I’m still thinking about this thing my undergrad mentee said to me ages ago about how come journal club is so hostile and critical, and shouldn’t we strive to create a more positive environment
and I don’t think we should, but it was hard to articulate why
for background, Academic Journal Club is when a dozen-ish scientists take a look at some freshly released research and argue about if it’s any good or not.
generally this involves a lot of nitpicking and suspicion.
science runs almost entirely on trust. it’s laughably easy to fabricate studies, and there’s big incentives (clout, $, mainly $)
independent replication is great but sometimes a result took 5 years to get and there’s 2 people in the world who can make the technique work…
so naturally, as we have no choice but to believe our fellows are honest, scientists are all skeptical bastards
plus, even with perfect ethics, science is HARD. sometimes the best analysis you can do just ends up being…wrong.
i remember an article breathlessly declaring that 75% of research can’t be replicated and therefore science is DOOMED
and as a biologist I was like “yeah dude we have already taken that into account, I barely believe 25% of the shit I did with my own two hands”
which brings us back to journal club. the reason it’s so harsh is because we’re doing our very, very best to use all of our combined expertise to pick out the good 25%.
because if you base your research on previous work that turns out to be bullshit, that is a big hassle
we also use journal club to teach; reading papers critically is both how you learn the known facts in your field and how you build essential bullshit-detecting skills
on the leading edge of science there’s no textbooks; it’s all squabbling over beers about dr liu’s new stuff
(and yes, sometimes you have beef with dr liu because she disagrees with your lab’s pet theory about stem cells and perhaps there is some trash talk)
my mentee critiqued journal club from a sort of social-justice-y perspective — isn’t this going to drive away students who aren’t aggressive, loud, competitive, and favor confident white dudes who are more likely to have those traits
wouldn’t it be more inclusive to be gentle?
which is a valid critique; not everyone is going to learn well in the midst of “dude actually if you look at figure 3C they didn’t include a scale bar and that means they’re trying to trick us”
and yet…every scientist MUST learn to be critical. we MUST ask “what if it’s wrong”
“what if a person I like is wrong”
“what if someone in power is wrong”
“what if /I’m/ wrong”
those aren’t comfortable questions. ten scientists in a room aren’t going to agree (ever) about the answers and boy howdy do we all have emotions about our positions
i don’t know if it’s possible to make this kind of exercise conflict-free.
maybe I want to be making the case for “I respectfully disagree”
journal club, for all of its cantankerous nature (and despite my tendency to read the paper being discussed as it’s being discussed rather than ahead of time), taught me that respecting someone’s ideas doesn’t mean taking them at face value
I think it’s important to be able to look at something, say “I care enough to figure out if I think this is true or not,” and have that process of attacking an idea from all sides come out as a net positive, whether it holds up to the scrutiny or not
postscript: questions I ask when I read basically anything after 9 years of journal club
- does the author have motivation for bias
- what’s the author’s expertise, do they have enough to make these claims
- is this sample biased
- are you selling something
- who is the audience
- do I know enough to evaluate this
- is there a possible alternate explanation
- will this still be accurate if it’s repeated at scale
- what was that survey design like
- when was this written
- what do experts think about this author
- has it been repeated
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shower thought: ling rui/lfn dubcon + fucking machine, she’s launching a new discreet product line and asks if lr will help her test it, he says yes without asking for details, and then wakes up bound wrist and ankle to the bedposts with lfn adjusting a machine between his legs
he struggles, she reminds him he promised to help with her new product. she has to know it works for men as well, she can’t sell it without thorough testing and it’s awk to find willing male trial users so he should hold still and be ready to fill out a satisfaction survey later
lfn knows that lr isn’t ready to be intimate with her yet so she promises not to touch him any more than is required! the starting attachment isn’t that big so she can lube it up and squeeze it in without even touching his asshole with her fingers, no problem 😙
time for me to PROCESS an IMAGE, if you know what i mean
the image is a hand on SOMEBODY'S throat and the process is gonna be 🐱/🐶 breathplay bullshit that's gonna get extremely nsfw extremely fast
first week or so of filming: z is hot, bored, tired of trying to bully his fellow cast into being social humans, and nursing a crush that is, to all appearances, gonna get FIRMLY turned down if he voices it.
on the heels of a breakup and covid-induced isolation, z's been really feeling the loss of high impact sports as an energy outlet. he's also missing interesting sex. his own hand is fine and all, but it's not exactly /inspiring/
it's been a hard fucking week. what if 🐱 woke up with a surprise pussy one morning and went directly to ask 🐶 what to do with it
(even though G doesn't know the first thing about vag, given, you know, it's not a place he really ventures)
we are not explaining how this happened. it just did. Z's alarm goes off and he stumbles into the bathroom to piss and -- huh. HUH! why is his dick gone?
first reaction: feel around his crotch to see if it's just hiding (it's not)
second reaction: oooooooooh that's new
third reaction: grabbing his chest to see if he has boobs too (no more than usual)