James Streetley's blog

We are bombarded with ‘expert opinions’ every day in the media, both printed and broadcast, and many of these people are presented to us with their title: Prof, Dr, PhD, FRS and the like. An example might be this recent story on sleep deprivation and stroke from the Guardian, which is followed throughout.

My questions are: does including their “rank” in the scientific hierarchy automatically say to the audience “you should believe this person for they are more qualified than you“, is this committing an ‘argument from authority‘ and does this even matter at all?

The first question translates basically to whether or not an academic’s title is optional. On the one hand, they’ve earned the degree/accolade by working pretty damn hard and deserve to be called by it. In 3 years time, when (hopefully) I finish my PhD, I’ll be pretty cheesed off if ‘Dr’ doesn’t get written down in the right places. On the other hand, within science (certainly biology/biochemistry), people don’t much use their titles. At the institute where I work, titles are basically relegated to the telephone directory and a handful of email signatures. They certainly don’t appear on published papers, so why in the press release and press coverage. (As an aside, this is different in the medical world such as the BMJ, The Lancet and NEJM, where author qualifications are published). If they aren’t on the paper itself, I think that says to me that they aren’t needed in the press coverage, but I’ll admit that it’s an open question.

Does the inclusion of these titles confer authority on to whatever quote their holder is giving? I think they probably do. This might not be the intention in science reporting but it has that effect. Why else would people be so keen to use the title Dr, if not to be accepted as an expert in a field?

A better question is whether worrying about presenting a well-qualified expert as an authority figure actually matters? As noble as the Royal Society’s motto might be (nullius in verba – On the word of no-one), equally nobody has time to fact check everything, and qualifications and titles are often a pretty good heuristic for reliability. As Paul Nurse (or perhaps “the Nobel laureate Sir Paul Nurse PRS) recently put to James Delingpole (3m30s), when you go to a doctor, you trust their clinical judgment. You might do your own research and disagree with the consensual position, but that would be a very unusual position to take.

The problem – as there is with all such rules of thumb – is that it is open for exploitation. I alluded earlier to those who ‘pass off’ having more qualifications than they have, often in order to lend their opinion legitimacy, often for monetary gain in the form an endorsement by an expert. Weirdly, this means that every time a title such as Dr is used legitimately, it adds weight to all those using the same title illegitimately. A reverse problem can also occur – someone with a legitimate qualification, in a relevant field presents a maverick view rather than scientific consensus and can be spectacularly wrong, but still taken “on authority”. Think Andrew Wakefield and the disproven MMR/Autism link for an example.

On balance, I’m not sure that there is a right answer to the use of academic titles. To me they are a mark of respect and achievement, not authority and certainly don’t mean that everything the holder says is true and sacrosanct, but I’m not sure that is always how they are taken.

“James Streetley BSc (Hons) MRes“

Supporters at the rally

Yesterday, I attended (and helped marshall, as evidenced here) the rally for an important campaign called Science is Vital. It is a campaign against any proposed cuts to the science budget, when the spending review is published later in the month. I urge anybody who hasn’t already done so to: check out their website which details all the reasons why continued investment in science is a necessity, sign their petition and write to their MP about the campaign. It was a fantastic afternoon and great to meet up with so many people that I’ve heard about or briefly tweeted @ them but never spoken; even if it was under unfortunate circumstances with the prospect of cuts hanging over all our heads.

This campaign is more than just a self-interested group getting antsy about a policy they don’t like. Yes, many of the people who have signed the petition are scientists who are understandably worried about their own careers. I am also worried about what the state of biomedical science will be when I start looking for my first position after finishing my PhD in 3 years time.

This is about more than that though. We are saying

We already don’t have enough money to do all the research we need, with only around 20% of grant proposals finding funding, and yet we greatly ‘punch above our weight’, in almost any metric you pick; number of World-class universities, citations per researcher, papers produced against spend. We can’t get more efficient. We are already at the limit.

And it isn’t the scientists that will be the biggest losers in this. They can move to other world-leading institutions in the US, Japan, India, Australia, Germany and others. It is society that loses out, as we have to become reliant on the work of other countries to fulfil our scientific, technological and engineering needs.

The Campaign for Science and Engineering has plenty more on the economic reasons why science funding is a poor judgment, so if you like facts and figures, head here. The Science is Vital campaign has also collated photos and other reports from the event and the Pod Delusion has podcasts of all the speakers and some reporting from the rally. The rest of my own photos from the event can be found in this Flickr set.