Publish or Perish

I'm a social scientist that is surrounded by medical doctors.  As such, I often have to struggle for some professional respectability at work.  Unless, of course, they have a noncompliant patient, and then it's all, "Could you please talk to this guy and find out what his problem is?"  Oh, and then there's the periodic, "Could you read this paper and edit it for me?  The submission deadline is 20 minutes away, and I don't have basic grammatical skills."

Anyway, the point of my rambling is that I've had my fingers in several papers and posters that have been published and/or displayed.  Yet, if you look at my CV, you'll notice a complete dearth of publications.  The reason behind this is that when you have eight to 12 authors on a paper, the non-MD/PhD gets the shaft.  That's me.  Regardless of how much data I collected or if I almost completely rewrote the paper because it read like the product of a drunken colobus monkey with a medical dictionary, my efforts go unrecognized.

So, I've grown weary of waiting for someone to be gracious enough to allow my name to grace an article.  I've decided to take matters into my own hands.  I realized that it wouldn't be very difficult for me to write an article discussing the influence of anthropology on an author's work since I've read just about everything this person has published.  Once the article is written, I'll try to get it published in a literary journal at the very least.  It's not a scientific article, but, hey, any publication is better than no publication.  Unless you're publishing in The Watchtower.

When I was outlining the article in my head, I foolishly thought that I'd be able to knock it out over a weekend.  Maybe a full week with edits.  That was two weeks ago and I'm not even halfway to my desired work count.  The problem is not that I don't know the material.  The problem is that I have to find the perfect citation with which to back up my argument.  And when your source material is the work of an extremely prolific author, slogging through the texts can be a bit time-consuming.  Not to mention nerve-wracking.

What started out as a shameless effort to pad my own CV had morphed into a labor of love.  However, the honeymoon is over and I'm now dealing with the harsh realities of completing a paper that even I have lost interest in.  The only thing sustaining my efforts at this point is the thought of sweet, sweet vindication when I (hopefully) see my name on an article and the letters "MD" are nowhere to be found.

Why I Miss the Cold War

Today, as I was sitting at my desk and devouring a TV dinner that I had turned into a sandwich, I noticed a tweet by Matt Tuttle (aka: Anthroprobably) that linked to this article.  The article in question discusses how funding for research often comes under attack when "Republicans control at least one house of Congress, as they are about to do."  The article also lists a few instances when the politicians attacking certain research projects have been humorously mistaken.  My favorite example is when Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) attacked the NSF for allocating funds for research into ATMs.  He thought ATM stood for "automated teller machine" when it actually stood for "asynchronous transfer mode," a telecommunications innovation that is way over my IQ.  Needless to say, some of these politicians don't do their research.

This periodic cycle of trying to cut funding to the sciences makes me lament the fall of the Soviet Union.  Sure, living in a world that could be wiped out by nuclear holocaust was a little stressful (at least I think it was - I was a wee child in the early 80s), but the arms race spurred by the Cold War extended to far more than weaponry.  Our need to best the Soviets at every turn led to huge research budgets, some of which took us to the moon.  During the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 60s, education in science and math was at an all time high.  The pressure exerted by the Soviet Union caused us to become a scientific and cultural power as well as a military one.

The vacuum created by the fall of the Soviet Union has removed a large impetus for us to excel in these fields.  As we have grown smug and self-satisfied at our apparent Cold War victory, we have let ourselves backslide into what appears to be the dawning of a new Dark Age.  Not only have science and math education suffered in the intervening decades, so have the humanities.  Emerging nations like India and China seem to be on the verge of surpassing us in scientific and technological sectors.  Some believe they already have. 

When the hammer and sickle were looming over us, we responded with an unprecedented effort to become the world leader in science, technology, athletics, and every other conceivable aspect of humanity.  Will we respond in a similar fashion when China really gets the ball rolling?  I guess someone should remind these politicians that it is easier to hold ground than to retake it.  It's too bad that we apparently need the Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads to fulfill our potential.

If You Don't Understand It, Ban It

No one is going to argue that smoking is a filthy habit.  However, this neo-fascism that has arisen among the ranks of non-smokers goes too far.  When I see commercials showing teens using Jackass-inspired tactics to encourage people to quit smoking, my first reaction is to reach for a cigarette.  However, I understand that continued smoking will make it harder for me to live the kind of life I want to live.  What to do?

Enter the electronic cigarette.  I'm not going to waste time and space explaining them here.  If you don't know what they are, Google them.  Anyway, the Mrs. and I have both been almost completely tobacco-free since we started using these things more than six months ago.  Her asthma attacks have been greatly reduced and we don't smell like my grandmother's dentures anymore.  Life is good, right?  Not so fast...

I came across this article today on WebMD.  As a scientist (or something resembling one), I was shocked at the lack of empirical evidence in this article.  The doctors quoted continually say things like, "We cannot say they are good or bad because we don't have any scientific proof," and, "There are no clinical studies of long-term use of these products."  However, despite this dearth of clinical data, the FDA seems to be seriously considering banning electronic cigarettes. 

Dr. Norman Edelman, the chief medical officer for the American Lung Association, asks, "What happens to someone who stops inhaling the tars of cigarettes and just inhales nicotine? We don't know."  And yet the article states that "the Nicotrol inhaler is an approved smoking cessation device."  Well, what's the difference, Dr. Edelman?  Is it because one is regulated and the other one is not?  Is it because the propylene glycol vapor is dangerous all of a sudden, forgetting the fact that it's been safely used in night clubs and theatrical productions for decades?  Hey, here's a crazy idea: why not regulate the electronic cigarette just like the nicotine inhaler?  Oh, you don't want to go through all the cost and trouble of those pesky clinical trials?  Fine, regulate it like tobacco.  Just keep those damned tobacco taxes off of the electronic smokes since they're not a tobacco product. 

Why is it that even our supposedly finest scientific minds are subject to the knee-jerk reaction of banning what they don't understand?  Isn't it the role of the scientist to study and to understand?  Maybe I'm missing something here.  I'm sure there a lobbyist at work somewhere in this tangled mess.