I love this. About 20 years ago, I saw a therapist for the first time. I remember one thing she said to me that struck me in a profound way. What she said is that human beings have a tendency to bury their unsavory motives beneath unimpeachable motives. Critical thinking is an essential tool of science, but only when we use it as it should be used. Discriminately. Criticism can be harmful to science because of the cover it creates for unscientific critique. A facade of rigorous critique can be used to conceal our own pettiness towards profound discoveries. When work is good, really, really good - we need to be able to say so. When we can do this, it speaks to our integrity, and to our ability to humble ourselves before progress. Mustn't we be able to acknowledge, to commend, the giant leaps forward that others make, as part of our job description? If we can't applaud the great leaps forward, because we are jealous we didn't make that leap ourselves, we do science a grave disservice. When we critique a work because we are jealous we didn't do it ourselves, we hold science back. And we shame ourselves and our profession. No one is going to write the history book of the future we could have had, unless we embrace that future when it appears. When we torpedo that future, and then look around, wondering how the world became so petty, degrading and hopeless, we have only ourselves to blame. There is a MAGA component to science - a mob mentality oriented towards destroying the best we have to offer, and I think you have struck upon it, Liz.
This is an interesting take. I'd been thinking mostly about the way that criticism keeps us from seeing the value in partially completed or slightly flawed work, but you are saying something different--that it becomes a weapon in interpersonal fighting. I can see that.
I "washed out" because of it. I'm not pure, but I'm trying to learn. I'm guilty of the same kind of gaslighting, in my twenties. How many of us are willing to admit to gaslighting. We don't realize we are powerful enough to do it, until we are harmed by it. It was only when I started to do really well, which few of my classmates anticipated, that gaslighting started to punch me in the face. When my best friends started to do it, I folded. The joy of science was murdered by it. The result? The work isn't moving forward now. It will be rediscovered years from now. The people involved will quietly hope it doesn't happen in their lifetimes, which isn't realistic. Because they have publicly condemned the future of the field, they can't work on it either. If I am wrong, time will tell. It's just so stupid and anti-science. Scientists are as lizard-brained as any uneducated person. My personal theory is that this is why the world stinks. It is only a benevolent universe if we (human beings) can support, be grateful, and take joy in each other's accomplishments and discoveries. Human beings are petty. They punch up, far more than they punch down. Just like bullies on the playground. Targets are targets because they are better, not because they are weak. We punch up until we are the lowest common denominator. We should not look around and be surprised. I wrote a paper about a third arm of immune surveillance, Liz. The people who got to publish papers with me, because of me, condemned my work, despite the boost, the meaning I gave to their work. I thought these people were friends. It took me ten years to understand what had happened.
When we gaslight our friends, it gets back to them eventually. I certainly did not want to believe it myself. I preferred my own annihilation to doubting my dearest friends. Rene Gerard calls this the "scapegoat instinct" - martyrs usually agree to and participate in their own destruction, because they trust their friends not to betray them. If their friends tell them they deserve punishment, scapegoats accept punishment. The pointlessness of it makes me so sad for our species. All we need to do is celebrate progress, to celebrate true leadership, if we want true progress and true leadership. But we sabotage ourselves, because we are too small to do it.
I wonder about how this tendency might seep into our personal lives -- judging partners, friends, or even just passers-by (often from a place of self-righteous insecurity). Unfortunately, in my experience the hyper-analytical 'you-should-have-thought-of-this-why-didn't-you' mindset transfers quite readily into contexts that have nothing to do with academic work. I found myself succumbing to it at times, and I didn't like the person it was making me become, which was one additional reason to consider the exit.
I'm still working on it (I'm only 10 weeks out). What I definitely *can* feel though is that the anxiety that was symbiotic with that mindset has subsided quite a bit, and with it the knee-jerk tendency to judge or find fault -- both in myself and in others. I think I'm becoming a better person for it.
I realised at some point in my career that I couldn’t remember anyone telling me I’d done a good job for at least 20 years. I’d actually achieved a lot and it was/is very odd that no one ever mentions it. I do try not to be like that, and definitely celebrate jobs well done by others, but there’s a lot of work still to do to tone down the “this is great, but” response. Thanks for this piece. I really like the muscles analogy.
Totally agree with how difficult it is, over the span of 20+ years, to have the only regular evaluation of teaching come from students (!), and to have increasingly fewer evaluations from college-review committees post-tenure (every five years at my college), and where collegial reviews are set up on a deficit model where they look for evidence that you do not meet expectations rather than the flip-side of gathering evidence that you do. It's a tough space to operate in, over time. Everyone needs -- deserves -- an accolade for a job well done, but the overly critical mindset does indeed creep.
I love this. Especially your connection of overdeveloping one muscle group and the imbalance and damage that causes. Beautiful how that metaphor carries throughout this pieces and provides a physical anchor to the what you discuss. What you wrote about academic imbalance reminds me of my qualifying exams when a committee member said my praise of another scholar's work was evidence that I was not thinking critically enough. NOPE. The scholar was just that good, and I had not been indoctrinated enough yet to willfully refuse to see strength and beauty in another scholar's work. It is so strange, because outside of academia, research shows (lol! don't ask for me for citations please, don't have time to go pull them) that praise is far more motivating than endless criticism, leads to more innovation and better collaboration, all of which is so important in the sciences!
"we are overtraining our critical thinking while perspective and kindness are left to atrophy"
This reminds me of research showing that many therapists have LOWER levels of warmth, respect, empathy and genuineness (qualities that improve therapeutic outcomes) at the end of their professional training than they had at the beginning. Sad.
A very good point, about seeking balance! The critical evaluation mindset needed for so many aspects of the job does indeed creep. I work at a liberal arts college (in Psychology), where while we do engage in scholarly work (peer review, research publication) we teach and mentor undergraduates A LOT more (five 4-credit classes per year). I learned early on that I had to keep the balance between critical assessment and student-centered feedback in check or else students would start to shrink away. During the pandemic I dug-in to learning more about Universal Design for Learning and EDI techniques we can use in our classes and started making some pretty huge adjustments to my mindset about how I approach my work with students, and it has made a surprisingly big difference in the non-tangibles of my daily / weekly experience at work. In some "higher ed" publication (cant' recall which, maybe the Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed?) I came across the term "Radical Empathy" and while I don't love the term, I do agree with the philosophy behind it. Keeping the critical creep in check, and assuming the best of students, maintaining standards but leaving room where reasonable for personalization, has had an impact on both mine and my students' motivations and approaches to our work. I believe the formula shakes out like this: When students trust us because of how we handle the basics, they approach those moments where we need to critical or discerning with more efficacy. Rather than taking it like a glancing blow, they take it as intended: as a means of improving the quality of the work.
I couldn't agree more. When I flipped my class and started to use Jigsaw, I had a much better rapport with the students. I felt like I could stop performing (both my knowledge of the subject AND my superiority) and just enjoy explaining concepts. And I think the students were much more engaged and connected to the material.
This is great. It's not an either/or, and it's not balancing empathy with critical thinking. It's developing the empathy muscle, which will find it's way into all of our being, including critical thinking.
Also - you've got to check out Chi Running. I'm a 60 year old runner, been running since age 15, but most of these years have been inconsistent, on/off for months at a time. Around 2007 I started running much more consistently but was still plagued with serial injuries and just thought that there's got to be a better way. I believed the convincing research about our evolutionary development with running and kept looking until I found Chi Running in 2010. At first it sounds too silly or touchy-feely for a scientist, but if you can hold off some skepticism and just focus on the mechanics, it's great. I had to re-learn how to run and I'm still to this day improving my technique and form (14 years later) and it's allowed me to run without any of the injuries I used to suffer from. The other bonus is it's a great device for mindfulness meditation.
I love this. About 20 years ago, I saw a therapist for the first time. I remember one thing she said to me that struck me in a profound way. What she said is that human beings have a tendency to bury their unsavory motives beneath unimpeachable motives. Critical thinking is an essential tool of science, but only when we use it as it should be used. Discriminately. Criticism can be harmful to science because of the cover it creates for unscientific critique. A facade of rigorous critique can be used to conceal our own pettiness towards profound discoveries. When work is good, really, really good - we need to be able to say so. When we can do this, it speaks to our integrity, and to our ability to humble ourselves before progress. Mustn't we be able to acknowledge, to commend, the giant leaps forward that others make, as part of our job description? If we can't applaud the great leaps forward, because we are jealous we didn't make that leap ourselves, we do science a grave disservice. When we critique a work because we are jealous we didn't do it ourselves, we hold science back. And we shame ourselves and our profession. No one is going to write the history book of the future we could have had, unless we embrace that future when it appears. When we torpedo that future, and then look around, wondering how the world became so petty, degrading and hopeless, we have only ourselves to blame. There is a MAGA component to science - a mob mentality oriented towards destroying the best we have to offer, and I think you have struck upon it, Liz.
This is an interesting take. I'd been thinking mostly about the way that criticism keeps us from seeing the value in partially completed or slightly flawed work, but you are saying something different--that it becomes a weapon in interpersonal fighting. I can see that.
I "washed out" because of it. I'm not pure, but I'm trying to learn. I'm guilty of the same kind of gaslighting, in my twenties. How many of us are willing to admit to gaslighting. We don't realize we are powerful enough to do it, until we are harmed by it. It was only when I started to do really well, which few of my classmates anticipated, that gaslighting started to punch me in the face. When my best friends started to do it, I folded. The joy of science was murdered by it. The result? The work isn't moving forward now. It will be rediscovered years from now. The people involved will quietly hope it doesn't happen in their lifetimes, which isn't realistic. Because they have publicly condemned the future of the field, they can't work on it either. If I am wrong, time will tell. It's just so stupid and anti-science. Scientists are as lizard-brained as any uneducated person. My personal theory is that this is why the world stinks. It is only a benevolent universe if we (human beings) can support, be grateful, and take joy in each other's accomplishments and discoveries. Human beings are petty. They punch up, far more than they punch down. Just like bullies on the playground. Targets are targets because they are better, not because they are weak. We punch up until we are the lowest common denominator. We should not look around and be surprised. I wrote a paper about a third arm of immune surveillance, Liz. The people who got to publish papers with me, because of me, condemned my work, despite the boost, the meaning I gave to their work. I thought these people were friends. It took me ten years to understand what had happened.
When we gaslight our friends, it gets back to them eventually. I certainly did not want to believe it myself. I preferred my own annihilation to doubting my dearest friends. Rene Gerard calls this the "scapegoat instinct" - martyrs usually agree to and participate in their own destruction, because they trust their friends not to betray them. If their friends tell them they deserve punishment, scapegoats accept punishment. The pointlessness of it makes me so sad for our species. All we need to do is celebrate progress, to celebrate true leadership, if we want true progress and true leadership. But we sabotage ourselves, because we are too small to do it.
What an awful story. I don't want to believe it but I do.
I wonder about how this tendency might seep into our personal lives -- judging partners, friends, or even just passers-by (often from a place of self-righteous insecurity). Unfortunately, in my experience the hyper-analytical 'you-should-have-thought-of-this-why-didn't-you' mindset transfers quite readily into contexts that have nothing to do with academic work. I found myself succumbing to it at times, and I didn't like the person it was making me become, which was one additional reason to consider the exit.
Absolutely. Not liking the person I was becoming (or how the job amplified who I already was) is exactly it. I feel different now; do you?
I'm still working on it (I'm only 10 weeks out). What I definitely *can* feel though is that the anxiety that was symbiotic with that mindset has subsided quite a bit, and with it the knee-jerk tendency to judge or find fault -- both in myself and in others. I think I'm becoming a better person for it.
You are "unprofessoring"!! I wish you the best; it's a lot!
Thank you; it's a lovely way to describe it!
I realised at some point in my career that I couldn’t remember anyone telling me I’d done a good job for at least 20 years. I’d actually achieved a lot and it was/is very odd that no one ever mentions it. I do try not to be like that, and definitely celebrate jobs well done by others, but there’s a lot of work still to do to tone down the “this is great, but” response. Thanks for this piece. I really like the muscles analogy.
Totally agree with how difficult it is, over the span of 20+ years, to have the only regular evaluation of teaching come from students (!), and to have increasingly fewer evaluations from college-review committees post-tenure (every five years at my college), and where collegial reviews are set up on a deficit model where they look for evidence that you do not meet expectations rather than the flip-side of gathering evidence that you do. It's a tough space to operate in, over time. Everyone needs -- deserves -- an accolade for a job well done, but the overly critical mindset does indeed creep.
yes, the deficit model--that's exactly it!
I hear you! We haven't even gotten good at the "shit sandwich" approach where you place a critique between two compliments.
TWO compliments???! I think that would blow my mind
😵💫
I love this. Especially your connection of overdeveloping one muscle group and the imbalance and damage that causes. Beautiful how that metaphor carries throughout this pieces and provides a physical anchor to the what you discuss. What you wrote about academic imbalance reminds me of my qualifying exams when a committee member said my praise of another scholar's work was evidence that I was not thinking critically enough. NOPE. The scholar was just that good, and I had not been indoctrinated enough yet to willfully refuse to see strength and beauty in another scholar's work. It is so strange, because outside of academia, research shows (lol! don't ask for me for citations please, don't have time to go pull them) that praise is far more motivating than endless criticism, leads to more innovation and better collaboration, all of which is so important in the sciences!
Scientists are not very good at applying data-driven practices to their own work!
"we are overtraining our critical thinking while perspective and kindness are left to atrophy"
This reminds me of research showing that many therapists have LOWER levels of warmth, respect, empathy and genuineness (qualities that improve therapeutic outcomes) at the end of their professional training than they had at the beginning. Sad.
Eww. But it tracks!
A very good point, about seeking balance! The critical evaluation mindset needed for so many aspects of the job does indeed creep. I work at a liberal arts college (in Psychology), where while we do engage in scholarly work (peer review, research publication) we teach and mentor undergraduates A LOT more (five 4-credit classes per year). I learned early on that I had to keep the balance between critical assessment and student-centered feedback in check or else students would start to shrink away. During the pandemic I dug-in to learning more about Universal Design for Learning and EDI techniques we can use in our classes and started making some pretty huge adjustments to my mindset about how I approach my work with students, and it has made a surprisingly big difference in the non-tangibles of my daily / weekly experience at work. In some "higher ed" publication (cant' recall which, maybe the Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed?) I came across the term "Radical Empathy" and while I don't love the term, I do agree with the philosophy behind it. Keeping the critical creep in check, and assuming the best of students, maintaining standards but leaving room where reasonable for personalization, has had an impact on both mine and my students' motivations and approaches to our work. I believe the formula shakes out like this: When students trust us because of how we handle the basics, they approach those moments where we need to critical or discerning with more efficacy. Rather than taking it like a glancing blow, they take it as intended: as a means of improving the quality of the work.
I couldn't agree more. When I flipped my class and started to use Jigsaw, I had a much better rapport with the students. I felt like I could stop performing (both my knowledge of the subject AND my superiority) and just enjoy explaining concepts. And I think the students were much more engaged and connected to the material.
This is great. It's not an either/or, and it's not balancing empathy with critical thinking. It's developing the empathy muscle, which will find it's way into all of our being, including critical thinking.
Also - you've got to check out Chi Running. I'm a 60 year old runner, been running since age 15, but most of these years have been inconsistent, on/off for months at a time. Around 2007 I started running much more consistently but was still plagued with serial injuries and just thought that there's got to be a better way. I believed the convincing research about our evolutionary development with running and kept looking until I found Chi Running in 2010. At first it sounds too silly or touchy-feely for a scientist, but if you can hold off some skepticism and just focus on the mechanics, it's great. I had to re-learn how to run and I'm still to this day improving my technique and form (14 years later) and it's allowed me to run without any of the injuries I used to suffer from. The other bonus is it's a great device for mindfulness meditation.