Behaving like animals

This week brings some news about the allegations of animal cruelty levelled against Imperial. They’re rushing to the rescue with a three month long investigation. In other words “let’s just kick this can into the distance, and then write a report that will be long and boring and hopefully nobody will read”. Of course you couldn’t have a two week investigation and find everything there is to know, but it definitely feels like the PR machine is in overdrive here. Sorry to be cynical. If they were serious, they could just walk up to the researchers now and give all involved in animal testing a pop quiz. If they don’t know details they should, well, then there is cause for concern.

They will interview people, who will probably be like Rebekah Brooks at Leveson and just say that they remember no specific details of any specific events. In the groups that carry out this research it’s likely that it would be obvious who told on you if you get found out to have behaved inappropriately (sorry to go all school playground on you). Therefore it is likely that those bystanders will not really want to then have to spend another however many years in an office with someone they just got in to trouble. It sounds weird to put it like that, but I fear that may happen with this investigation.

At the heart of this is really just what happens to many people in many jobs: you get callous and blasé about what you are doing and how it affects people and the environment around you. People in positions of responsibility cannot let such things happen to them, especially when you are caring for others and animals. A good example is the LIBOR fixing. People got comfortable and probably didn’t even think of the consequences. That’s obviously horrible, but it’s also human. It’s amazing how people can behave when they are in a group. People will do things that they probably wouldn’t if they had time to think about it.

I think what this really exposes is, in fact, that scientists are just human and are not infinitely amazing at their jobs. Those companies claiming that they're the height of “professionalism and excellence”. Guess what. They’re going to have people that screw things up all the time. Imperial and everyone else likes to think of a scientist as infallible. If you’re a first year, then a PhD student seems like some kind of fountain of knowledge. The weird thing is that they are just like you. They are just like everyone. Just the same way as an accountant may not know something about an area of accountancy, a PhD student may not know the proper way to do a reflux if they study computational chemistry (can you tell I did chemistry?). And a PhD may not even know everything about their project as well. Think about it like a doctor. Does your medic friend know their medicine back to front? Why would they magically know everything there is to know just because there is a “Dr” in front of their name? The point I’m struggling to make is simple: people are not perfect, people do not even know their own jobs perfectly, this is fine if you are not responsible for lives; however, if you are in a position of responsibility, you have to make sure that you at least know the relevant bits of your job. If you don’t, leave it to someone else who does.

Imperial snooping on you

This is pretty hilarious. The idea of people in College reading memes is odd. I just have a mental picture of Sir Keith O’Nions (President & Rector) just sitting there tempted to post something about how he just Rectored the crap out of an alumni tour.