both ways is the only way i want it*

it’s halftime in america.  or at least it’s halftime in game five of the clippers-rockets series.  although i had planned to root for the clippers, mostly because they managed to eliminate the spurs and the holder of the best nickname ever,** i am finding it hard to resist james harden’s mohawk/beard combo.  clippers or rockets?  so hard to choose.

this is a common problem for me.  i like to have it both ways.  i am a personality psychologist and a social psychologist. i’m an atheist who is baptized and had my first communion, but if anyone in iran asks, i’m muslim. i think eating meat is mostly wrong but i just ate a bbq cheeseburger with pepperjack cheese.  i am vast. i contain multitudes. (and now also a bbq cheeseburger).

so i’m here to plead for two things that might, on the face of it, seem contradictory: more civility and more criticism. 

more and more of our scientific dialogue is happening in informal settings such as blogs and social media. this has many upsides.  but as eli finkel pointed out on the facebook ISCON page, it's important to think about the norms for these interactions.

more civility

in our formal outlets (i.e., journals), i think our field is unique in its extremely civil tone, even in critiques, failures to replicate, etc., and also in the tone of our reviews.  from what i gather from people in other fields, we are a really respectful bunch.  i like that about us.

the informal outlets are more of a mixed bag.  i see a lot of very dispassionate, sober analysis.  but i also see some snarkiness, especially on twitter. my twitter activity has mostly dwindled to werner twertzog retweets because the intellectual discussions feel a bit like a dodgeball drill.  maybe that’s fine – we all need a place to let off steam.  but if we want social media to be a place for serious intellectual discussion, we have to treat each other as competent and honest actors.  if we don’t have that foundation, why bother debating?

i hesitate to even bring up the civility issue, because i worry that it is my own anxiety that makes me scared of participating in these more heated discussions.  but i am using my expert interpersonal perception skills to infer a pattern in who does and does not participate,*** and i don’t think i’m alone.  if we want to draw more people into the conversation, civility is key.  

more criticism

by civility, i don't mean agreement.  the best intellectual debates are between people who vehemently disagree, but have great respect for each other.  we need to separate politeness from agreement.  in some domains of life it might be impolite for me not to believe you, but in science skepticism is vital - it is not a sign of disrespect.  we need to stop being so sensitive about critiquing each other’s research.  it should not take guts to question a phenomenon, to say you think a theory or hypothesis is wrong, to critique the methods or conclusions drawn by your colleagues. disagreement should be commonplace. we all read things we don’t believe. i sometimes read six impossible things before breakfast.****

and yet i find myself biting my tongue because of how criticism is perceived in our field.  saying you don’t believe a finding, or a theory, is often seen as rude.  that needs to change.  we need to be able to debate, disagree, critique, and then go to happy hour like civilized people. i might be totally fooling myself, but if you wanted to buy me a beer and trash one of my papers, i think i would be ok with that.******

conclusion

we need to draw a sharp distinction between scientific criticism and the more personal kind.  i think we all know where that line is, because we observe it very well in professional contexts. we know how to disagree without disrespecting.  it's practically our job description. 

we also know that being skeptical is not impolite - it is the heart and soul of the scientific process. we teach it to our students and we practice it all the time.  but for some reason once a paper is in print we act like it's blasphemy to be critical of it. let's get over that. no finding should be sacred.

update

oh my god the clippers are dying.  i hope big baby doesn’t start crying.

 
werner herzog

 
* title shamelessly lifted from maile meloy’s excellent short story collection. which i read all of.  and i don’t even like short stories.  i like my stories long.

** what’s a girl gotta do to get called the big fundamental? (also, tim duncan has a social psychology publication with mark leary.  true fact.) (also, i’m partial to doc rivers, but i do think the whole father-son combo is kind of weird.)

*** i'm a professional. don't try this at home.

**** when you live on the west coast, there is a lot of stuff to catch up on when you wake up in the morning.  like the psych science table of contents.*****

***** sorry psych science.  you don’t deserve that, not any more than many other journals.  plus you've done a lot of good things.  please don’t reject the manuscript that we just submitted to your very fine journal.

****** especially if it’s a west coast IPA.

 

Comments

[kadesoto]

It surprises me how nasty some folks are on their blogs. Not civil at all. Would you talk to people in person like that? Just because one's blogging doesn't mean they can't be professional. Great thoughts.

[Stephanie]

Really excellent thoughts. I always read your blog but this is the first time I've commented. Two cheers for civility and skepticism.

[Lee Jussim]

Simine,

Great post, as usual. Incivility is both a real problem ("shut up," "calm down," "shameless little bullies,") and a problem of perception. If I say, "Simine, you are wrong about X," I know you -- YOU will react as if we are having a discussion, and you will calmly explain why you think you are right. You will probably end up moving me, at least a little, in your direction. However, in my experience, you are the exception rather than the rule.

I blogged about the difficulty of saying, "X is wrong" a while ago. Interested readers can go here to find it:
https://pigee.wordpress.com/2014/07/09/is-it-offensive-to-declare-a-social-psychological-claim-or-conclusion-wrong/

The problem is that many of our colleagues treat suggestions that their cherished beliefs are wrong as personal attacks, or as platforms for circling the wagons to "eject" the verboten claim from "acceptable" science.

And if any reader of this blog has any doubts about how hard it is to point out evidence suggesting that social scientists' cherished beliefs may not always hold true, I strongly recommend this:

http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/2009academicfreedom.pdf

Civility is truly important because it creates a safe space for actual intellectual diversity and disagreement, which itself is crucial for limiting the science-damaging effects of politically-motivated groupthink on politicized and polarizing topics.

So many of our colleagues claim to support diversity -- and as long as that means demographic categories, they generally mean it. But as soon as it means intellectual diversity -- embracing people with ideas very different than their own -- not so much. Which strikes me as ironic because one of the arguments I have often heard for demographic diversity goes like this: "People from different backgrounds will bring different ideas and experiences to the table, and that is good for all of us."

Great! I agree. So let's put that premium on people with different ideas and experiences! (in addition to, not instead of, demographics).

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jussim/PoliticalDiversityBBS.docx

[Sam Schwarzkopf]

Great post, I totally agree. Maybe I should try to agree in an uncivil way to restore balance to the universe?

A while ago I wrote a blog post on this topic trying to suggest ways in which to improve the civility and productivity of these kinds of debates. I have no idea if the ideas work in practice but I don't see many other people trying: https://neuroneurotic.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/ten-ish-simple-rules-for-scientific-disagreements/

I spent most of 2014 arguing that science needs skepticism otherwise we end up with even more incredible findings (or even credible-but-wrong ones). Perhaps one of the biggest problems with this is that all too often and too easily we end up viewing our theories (and the findings supporting them) as our brain children and we get unduly attached to them.

We should instead encourage and train ourselves (and our students) to engage in strong inference in which we adjudicate between different hypotheses. This is perhaps often quite hard to do in our field but not impossible. Instead of seeking to prove some cool idea we should try to pick the more likely explanation by trying to disprove all of the options we can think of.

Of course, the culture of high impact publishing is partly to blame for this sorry state of affairs. I honestly don't know how this can be changed unless we just abandon the use of journals altogether (or at least remove the decision about where to publish completely from the authors).