© 2015. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd | Journal of Cell Science (2015) 128, 4027-4028 doi:10.1242/jcs.179010
STICKY WICKET
Burning down the house II – not-so-bad ideas
“No visible means of support, and you have not seen nothing yet.
Everything stuck together. Dum dee dum dum dum dee dum, Baby
what do you expect?” Hey, we’re back. And no, I’m not still
listening to that song. I’m listening to it again. I do that.
If you’re just joining us, we’ve been talking about bad ideas.
Things that keep coming up – observations, conclusions,
hypotheses – that we don’t believe but that just don’t go away.
Even when they’ve been disproven or replaced by better ideas, here
they are again – being cited in reviews, making their way into
summary figures, being pointed to as an explanation for something
Correspondence for Mole and his friends can be sent to [email protected], and
may be published in forthcoming issues.
in a paper, being used to make arguments. The field moves past
them but they keep coming up for more exposure. And with ‘no
visible means of support’ you wondered why I was listening to that
song.
So how do we get rid of them? Well, before I tell you my ideas on
this, let’s have a look at what is being suggested in the blogosphere
(online). No, I don’t pay attention to the blogosphere. But I do listen
to the ‘beer-o-sphere’, which I experience at meetings all the time –
after the sessions, over a beer, when everyone weighs in on issues
like this. The beer-o-sphere is way better than the blogosphere.
So here is the solution from the beer-o-sphere on how to get rid of
bad ideas:
Let us publish negative results! Okay, we hear this all the time,
not only in the beer-o-sphere. If there were a place to publish
An occasional column in which Mole and other characters share their views on various aspects of life-science research.
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Journal of Cell Science
Mole
STICKY WICKET
Okay so let’s get something straight. Just because a bad idea
seems to persist, it doesn’t mean you have to use it. In fact, not
only shouldn’t you use it but you shouldn’t use anything that isn’t
useful for understanding the problem you have set yourself to do
(or been set to do, not everyone gets to pick). Be critical, by all
means, not only of ideas you question, but all ideas. Examine the
evidence. And this goes both ways – if you are told something is
wrong, find out why some folks believe it. There are lots of things
in your own field you ‘don’t believe.’ But can you make a clear
argument for why not? I’m often surprised at how many of us
cannot.
So let’s get back to what we can do about this. First of all, be an
intellectual. If you doubt an idea, have clear reasons for why. Make
an argument. The thing is, while we don’t care (much) to see lots of
failed experiments, we are very open to hearing your opinion as to
what is wrong and why. And what the correct answer might be.
When we write a review, or a commentary, or an opinion piece, be
critical and make a case for what is correct and what is not. Be
diligent. I promise I’ll be interested in reading that.
My friend Professor Wombat feels it is important to publish
contrary data, and he does it regularly. Actually, he does it very
well. He also publishes lots of interesting observations that are
rigorous and move things forward (it would be a shame if he only
set about showing other people are wrong). And he often publishes
the contrary positions in places where people will read it (you
know, the journals with the nice, soft pages). But here’s the thing –
he gets the contrary positions wrong, too. A few years ago, he
published a very influential paper that disproved a prominent idea,
to great attention. But with time, we came to realize that he had not
disproven the idea but, rather, found a counterexample. It did not
‘burn down the house’ of the idea, but refined it. He’s good with
that. We’ve talked about it, and I know that he is interested in
having the discussion, not proving his own point. This is how we
make progress.
So yes, challenge those bad ideas – hold them up in the light and
show us why they are bad. And here’s the thing. We have to fight
with editors and reviewers, who tell us that challenging the idea is
“not new.” As long as it is out there, the arguments against it are just
as fresh as ever. And maybe, instead of citing the bad idea, someone
will think twice and cite something else. Maybe even you. It’s about
having the discussion.
It’s raining and starting to move into evening, and I haven’t had
any ‘tea.’ Time to, um, put the kettle on and get back to reading. I’m
not too worried about bad ideas when there are so many good ones
out there. Many papers are, in the end, wrong on some level, but it is
the bits that are right that move us forward. We can burn the house
and live in it too – it’s what we do.
Journal of Cell Science
negative data, data that say that something doesn’t work, the
weight of this will bury the bad idea in a deep grave made of
electrons (no, nobody thinks negative data have to be published on
paper; it isn’t worth killing trees to kill a bad idea). That should do
it. Right?
Well, I agree and I don’t agree. A definitive experiment that
proves that an accepted idea cannot be correct, certainly, should be
published. But experiments of this type are extremely hard to
design, and I suspect that when they are done, they do get published.
The sort of negative data that are being discussed in the beer-osphere is generally of the sort, “We tried to repeat the experiment
and it didn’t work.” People. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again:
Personally, I have trouble reproducing anything – I am not sure I
could reproduce an experiment that shows that objects fall down and
not up. I do not want to read about your failures. There are many,
many reasons for things not to work and, generally, very few
reasons why they do. Yes, having a way for everyone to complain
that something doesn’t work, or isn’t reproducible, or gives a
different result, is all very cathartic, especially when others have the
same problem, but it doesn’t actually prove anything. I don’t mind
the idea of publishing negative data but it won’t burn down the
house of bad ideas.
Let me give you a counterexample, how we can be wrong about
wrong ideas, even when we have compelling negative data.
Professor Echidna publishes that after a long search, he has
actually found a mammal that is venomous. Quickly the community
tries to reproduce this, but no mammals are venomous. So he shows
them where he found it. More reports state that all mammals in that
area are non-venomous, although many have pouches. Echidna
identifies the animal as a duck-billed platypus. Professor Platypus
herself publishes that she is definitely not venomous. The
community, and the beer-o-sphere, are satisfied that this is a bad
idea that needs to go away. But Echidna persists, “I meant male
platypuses.”
Which brings me to a question. Who says a bad idea is wrong?
This is one thing to consider. Just because the consensus in the field
says something is wrong, doesn’t actually make it wrong. Work can
be difficult to reproduce, contain artifacts and look shaky, and still
be correct. Male platypuses are, in fact, venomous. I bet you knew
that?
But Mole, you say (I’m listening). If something is wrong, and
most people in a field know it’s wrong, isn’t it dangerous to give it
credibility? At the very least, people will waste their time on it.
At the worst, they’ll use the idea to influence policies that could hurt
people. Just because something could be correct, despite the
experience of other experts in the field, must we give credit to
everything that is published? How can we ever get anywhere?
Journal of Cell Science (2015) 128, 4027-4028 doi:10.1242/jcs.179010
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