An interesting ethical dilemma has emerged again today.
I received a request from a European funding agency to review a proposal (it's a 5-pager with a pretty big budget requested, which made me want to pack up and move back to Europe stat, but that's perhaps material for a different post). The proposal is from a PI I know superficially; the group does very good work and is quite large.
Here's the issue: they are getting into the subfield I work in and the proposal is exactly on the same type of stuff that I am currently working on with my postdoc, a couple of students, and a few collaborators. On some of the problems they propose to explore we already have paper drafts. But, the group is large and I am sure they can move pretty quickly into whichever direction they choose, which does make them serious competition.
So the obvious question is: how does one -- if at all -- evaluate such a proposal?
Option 1: Recuse myself as I have a conflict of interest. A downside is that I am probably one of the most qualified persons around to evaluate this proposal for technical merit precisely because I currently do closely related work.
Option 2: Simply evaluate the proposal as objectively as possible, focusing on the technical merit, originality, novelty, etc., and try really, really hard to put aside all consideration of competition/scooping. Keep repeating "They do good science, I will evaluate the science. I will be objective, I will be objective..."
Option 3: Kill the proposal and never think about it again. It's nice to be able to eliminate competition by cutting their lifeline! *mwahahahaha*
Whenever something like this happens, I always do either 1 (if I really feel I would be negatively predisposed to a paper or a proposal simply because I think the person is a jerk or I do feel we are in too direct a competition) or 2 (when I feel that I am able to be objective and do not have strong negative feelings about the proposer). I think 1 and 2 are the only ethical things to do.
But, sometimes you receive these irrationally hostile and largely unfounded proposal or paper reviews. I know several people in my field who are notorious as someone who will kill your work just because they can, and they seem not to have any qualms about doing so regardless of the proposal's or paper's merit. I am pretty sure I can identify one proposal reviewer on my recent declined NSF grant who has always gone out of his way to be an ass to me, and is universally known as quite dangerous. So perhaps I am being a dumb and naive Goody Two-Shoes and it really is eat or be eaten, so I should start wielding the bloody sword of rejection at anything or anyone that even remotely steps on my turf?
Have you ever killed a proposal or a paper just because you could? All of these actions can be justified based on a lack of technical merit -- there is no such thing as a perfect proposal or paper -- but, if you are being honest, have you ever really, truly done it primarily in order to derail someone, because, underneath it all, you felt threatened and protected your turf? Even if you have never done so, how often have you wondered, at least in the back of your mind, whether perhaps you should do it?
Of course, this post begs for a poll:
Please be honest. I know enough people in science who are complete and utter selfish assholes that I will be deeply disappointed if all I get are hypocritical responses such as "I would never EVER dream of doing such an unethical thing!" Even good people dream of doing horrible things, but luckily most people don't act on their worst impulses.
16 comments:
This is a really complicated issue. In my field, our work is often so wrapped up on context (community setting, for example) that it would be hard to have an out and out "scoop." Nonetheless, I recognize that this is an issue in STEM.
I'm confident that the best response here is #1 or #2, but which of those is difficult to determine. Quite honestly, I think this depends on your personality and whether you think you can really pull off #2.
If the roles were reversed, and you were the investigator who wrote this proposal, how would want the potential reviewer to handle it?
I think you should excuse yourself. There is just too much unconscious bias even if you try to be objective. I know for sure people do 3 on papers and grants because it happened to me multiple times. I however found out who they were in some cases, esp people who tried to kill my work when I was younger and they ahead of me. As tempting as it is to retaliate, I can't play that game and I excuse myself from those people's work as a reviewer. In my experience option 3 killers don't get too far without being found out anyway. Everybody knows.
I have never been in this situation for proposals (simply because I am not 'senior' enough to evaluate them) but I was at least tempted to kill some papers when I received them for review. This feeling was particularly strong because I had made quite a bad experience with peer-review with my very first paper which was killed by a referee who just gave a one sentence report 'the simulations are not convincing' (true story, I know that the editor also sucked for letting this happen, especially since it was for a high-IF journal where you would expect a certain standard for referee report whether they are positive or negative). Anyway, when I was then for the first time in the opposite position my immediate thought was to do the same. But then I actually read that particular paper, found it quite good and also realized that I would only harm a poor PhD student who put in a lot of work for this. So I finally settled for option 2 which I have kept doing ever since. It's true that it has crossed my mind to use the power to prevented other young scientists in my field from getting papers accepted in good journals (i.e. indirectly 'improving' my publication list over theirs) but that just never felt right...
I would go with #1.
I am reminded of a recent article on cheating in the NYTimes. I do wonder a bit about the overall pattern of behavior in these types of situations. Would it be best to attempt to err on the side of ethical, or aim for the mean? For example, your options there leave out a few possibilities also in a ethical grey area. Such as agree to review it but take your sweet time, while moving a quickly as possible on the obvious research fronts. I may just be very cynical, but I bet that sort of "I didn't cheat per se but took advantage of the situation" thing happens all the time.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/17/weekinreview/17chump.html
If I were in your shoes and chose to review it, I'd try to imagine I had to do the work myself. Would I want to do it the way they propose? What would I change? I think that's the only way I could stay objective.
Like Anon #1, real scoops are rare in my discipline because most of research is unique to a field site. Not sure what I'd actually do. I admit taking a long time is tempting, but that definitely seems unethical. Can you read it before you excuse yourself? :)
There's no way I could pull off #2. So I would do #1. However if you are the best qualified person to review it, then doing #1 is not so far from #3, since another reviewer that doesn't "get" the proposal as well as you do is not likely to give as good a review as you would.
This is why one-sided blind reviewing is a baaad thing. I would do #1.
I would recuse myself (#1) in those cases where what I really wanted to do is sink the proposal (#3). The benefit of choosing #1, aside from behaving in a more ethical manner, is that you don't have to write the review... In the case you mention, though, it might be worthwhile mentioning your draft papers when you explain your conflict of interest.
#2 is self-flattery. I do #2 with some papers, but it's not parsimonious to believe we can pull it off that well, especially for big grants. #1 is the way to go. #1 also helps you avoid groupthink, which is a big part of the scientific method at the population level.
I'd probably choose #1. I'm sure there are other qualified people who can review the proposal who don't have a vested interest in its outcome.
In the case I was really strongly tempted to do #3, I would choose #1. Otherwise, I agree with Namnezia, since #1 could be the same as #3 under certain conditions, and would try to do #2. If I have personal negative feelings about the PI already, and the research is in competition as mine, I would choose #1, since that is 2 strikes against an impartial review (and I really, really don't want to pull a #3, no matter how tempting it is).
If the proposal is bad, you obviously do 3.
If it is good, I say give it an excellent and help them have it funded. This may sound strange but, I have become convinced that competition from others serves your best interest in the long run. It's never a good thing to be the only person, or the only group, working on a specific problem. You want others to cite your work, hire your students and postdocs, send you students and postdocs, review your proposals positively, nominate you for prizes, etc.
"the group does very good work and is quite large."
"they are getting into the subfield I work in and the proposal is exactly on the same type of stuff that I am currently working on"
"some of the problems they propose to explore we already have paper drafts"
It sounds like you think they will be doing good work and will be succesful. Unless of course you think your subfield is a waste of time and your draft papers are all lies.
Anon at 12:34: One could flip your argument and say that, since they are proposing to do what GMP is currently working on or has already done, there is no need to duplicate the effort and the proposal should not be funded on account of being old news.
I never understood why "recuse myself but contact them and get a collaboration going so as to avoid scoopage to the degree possible" is never considered as an answer.
I agree with Becca. I'm just a trainee, but would it be unreasonable to send an email like the following:
"Professor Famous,
This is GMP from MyU. Recently I was asked to review your grant on polynomial-time solutions to the Traveling Salesman problem. My group has recently developed an algorithm in nlogn time, based on similar principles; we are planning to submit the manuscript to the Journal of Fantastic Results by the end of the month.
Depending on how far you've taken this work already, I would be willing to discuss publishing back-to-back.
I have recused myself from reviewing this particular grant; however, I wish you the best of luck. To my knowledge, no one else has thought to apply this method to create world peace and flying pink unicorns, and the field would greatly benefit from these results.
Yours, GMP"
This way, the other professor saves face (and months of work), everything is above-board, and you build goodwill towards a potential collaboration.
I don't tend to play dirty (even to the limited extent that I can, as a young'un). Not because I'm not selfish, but because I'm an arrogant SOB. I think my subfield is awesome, and should get more money (after all, it was awesome enough for me to choose it). I think there's room for everyone (some problems have One Right Answer, but I avoid those). And I think I can defend my turf; violators will be scooped like Baskin-Robbins in July, no subterfuge necessary. Because that's how I roll.
Also, pragmatically, you can't sabotage everyone. For every one you personally sink, there's another hundred that are just as good. Better to build a reputation as someone who can be trusted; that way, you're more likely to get the help, opportunities, and collaborations that will move you forward.
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