Science: Being first is not always the case
Instead of competing with my competitors, I invited them to contribute data to my paper so that no one got scooped. I figured out who might have data relating to my work (and who could get scooped) using public resources and then sent them an email. Now that I have done this, I am thinking: Why the hell isn’t everyone doing this? Why do we waste taxpayer money on ego battles between rival scientists? Usually in science you get first place or you get nothing, but that is a really inefficient model when you think about it, especially in terms of the consequences for people’s careers and training, which the public pays for.
Unfortunately agenda of being first has created a unhealthy environment for scientific research leading to long term inhibition of human acquired knowledge, in some cases the impact can be more than two decades. From the discovery of the DNA double helix to AIDS research, we have seen lot of the problems associated with the competitive model of science. For instance
The story of the double helix is awash with might-have beens. Every participant had cause for regret about a blunder made or an opportunity missed.
May be story could have been something else if Wilkins might had collaborated sensibly with Rosalind Franklin, or Rosalind Franklin herself might had a better interactions with Crick and others. Competition makes people to work harder, to work better, to work efficiently but then we may be competing for all wrong reasons. It is more likely that collaborative minds working on a common problem will deliver faster results. In scenarios of major crisis such as worldwide spread of influenza when people are dying without a proper medicine we can not afford the luxury of being first in science.
What we really need is to maintain a optimal compete/collaborate ratio or mix. David Weinberger writes
And yet, the mix seems wrong. The competitive model made more sense when it was more difficult to share data anyway. The collaborative model is proving itself in unexpected places. It’s clear that a mixed model works — some competitive, some collaborative — but it’s not clear how far we can push the slider toward the collaborative side. My hunch, and my hope, is that it’s way further than we would have thought, especially since experience shows that the satisfaction of being recognized as a continuously generous member of a network can at least equal that of authors of intermittent, officially-sanctioned publications.
2 Responses to “Science: Being first is not always the case”
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Great read. I just started grad school, and definitely see the prominent role / importance of being the first to get things published. It would be encouraging for future scientists and researchers to have greater collaboration opportunities; however, the way reward system is set-up, it is hard to highlight the advantage when one is getting started in the career. If rewards of collaboration were highlighted throughout the college years (if not more, at least, same amount as the idea of being first is advertised), I think a shift may be visible.