Colin Firth and the Slippery Slope of Scientific Authorship

Colin Firth CBE...PhD? Nicogenin (Flickr)

I’ve been in research for about seven years now. But if you search my name in PubMed, precisely one scientific paper will pop up—a manuscript published this past spring from my current group. I’m pretty far down on the author list, which reflects my contribution relative to my colleagues on this particular paper. While I helped with some of the writing, the data collection and most of the analyses were performed by others.

As you snuggle by the fire this holiday season to watch Love Actually, you should know that you’re also viewing the work of a published academic neuroscientist. That’s right—another PubMed search reveals that actor Colin Firth is cited on a 2011 brain imaging study in the journal Current Biology. 

And it doesn’t take an insecure graduate student like me to accuse Mr. Firth of not pulling all-nighters in the laboratory.

Authorship in science is tricky. In some laboratories, it’s a bit of a taboo topic. Ask your average scientist if they’ve witnessed abuses in authorship, and they’ll likely be brimming with stories for you—from people being “gifted” an authorship they don’t truly deserve, to hard-working (often junior) scientists being wrongly shafted by their colleagues. These stories are rarely discussed among labmates, and almost never between junior and senior investigators.

And then there are the extremes, like the 2001 Nature paper on the sequencing of the human genome boasting 2,900 authors and the 2012 paper detailing the Higgs boson, which cites a whopping 3,171 co-authors. Where exactly do we draw the line between who has made a meaningful contribution to a project and who is better suited for the “Acknowledgments” section?

Exposure to Different Forms of Violence Affects Kids’ Sleep Differently

I have a guest post today with the British Psychological Society's Research Digest blog. The piece is based on a new study in the journal Sleep Medicine showing that children exposed to different forms of violence in their community are plagued with different types of disturbed sleep.

Two particular types of violence stood out to researchers in terms of their association with sleep disturbance. Controlling for relevant confounders (such as age, gender and family income), individuals who were physically assaulted had a shortened sleep duration (by 35 minutes on average), exhibited almost three times as much wake time after sleep onset, and 6 per cent lower sleep efficiency than kids who did not experience physical assault. These effects were also seen three months later at follow-up. 

On the other hand, children who witnessed a homicide had twice as much wake time after sleep onset, greater night-to-night variability in sleep duration, and more self-reported sleep problems than kids who had not witnessed a homicide. These findings, however, did not persist at follow-up.

Read more of the post here!

#SfN14 Day 5: Reflections on a Neuroscient-astic Week

This is the final post in my series on the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting. It's been fun! You can read other posts in this series here. I live-tweeted some sessions @GainesOnBrains. Re-live the experience by exploring the hashtag #SfN14.

Taking some time away from the hubbub (and
warmth, apparently) to sightsee.

What a week. Neuroscience 2014 was completely overwhelming, exhausting, inspiring, invigorating, and fruitful (I'm kind of sad that last one didn't end in "-ing"):

• There were over 30,500 people in attendance on any given day, with over 15,000 abstracts presented as posters or oral presentations.
• I don't think I attended a single talk that didn't have a line of latecomers waiting to get in.
• ...and I saw Eric-freaking-Kandel strolling around casually in his signature bowtie while I sat on the steps waiting to meet some friends for dinner.

But I think my biggest "takeaways" from the meeting weren't necessarily from the scientific sessions. There is so, so much more that goes on behind the scenes at scientific conferences, and thanks to its titanic proportions, Neuroscience 2014 was certainly no exception.

Here are 3 things I learned from #SfN14:

#SfN14 Day 4: “It’s Not the Stress that Kills Us; It’s Our Reaction to It” –Hans Selye (Theme E)

This post is part of my series on the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting. You can read other posts in this series here. I’m also live-tweeting some sessions @GainesOnBrains. Join the conversation at #SfN14.

Day 4 winding down. You wanna know what a stressful situation is?
Being surrounded by 30,500+ people for five days. Whew!

For the most part, I like to think I handle stressful situations fairly well. I take a few deep breaths, tell myself the stressor is really not that big of a deal, then go find something else to do—like exercise or knitting.

The fact of the matter still holds, though: I’m a ruminator. As much as I try to escape, I can’t stop thinking about it if something’s bothering me. It affects my attention, what I eat, and how I sleep, to name a few.

The worst part is that all of this rumination is probably terrible for my cardiovascular health in the long-run. I try to adopt my positive coping mechanisms…but am I actually doomed?

Susan K. Wood of the University of South Carolina spoke on the role of stress and neuroinflammation in not only the susceptibility to depressive symptoms, but also how these symptoms translate to risks for cardiovascular disease. Wood was one of several speakers on Tuesday’s symposium focusing on resilience to stress.

#SfN14 Day 3: How to Effectively Communicate Your Science to the Public

This post is part of my series on the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting. You can read other posts in this series here. I’m also live-tweeting some sessions @GainesOnBrains. Join the conversation at #SfN14.

My positively GORGEOUS new cell scarf from Artologica (Michele Banks)!
Check out her Etsy store for this and other incredible art!

Talk about exhaustion. I didn’t get a chance to write yesterday because I was too busy meeting Internet friends at #sfnbanter. In case anyone was wondering, all the people on Twitter are real!

In sleep research, we have this term called “social jetlag.” It’s aptly named. I’m feelin’ it big time this morning.

Yesterday morning, I attended the professional development workshop called “How to Effectively Communicate Your Science to the Public.” Panelists included science communicator Elaine Snell, AAAS Director of Public Engagement Tiffany Lohwater, author Jane Nevins, and Columbia University professor and NeuWrite host Stuart Firestein.

Here are some tips and tricks that particularly stood out to me:

#SfN14 Day 2: On the Origin of Sex Differences in the Brain (Theme E)

This post is part of my series on the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting. You can read other posts in this series here. I’m also live-tweeting some sessions @GainesOnBrains. Join the conversation at #SfN14.

This is what a bunch of hungry neuroscientists look
like when it's 5pm and the poster session is over.

One of my mentors likes to occasionally tease me when I bring him data: “You’ve discovered something new. Men and women are different.”

He kids, of course. Male and female brains are different in funny and fascinating ways we don’t quite understand.  My poster (which I presented this afternoon) was on gender differences in the loss of slow-wave sleep across adolescence. I just had a paper accepted (today, actually!) on gender differences in some aspects of sleep apnea. (I could actually probably build a pretty successful career on studying gender differences in sleep alone, actually. If I wanted to.)

So I was very excited to attend Dr. Margaret (Peg) McCarthy’s talk on the origin of sex differences in the brain earlier this afternoon.

Let me get two things out of the way before I begin. First of all, I really admired Dr. McCarthy, who hails from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, for how she spoke about her past and present colleagues, giving credit where credit was due to previous labmates and graduate students. You don’t realize how few people do that until someone does it explicitly.

Secondly, McCarthy covered the history of research in sex differences in the most genius way possible: a parody of The Big Bang Theory theme song. Seriously—it was golden.

The simplistic view of biological sex differences goes a little something like this: an undifferentiated group of cells destined to become the gonads will, by default, be ovaries. But it’s the influence of the Y chromosome that gives half of our population testes. In this way, too, the “female brain” is the “default brain.”

#SfN14 Day 1: Tackling Difficult Mentor/Mentee Discussions

This post is part of my series on the 2014 Society for Neuroscience annual meeting. You can read other posts in this series here. I’m also live-tweeting some sessions @GainesOnBrains. Join the conversation at #SfN14.

Wearing lots of hats—er, ribbons—at this meeting.

Greetings from D.C.! It’s nearly midnight on Saturday and my stomach is exploding from this chocolate torte I decided would be a good idea after a giant plate full of ravioli.

It wasn’t a good idea, though. It was a GREAT idea.

This afternoon, I attended life coach Dr. Samantha Sutton’s interactive talk called "Mentor-Mentee Interaction: How to Have a Difficult Conversation." In the past, Dr. Sutton has presented this as a 10-week, 4-credit course at Stanford. I was pleasantly surprised to see what I believe were an equal number of students, postdocs, and professors in attendance.

When I typically think of preparing for a tough talk, a student approaching a professor comes to mind. My preparation strategy for things like this is usually: 1. Prepare what you’ll say; 2. Be disappointed by mentor’s response; and 3. Not know how to respond because I didn’t prepare for this response, and because I lack tact and self-confidence. Knowing I’m not alone, and that PIs struggle with this too, was reassuring to me.

Kudos to everyone for realizing that relationships in the workplace—and especially among extremely competitive and career-driven scientists—are really, really complex.

Gearing Up for #SfN14!

The letters "SfN" have become so ubiquitous in my world that I actually forget that most people don't know what they stand for!

Established in 1969 (happy 45th birthday!), SfN stands for the Society for Neuroscience, the world's largest organization of neuroscience researchers, with over 40,000 members representing 90 countries and 130 chapters worldwide.

Each year, SfN hosts the Neuroscience meeting, a huge (yes, HUGE) academic conference in a major city. 

This year's meeting, Neuroscience 2014, is in Washington, D.C., beginning this Saturday, November 15 and concluding on Wednesday, November 19.

Believe it or not, this'll be my first time attending.

Best of all, beyond all the diverse talks spanning research, outreach, and professional development I've got scribbled down in my planner, I have a few more things to look forward to.

This is Why There are So Many Defibrillators in Casinos

Gamblers beware. Nadavspi (Wikimedia Commons)

My brief experience in a casino was pretty typical, I’d say.

Flashing lights. The faint smell of booze. Not much chatter among patrons. The sounds of dice rolling, machines buzzing, and coins clanking. The same butts inhabiting the same stools for hours on end. Everything you see on TV or in the movies is fairly accurate, to my untrained eye.

But one thing I didn’t notice in either the movies or real life, likely due in part to the gaudy décor, was the abundance of defibrillators lining the walls.

While nearly as common as water fountains and restrooms in public spaces like schools, malls, and airports, automated external defibrillators (AEDs) have more recently taken up residence in a place that probably needs it most of all: the casino.

Why Do We Find it So Hard to Write About Ourselves?

Throes of Creation by Leonid Pasternak. Wikimedia Commons

For many students right now, an overwhelming mountain stands between them and the Most Wonderful Time of the Year. In this case, I’m not talking about Christmas—rather, I’m referring to the end of the Application Season.

Across the country, high school and college students are feverishly applying to institutions of higher education—doling out, on average, nine applications each. In order to afford the inevitable financial burdens to come, many are also toiling over scholarship applications in parallel. With competition for college admission at an all-time high, surely the perfect personal statement will make students stand out among their straight-A counterparts with glowing teacher recommendations.

But students aren't the only ones to bear the burden of seemingly endless applications; after all, the job market is tough too. More often than not, career-seekers find themselves face-to-face with blank computer screens in an attempt to pen one short masterpiece: the dreaded cover letter.

We’re experts on ourselves. So why do we find it so difficult to write about ourselves?

TEDMED Day 3: The Nature of People, the Peculiar, and the Pint-Sized

Bob Carey knows that laughter is the best medicine.

I was sad on the last day because a.) it was the last day, and b.) it started an hour earlier than Day 1 and by this point I was exhausted. (Exhaustion is the curse of the introvert who tries to put oneself out of their comfort zone by surrounding oneself with a thousand strangers for 10 hours a day). But as you can see from the picture on the right, it's clear that my spirits were lifted by midday.

Session 7: "Human Nature Inside and Out." This was a very diverse session addressing not just how can improve upon patient care by understanding human nature, but also how we can turn around our natural tendencies in the face of adversity.

The session opened with Julian Treasure, chairman of The Sound Agency, which advises businesses on how to design their buildings with sound in mind. Treasure gave some upsetting statistics: hospital noise has doubled in magnitude in the past 40 years; it's 12X louder during the day and 8X louder at night than recommended by the World Health Organization; and loudness is the #1 complaint of hospital patients in 2013. Treasure suggests hiring acoustic engineers, employing vibrating pagers and silent trolleys and footwear, and masking sound with white noise or music. Next, architect and scientist Mariana Figueiro spoke of the range of afflictions to which we're vulnerable when we don't get appropriate amounts of (blue!) light during the right time of day. Jeff Karp then spoke about his brilliant "bioinspired" technology, including how imitating spider webs improved adhesive tape for premature babies and how barbs, like on porcupine quills, are much better for the skin than tradition staples. Next, anesthesiologist Emery Brown gave us a primer on general anesthesia (which is not sleep!). It's actually, he says, a "drug-induced reversible coma," and different anesthetics have different signature EEG patterns. Neurosurgeon and researcher Uzma Samadani then spoke about her company Oculogica, which creates eye-tracking diagnostic technology to detect concussions and other brain injuries that do not show up on imaging. Finally, Debra Jarvis, the "irreverent reverend," spoke on the importance of finding meaning from crappy situations. She told us about a man with cancer who would go for his chemotherapy treatments alone. When Jarvis asked why he didn't bring anyone, he said he didn't have any friends. Once cancer-free, he vowed to find the meaning of friendship; when Jarvis attended his Christmas Eve party later that year, his house was packed to the brim.

TEDMED Day 2: Hijacking, Keeping Mum, and the Importance of R&R

I was particularly excited about Day 2. Not only did this day include some of the speakers that I was most looking forward to, but the session topics were relevant, I found, to both medical practice and the scientific method.

Progress on Andrew Rae's mural by Day 2.

Session 4: "Stealing Smart." This session described how one biological system can hijack another to assert its effects—and how we humans can take advantage of that for our own needs.

The session opened with cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz, who observed that vets were often treating animals with similar afflictions as humans—even mental illness. Natterson-Horowitz argues that studying behaviors and conditions like self-harm, infant neglect, and stress-induced heart failure in animals can improve our treatments in humans. Next up, economist Ramanan Laxminarayan discussed the worldwide problem of antibiotic resistance. Like the "drill, baby, drill mentality," we find alternatives when other antibiotics stop working; Laxminarayan proposes solutions comparable like emissions taxes and green energy subsidies. Drew Lakatos took the stage next, citing that 1/4th of people over age 65 who break their hip die within the next year. Lakatos created ActiveProtect, a sensor technology one wears around the pelvis and deploys like an airbag when it detects atypical human motion. We were then treated to the soulful sounds of jazz trumpeter Dominick Farinacci, who, in addition to his musical skill, shared stories of his mother's cancer treatment and playing for hospice patients. Neuroscientist Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute of Drug Abuse, spoke next, discussing her work on depletion of the dopamine D2 receptor in both drug addiction and obesity. Like "driving without brakes," she says, these conditions are not simply problems of self-control, as this dismisses the idea that a region of the brain is chronically malfunctioning. Last up, journalist Leslie Morgan Steiner told the story of Rhonda and Gerry, an infertile couple who chose surrogacy in India, which was 1/10th of the cost that it would have been in the U.S. Despite being so stigmatized here—by conservatives and feminists alike—the business is thriving abroad thanks to "medical tourism." We were lucky to be introduced to Rhonda, Gerry, and their three little miracles onstage.