Can Science be just?

 How the System Works

Here let me start with my personal experiences and observations. For several years I was a deputy director of an institute of a university in Poland. At the same time I had undergrad and PhD students under my supervision. Of course I was attached to my students and I was interested in ensuring that, after getting their PhD degrees, they would find jobs. I am sure that my students had fewer problems than other students, this being due to the fact that I was in charge not only of the science education they were receiving, but also of the administration.

Was it just? No, it wasn’t. But I was emotionally invested in the success of my students even if I was taking care to assess their skills objectively. Jobs, positions, promotions – they all depend on recommendations and not just on the objective qualifications of the people involved. The same applies to approving or rejecting papers for publication in scientific journals. Of course each case is different, and the system “works” – to some degree at least. But certainly one cannot say that Science is always just. It is not.

The System Turns Against Mavericks

Another example: For over thirty years I held a position at the above mentioned institution – the University of Wroclaw, Poland. I started as an assistant, then became assistant professor, then a full professor. I have had many students, many academic rewards – both for scientific achievements and for education. I went abroad in 1997 and never went back. One of my colleagues, a professor there, proposed in 2006 that I go to Poland and give a seminar on my work since I had left. I agreed, but the decision about the formal invitation depended on the director of the Institute. In 2006 this position was held by one of my former PhD students, with whom I had joint publications – I thought he was a reasonable younger colleague, even if I was critical about the scientific path that he chose after our collaboration ended. He refused to invite me formally for a talk, the justification for this refusal being: “As you know there are many people in the institute that do not like your involvement in matters that are far from scientific research.” That was his opinion, he himself being an active member of Opus Dei.

The Seal of Opus Dei

 Is it rational? Is it just? Certainly, from a certain point of view, having in mind his career, it was rational. But it was not rational from the point of view of the ideals of Science. And it wasn’t just, unless I deserved to be punished for the very simple reason that I am “not like others” or, perhaps,  because I was critical of his later work.

Independent Thinking Not Allowed!

Scientists who think differently from the herd, those who question the status quo, who dare to fight for values, are ostracized, they are labeled “trouble makers”, gossip about them spreads behind their backs within the all-too-human and foible-driven scientific community. This is irrational and unjust. Yet life is like that. But again, Science suffers.

Justice, Honesty, Objectivity and Peer Review

Justice is closely related to honesty and objectivity. There is a peer-review system to which scientists submit their papers for publication in professional journals. It also applies to books submitted to publishers. The referees are almost always anonymous - the publisher knows who they are, but the person who submits the work does not know and is not supposed to know.

From my own experience as a referee myself, this is an unfortunate practice. While it is supposed to assure objectivity of the refereeing process, the results are often quite the opposite. Anonymous referees tend to use different criteria for their friends, and for those who share their views than they use for those they don’t agree with, don’t like, or wish to gossip about.

As for me, when I receive a paper for reviewing, and when I see some problems with the paper, I abandon my privilege of acting as a referee anonymously, and I ask the editor to put me in contact with the author. It often happens that the author, after some exchange of correspondence, decides to either rewrite or withdraw the paper completely. Of course sometimes I get a new enemy this way, but still I think it is a much better policy than killing papers anonymously.

As I have already mentioned, sometimes the good ideas of less well-known authors are stolen by referees, while the submitted papers are rejected. Such things happen not always because of ill will, they happen because there are automatic and unconscious mechanisms working in us. Let me give two examples from my own experience.

Roman Jackiw: Giving Credit Where it is Due

Roman Jackiw is a well-known physicist, Dirac Medalist, and a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In 1985 Jackiw published a paper [1] (see also [2]) where he essentially replicated the results of a paper I wrote and published ten years before². I wrote to Jackiw and brought his attention to this fact. In 2002 he wrote another paper on the same subject. This time he sent me a copy of his paper and, a nice private note mentioning that this time he has quoted me. I am pretty sure that Jackiw had seen my paper of 1975, but somehow had forgotten about it. Then, ten years later, he thought it was his own idea. Such things happen innocently. Sometimes injustice is corrected, but all too often it is not.

[1] R. Jackiw, ”Three-Cocycle in Mathematics and Physics", Phys. Rev. Lett.54, 159 (1985)

[2] R. Jackiw, "Dirac's magnetic monopoles (again)", International Journal of Modern Physics A Vol. 19, No. supp01, pp. 137-143 (2004) 

[3]  A. Jadczyk, “Magnetic Charge Quantization and Generalized Imprimitivity Systems", Int. J. Theor. Phys.14, 183 (1975)

Coming next: Einstein and Klein, Plagiarism

P.S.1 Got an email from Kaca Bradonijc. She writes to me that she shifted into teaching and integrating her interest in physics and art. That's what I thought. Physics research is probably competitive and unjust  for sensitive people. It is also often boring and  unrewarding ("Publish or Perish" syndrome).