quickly across the world. Yet another issue that Hall neglected to acknowledge.
But that’s the point of his “sour grapes” as I read on your original thread. Hall sees only some people should hold authority in science and that science communication should stay unchanged. An odd position for a genomics researcher, I would have thought!
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Absolutely, and I probably wouldn’t have picked up on this story if Tommy Leung hadn’t pinged me! I really do love how social networks really connect people, as inane and cheesy as that sounds. No index can ever quantify that!
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Thank you – Buddhini’s post elegantly summarises much of the dismay that I felt in reading the Genome Biology “paper”.
I would, however, just add that “[outreach] doesn’t benefit me professionally” is possibly doing yourself a disservice. I think outreach can often benefit a research career in ways that are measureable by the metrics through which our “success” is judged, i.e. the things that count to our bosses. For any interested, some more thoughts on that at http://www.sciconnect.co.uk/blog/2012/07/can-outreach-make-you-a-better-scientist-2/
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Thanks for sharing your article; that’s great. I think it depends on where you’re situated. Some science fields and institutions have been better at recognising, rewarding and encouraging outreach, but too many others are lagging. A common complaint by researchers is that there’s not enough organisational support overall for this work, which borne out in the articles I cited above. I hope this changes soon!
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We are so unbelievably lucky to have literally daily access to scientists like Buddhini Samarasinghe and Zuleyka Zevallos and so many others who not only break science down into digestible, comprehensible, participatory content, but are willing and able to police their own population and call out the bad actors. Bravo! And thank you, again, so many times, for your voluntary work in Science on Google+ and other communities.
In my youth, I had one-way exposure to real, working scientists through magazines, books, and television shows like Cosmos. It was interesting, the topics expansive and exciting, but I could only wait for new information. I couldn’t ask questions, talk through problems, scrabble for understanding, express confusion or admiration or appreciation. For all their good works, it was necessarily, inevitably them………………………………………….and us, with that great gulf in between.
Social media, and, more importantly, scientists willing to engage with everyone through social media completely changed the character of science and scientists. Carl Sagan famously said,
“The best way to avoid abuses is for the populace in general to be scientifically literate, to understand the implications of such investigations. In exchange for freedom of inquiry, scientists are obliged to explain their work. If science is considered a closed priesthood, too difficult and arcane for the average person to understand, the dangers of abuse are greater. But if science is a topic of general interest and concern – if both its delights and its social consequences are discussed regularly and competently in the schools, the press, and at the dinner table – we have greatly improved our prospects for learning how the world really is and for improving both it and us.”
Thank you, all you scientists on social media who are making good on Dr. Sagan’s vision, all you who aren’t Neil Hall, all of you who aren’t afraid to walk bravely into our shared, open, communicative future. It is you who battle willful ignorance with patient understanding, it is you who entrance the scientists of tomorrow, and it is you who grasp the immeasurable importance of giving knowledge of science to everyone. Thank you so much for all of that.
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Thank you for such a lovely comment Michael Verona and you paint an evocative picture that resonates with me and many other people who fell in love with science, I’m sure. Seeing public figures doing science in a way that’s accessible is important to sparking curiosity in science careers! Storybooks, documentaries, TV shows, and yes, social media now, are all important and legitimate avenues to help science ideas spread. In the past I wrote about this as our version of the philosopher’s stone: we train scientists to publish in peer reviewed journals; this is important to our disciplinary development – but are then encouraged to keep this esoteric knowledge to ourselves. What for? So we can keep having conversations with our peers who all think alike? Academia is still largely set up to scare researchers away from non-academic pursuits. That’s the damage done by a piece like Hall’s, satire or not. This is the exactly the type of media hype we don’t need to put off researchers who may be thinking of dipping into social media. The task is daunting enough as it is if one is not used to it.
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Zuleyka Zevallos Buddhini Samarasinghe Hall clearly is unqualifed to write on the topic
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I’ve read that Hall supposedly has a reputation for satire and I’ve read all the people (read: mostly White men) who defended him on these grounds Able Lawrence, but I suspect you’re right. Satire needs to be delivered well in order to resonate with your audience. This failed on every level imaginable because the “humour” did not translate. It was just sexist, elitist and mean-spirited
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I do feel bad for him because I don’t think he intended this to happen. It was poor judgement on his part.
Genome Biology has an impact factor of 10.5. I don’t think any of us would have ever been able to have a paper like that, satirical or otherwise, published there. Such is the nature of academic publishing privilege!
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Zuleyka Zevallos Coffee room satire does not translate well on social media since the author loses control the moment it leaves his/her pen. I remember girls hating surgery postings mainly because most of the OT humor used to be raw like the scene in an OT with most women either adjusting to it or simply preferring to be elsewhere. But such talk remained confined to the OTs. The very same professors were (naturally) very popular with the boys who lapped it all up. What I dont understand is who misused his/her position to publish this apparent joke in *Genome Biology. He should have had a sociologist co-author (guide) to actually grasp the social context and the issues. In a way, it is obvious why he is a misfit in the social media.
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He’s not a bad person Buddhini Samarasinghe so I can see why you have sympathy, but his personality has nothing to do with his actions. He’s a professional. Even in relaxed settings, like when we make jokes, we are still expected to behave professionally. Many well-meaning people show their ignorance on social media and we all have to be prepared to live through the fall out, and be humble and learn from our mistakes. I haven’t seen him yet address any of the critiques except to retreat into the “just joking, guys!”
As Able Lawrence notes, social media is not the coffee room. He should have known better, but is clearly ignorant about gender issues and the difficulties faced by early career researchers. We’ve said this before in other contexts, but ignorance does not excuse the offence and someone doesn’t have to intentionally set out to be sexist in order for the sexism to stick. I know what you’re saying but at the end of the day – if he thinks he can publish this as satire and get away with it, what else has he been allowed to get away with? I keep going back to the “the bubble of privilege” line that Inger Mewburn used to describe some men in science. At the very least, Hall shows he’s blissfully unaware of the realities of science for us “plebs.”
Both of you hit on a good point: that impact factor is glaring at the top of Genome Biology website. I had to double check to make sure I was actually on the journal site and not some other blog. As I noted, Hall makes a grand “joke” about impact factor but he cited Wiki and news sites. Double standards are okay for White male chemistry professors, I guess. The problem with this article is not Hall’s alone because a respected peer reviewed journal let this pass. Another example of the sexism within science publishing.
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Zuleyka Zevallos I agree with you that the final responsibility for the joke should be with the Editors of Genome Biology who should be asked to resign. Neil Hall can be excused but not the editors. A letter to the Editors raising these issues is in order. Another case of death by Twitter
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Able Lawrence I also think the editors deserve a bollocking. If you write a letter, can I have a look?
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Able Lawrence Thanks very much for all your spirited comments. This has been a great discussion so far! I agree there should be consequences and a sincere public statement of apology based on reflection. At the moment all we have to go on is silence from the publishers and denials of “I didn’t mean it like that.” I don’t think anyone should be fired over this particular incident because we need a culture of reform in STEM. What would be useful is if everyone involved commits to in-depth gender and diversity training for starters. So not a one-day “sexual harassment is bad” performance, but discussion of case studies on the nuances of inequality in STEM, informed by social science. Sexism came through in this example, but so did age discrimination. Hall’s article chastises the practices of early career researchers who lack power and who bear the brunt of funding and political pressures in STEM (insecure employment, lack of employment, having their interests not be supported by higher education, including outreach).
It would also be helpful if the journal invited rebuttals on why and how social media strengthens STEM publishing and science communication, and what we can do to make this even better (recognition of this as science work for example). A statement on where the Journal stands on social media would also be useful. Similarly, encouraging gender discussion within the journal is also paramount . The editors would be wise to revise their publishing policies and to put together explicit guidelines to authors about the types of damaging and exclusionary attitudes that will not be tolerated, as well as clearly illustrating to the public how the publisher and editors will deal with similar issues in future. We outlined similar issues and recommendations in an earlier STEM Women on G+ post. This sort of thing keeps happening in science publishing because not enough people in power are taking diversity seriously (http://www.stemwomen.net/recognising-sexism/).
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Lucas Wilkins I think Zuleyka Zevallos and Buddhini Samarasinghe should co-author a letter to the Editors of Genome Biology
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This was a really excellent post. Thank you.
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Thanks very much David Wescott! I’m glad you found this interesting.
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Wow, thanks for the fascinating write-up on the gender politics of this, Zuleyka Zevallos ! I second Michael Verona ‘s sentiment. We are very lucky to have you and Buddhini Samarasinghe (and the other curators of Science on Google+ and STEM Women on G+ ) active in our community!
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Thank you Jonah Miller for such lovely feedback. And thanks as ever for your active interest, participation and intelligent contributions to gender and diversity issues, as well as your own great science posts. 🙂
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I don’t think I’ve made any intelligent contributions to gender diversity issues, Zuleyka Zevallos . I’ve just parroted the words of people like you, who actually know what you’re talking about. 🙂
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Ha! Thanks for being self-effacing Jonah Miller but I cannot overstate enough how much it matters that you care enough to speak out on these issues and lead discussions on these themes. Part of being a good ally to women is yes, resharing their work, but also standing up during times of controversy or crisis and still trying to engage discussion. This truly makes a difference. We need more colleagues like you to share the load!
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Thanks, Zuleyka Zevallos ! I’m glad I’m making a difference. It means a lot to hear you say that. 🙂
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What do we learn in sociology science
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