By Daniel Tarade
Academic science is hierarchical. Atop stacks of senior scientists, research associates, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, technicians, assistants, and undergraduate students sits the principal investigator. The PI. They alone receive the awards. Their solitary name adorns funding applications. More practically, it is the PI that receives a living wage and job security. Yet, the PI is also the individual who does the least. Students and technicians and postdoctoral fellows make the majority of empirical observations while labouring for minimum wage (or less). Everybody gives lip service to science being a team effort, but almost every means by which people can be compensated for their contributions disproportionately benefits the most senior member. A careful look to the history of scientific organizations betrays that scientists loathe manual labour and fetishize mental masturbation. The latter is the domain of the PI, and for it they are greatly rewarded.
I can remember when being a research assistant in my third year of undergrad at the University of Windsor and a few of us undergrads were stacking pipette tips, a menial task if there ever was one. One wondered out loud how awesome it would be if our lab had a robot for stacking tips. I retorted that the lab already did; we are the robots. A lot of work is needed to run a research lab. Yet, scientists distinguish between chores that are merely laborious and those tasks that require ‘intelligence.’ Shockingly, even certain experiments belong to the former category. A insidious phrase summarizes the divide between and ‘intellectual’ and ‘non-intellectual’ scientific work: just a pair of hands. You see this phrase used in a number of contexts (example 1, 2, 3). It is always a derogatory dismissal of someone’s contributions. If you are a pair of hands, it means you are replaceable. You are expendable. But the scientific enterprise sputters to a stop without technicians, trainees, and postdocs. As a whole, they play a vital role. The arbitrary distinction between ‘intellectual’ and ‘non-intellectual’ labour validates a system where a small number of scientific elite benefit while the rest suffer. How did this come about?
Many researchers trace science back to the ancient Greeks. Adherents of the ‘Greek Miracle,’ like historian of science Alistair Cameron Crombie, believe that “science [ultimately] derives from the legacy of Greek philosophy.”[i] What did Greek philosophy entail? In A People’s History of Science, Clifford D. Conner summarizes the incredibly influential arguments of Plato and the effect he had on scientific thought.[ii] Rather than praising Plato, Conner instead charges him with playing a “significant role in a two-thousand-year retardation of scientific thought—arguably the greatest damage any scientific elite has ever inflicted on science in all of human history.”[ii] What is the crux of Conner’s argument? Plato advocated for elitism and hierarchy in science. He explicitly excluded people who work with their hands from scientific practice and advocated in the Republic that “it is not the man who make a thing, but the man who uses it, who has a true scientific knowledge about it.” In general, Plato placed pure thought on a pedestal and relegated those who practiced empirical science to a lower caste. With the founding of his Academy, these scientific ideals persisted and spread. As we move on to discuss more modern scientific enterprises, the influence of Platonic platitudes is evident.
Evidence for the privileged status afforded to a priori reasoning is abundant in medieval European history. The Roman doctor Galen (129-210 AD) greatly influenced medical practice for centuries. Galen popularized the Hippocratic theory that all human disease stemmed from an imbalance of the four humours—blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. Cancer was the lone physical illness that Galen believed arose from an excess of black bile. As Siddhartha Mukherjee outlines in the Emperor of All Maladies: Biography of Cancer, the notion that tumours were merely a local outcropping of a systemic increase in black bile led doctors to rule out surgery as a potential therapy.[iii] Although Galen learned much about anatomy and physiology from dissecting animals, once he began working as the personal physician to Marcus Aurelius, his work stagnated;
Indicative of the beginning of the cleavage between surgery and medicine was the fact that Galen no longer practiced surgery to any great extent after coming to Rome. In the slaveholding society, manual labour was considered beneath the dignity of a gentleman, and surgery was regarded as a form of manual labour.[iv]
So it shouldn’t be surprising that no one empirically tested the idea of black bile; in fact, the standard of medieval scholasticism entailed memorizing and regurgitating the texts of Galen. That is until Vesalius disproved many of Galen’s ideas with his 1543 treatise De humani corporis fabrica (yup, it did take over 1300 years). Vesalius tried and tried but could not find any evidence of black bile in the human cadavers he dissected. Plato also contributed to the corpus of unscientific reasoning. Plato’s Timaeus summarized his thoughts on the cosmos based on “quasimathematical reasoning that was mistaken by credulous scholars [in the 12th century] for valid astronomy.”[ii] The spectre of armchair elitism paralyzed genuine scientific progress by brushing labour and observation aside.
Jumping forward to the scientific revolution (mid 16th century to the end of the 18th century), the ideal of empiricism took hold among the scientific elites. Francis Bacon and company, often regarded as the heroes of the scientific revolution, took inspiration from the mechanics, miners, blacksmiths, potters, technicians, etc who never abandoned empirical ideals. Yet, the elite did not collaborate with artisans. Rather, they used (or stole) artisanal knowledge as “raw material” for their own theories.[ii] Even though scientific methodology was reformed, the same hierarchies remained; those who instigated and supervised research on top and those who worked with their hands and made observations at the bottom. Revisiting one of the most celebrated achievements of the scientific revolution demonstrates this point clearly.
One of the most celebrated achievements of the revolution is Kepler’s formation of the planetary laws of motion. The raw data for this work is attributed to Tyco Brahe. You would be forgiven for believing that Tyco Brahe was a genius who meticulously made astronomical observations all by his lonesome. That is the myth. Reality is far more nuanced. As a nobleman and feudal lord, Brahe used his immense wealth to found “the most advanced astronomical research institute in the pretelescope era.”[ii] At no point did Brahe operate the observatory alone but did participate directly alongside skilled assistants. Yet, as time went on, Brahe became more and more occupied with his other duties. While Brahe funded, supervised, and wrote about the research, a legion of artisans, technicians, and labourers carried out the actual day-to-day work. Despite this, Brahe never named those people who worked for him. It took the work of historians of science like John Robert Christianson to identify those who so vitally contributed to this import astronomical project. For example, Christopher Schissler constructed a one-and-a-half meter globe, Hans Crol served as chief technician, and Christian Sorenson Longomontanus led the team of anonymous surveyors who in 1592 completed a catalogue of 777 stars. Brahe also forced the two hundred inhabitants of Hven island, where he based his observatory, to labour without pay. The point of this exercise is not to dismiss Brahe’s contributions but to question a history that gives all glory to the person with the idea and none to the people who laboured to actualize an idea or test a hypothesis. It also reveals that elitist science continued uninterrupted since the age of plato; the manner in which Brahe ran his institute (minus the use of literal slave labour) is so reminiscent of modern academia it hurts.
Reformation of science took hold in America by the late 1800s. John M. Barry chronicles this transition; beginning with Johns Hopkins, American scientific institutions, much like European institutions in the centuries past, committed themselves to secular and empirical science.[v] Barry dubbed this new generation of scientists, who rejected Galen and other theoreticians, “warriors” — Jonas Salk is one prominent example. In 1947, Salk started his own lab at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. A small team of researchers worked tireless at creating the first polio vaccine. They based their efforts on Salk’s idea that a dead virus can elicit an immune response just as readily as an attenuated virus. In the spring of 1955, the results of a massive field study testing the efficacy of their vaccine were announced at the University of Michigan. Spoiler alert, it worked. During Salk’s speech, he never gave credit to the members of his lab despite many being in attendance. Julius Yougner, a key contributor to the polio vaccine, never relented in demanding acknowledgement. In an interview following the announcement, Yougner said that “while Salk raised research funds, fought with his scientific opponents, and dealt with the public and the press, he stayed in the lab and conducted the experiments.” Salk had a hypothesis but did not test it alone. Instead, it took the tireless effort of an entire research lab.
Another more recent controversy centres on the 2011 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. I admit that Nobel Prizes are low-hanging fruit; any scientific award that recognizes just three people (at most) will fail to recognize many important contributions. It just so happens that those neglected are usually those who did the actual experiments. Jules A. Hoffman received a one-quarter share for “for their discoveries concerning the activation of innate immunity." But after the announcement, former trainee Bruno Lemaitre claimed that his supervisor did not contribute to the research at all. Lemaitre alleges that only once the importance of the work became apparent did Hoffman begin talking about a ‘team effort.’ It is telling that Lemaitre’s group supervisor Jean-Marc Reichhart defended the contribution of Hoffman by calling him “a very good ambassador for the field of innate immunity." If empiricism is the basis of science, why is the ‘ambassador’ put on a pedestal? Might as well give Bill Nye a Nobel Prize.
The purpose of this post isn’t to whine about awards and credit. These instead serve as a litmus test for how academic contributions are evaluated. But what is the result of scientific labour being undervalued? The average associate professor (all disciplines) in the United States makes $80,000 USD a year while a PhD student earns anywhere between $15,000 and $30,000 USD a year. And it hasn’t always been the case, but at some point PhD-trained scientists were expected to complete a postdoctoral fellowship before applying for a professorship. As wryly noted by many, this exploitive system keeps labour costs low as the average post doc salary is roughly $45,000 USD. And even though postdocs at certain institutions, like the University of Toronto, are entitled to overtime pay, they are warned by human resources that no one ever asks for it. Wink wink. Postdocs work long hours and even contribute intellectually. It is also ironic that a survey of American graduate students (in the biological sciences) found that postdocs positively contributed to skills development and PIs didn’t. But no one should be surprised. After all, postdocs actively engage in the empirical practice of science that positions them to teach others and generate hypotheses in addition to actively collecting scientific data. It is true that PIs possess a proven track record, but once they become the boss, they cease to contribute at the same level. There are exceptions. Some PIs never retire from lab work or are bona fide geniuses. But in most cases, it is the trainees that contribute most of the labour and much of the intellectual insight.
There are real consequences to this! In larger cities with high costs of living, many post docs and graduate students find themselves living in poverty. As I recently calculated for the University of Toronto, the stipend received by a Masters student in the Faculty of Medicine is half that of a living wage. Some may argue that completing a PhD and postdoc is simply a rite of passage, and that the cushiness of a PI gig makes up for it. This argument falls apart when you realize that in the US, there are seven postdocs for every tenure-track PI position. The vast majority of scientists never financially benefit for their contribution to academia. This results in another argument. Ever since Plato, scientists have argued that our pursuits ought to be dispassionate and uncoupled from any possible financial reward. It is laughable that these historical arguments emerged from the independently-wealthy scientific elite! Perhaps scientific research ought to be uncoupled from hunger and desperation instead. Enough with the moralizing, pay all scientific labourers a living wage!
So why hasn’t anything changed? The scientists with the power to change the system are those who most benefit from its current configuration. PIs constitute a conservative, reactionary force that largely reinforces the system. Many trainees also buy into the structures of academia; instead of valuing their labour, they view themselves as temporarily embarrassed PIs. Only once we all recognize our collective value will we be able to change the system so that all contributions to science are recognized as important and remunerated appropriately.
[i] Crombie, A. C. (1953). Augustine to Galileo : The History of Science A.D. 400-1650. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
[ii] Conner, C. D. (2009). A people's history of science: Miners, midwives, and low mechanicks. Hachette UK.
[iii] Mukherjee, S. (2010). The emperor of all maladies: a biography of cancer. Simon and Schuster.
[iv] Ackerknecht, E. H., & Haushofer, L. (2016). A short history of medicine. JHU Press. Quoted in [ii].
[v] Barry, J. M. (2005). The great influenza: the epic story of the deadliest plague in history. Penguin.