61 No exit
61.1 Lessons from Huis Clos
I took French during my first two years in college in part because I wanted to read Les Conquérants de l’Inituil (Conquerors of the Useless), the autobiography of Lionel Terray, a mountaineering hero of mine. However, once I could read French, I became enamored by some titans of French literature (Camus, Sartre, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud).
In my second year, we read Huit Clos (No Exit) by Jean Paul Sartre. One line in that play is:
“L’enfer, ces les autres.”
This is usually translated as “Hell, it is others,” or “Hell is other people.”
For unknown reasons, Sartre’s line caught my eye. I was unaware this quote was famous and that it had inspired – and still inspires – debates about its meaning.
I have never studied philosophy in general (Chapter 7) or Sartre’s statement in particular. But here is my interpretation, whether right or wrong: We discover who we are only by observing how others see and respond to us. We see our reflection in their mirrors. Thus, our self-awareness of our successes, failures, or being is relational. This can be hell if others look at us only in the present and ignore where how far we’ve come and where we are aiming. This also can be hell when the reflection we see is warped – intentionally or not – by someone else’s prejudices or self-interests.
It can also be hell if we are ignored, as we are then in a relational limbo. This is a common difficulty in academia.
I began to do biological research about five years after I read Sartre. I don’t recall ever worrying whether I would be a good scientist or whether others would like my work. I wasn’t being overconfident: instead, I was preoccupied with enjoying doing the research itself and trying to learn how to do it better. The research was sufficient motivation. That was fortunate as I received little or no feedback. I was working in a vacuum.
Once I started submitting manuscripts to journals, I got feedback from ad hoc reviews. Some reviews were critical and challenging, sometimes even picky. One early review I received was borderline pathological and was written in what might euphemistically be called stream of unconsciousness style. Granted, this was the early ’70s, and the reviewer – I later figured out who it was – was likely stoned. The other review of my paper was positive, but the Editor rejected my paper because of the negative review. [In retrospect, I should have written in protest.]
I wonder how many scientific careers are nipped in the bud by pompous and overly critical reviews. G. Evelyn Hutchinson appreciated this general point and had this quote on his wall: “Never try to discourage a student, for you will almost certainly succeed.” [I thank Rob Colwell for bringing this quote to my attention.]
Despite that one bad review, my papers were usually accepted in good journals. And even as a graduate student, I was invited to give departmental seminars and symposium talks, and I was awarded a prestigious postdoc. People must have liked my work, but rarely did anyone say that explicitly. I was growing up in an academic world where positive verbal feedback was rare.
Let’s return to Sartre. Young scientists need constructive feedback to know where they stand, whether they are progressing, and where they need to improve. In my experience, and in that of many colleagues, constructive feedback is rare. I suspect that many young students interpret a lack of feedback as a lack of support – that is, their advisors and colleagues fail to find their research sufficiently interesting to comment on it!
After I left the Kalahari, I resumed my graduate education in January 1971 at Harvard. Initially, I had trouble adjusting to Harvard and Cambridge, and a real winter. Moreover, many of the professors and students at Harvard had, shall we say, “strong” personalities.
Near end of the first semester, I became disillusioned with academia as a career and decided to drop out and become a cabinet maker. I went to lunch with Professor Ernest Williams, my advisor, and told him my decision. Until that moment, Williams had never said a single word – positive, negative, or neutral – about my work. But at lunch he said the following:
“I’m sorry to hear that. I thought I would have learned something from you.”
I was stunned – this was the first sign that he respected me or my abilities. Williams next encouraged me to stay on until I’d taken my qualifying exam. He said that the attitude of many graduate students changes abruptly once they’re past that academic and emotional hurdle. I’m glad I took his advice.
Williams gave me strong positive feedback on one other occasion. We were collecting Anolis lizards in the mountains the Dominican Republic. Late in the afternoon, with the fog starting to swirl in and the sun-setting colors penetrating the trees, I spotted two Anolis distichis, each perched on opposite sides of the same tree trunk. For some silly reason, I wanted to catch them both. Rather boldly, I said to Professor Williams,
“Watch this.”
I walked slowly to the tree and then simultaneously slapping both hands onto the trunk, catching both lizards. To be sure, I have (or had then) fast lizard-catching hands, but I know I was lucky that time. [And, of course, I’ve never tried doing that again – always quit whenever one is ahead.] Williams responded,
“That deserves a fine bottle of wine tonight at dinner.”
I’ll never know why Williams would salute my lizard-catching abilities, but never my publications in leading journals (even one in Science) or invitations for seminars, even as a graduate student. I know he did support me as he gave me a Research Assistantship in my last year and he obviously wrote strong letters of recommendation for me as I was awarded a prestigious postdoc at UC Berkeley and received invitations for job interviews and jobs.
So, what is the point here? We teach our students the methods, ideas, and ethics of science; but we rarely help them deal with negative feedback – or no feedback at all. I don’t think professors are being jerks here. Rather I think that many of us just assume that our own students must know our feelings by osmosis. “Isn’t it obvious that I like your work?” No, often it isn’t.
The feedback that most students get is from manuscript reviews and is almost always critical, but sometimes it is nasty. Negative feedback hurts, unless when so blatantly biased that one can write it off. Sometimes, however, negative feedback can inspire one to prove the reviewer wrong (Chapter 41).
61.2 “Good dog, bad dog”
In June 1970, Larry and I visited David Simpson in Chobe National Park in northern Botswana. Simpson’s parents left the UK after World War II and settled in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Dave was a skilled bushman, wise, and charismatic. One evening, we were talking around a fire at David’s campsite above the banks of the Chobe River. Larry and I talked about how the student movements in the USA had been overthrowing the entrenched biases of our conservative parents. We predicted the next generation would be even more liberal, as they could take off from what we had accomplished.
David laughed and told us we were naïve. He said that the next generation would be more conservative than ours, not less. He was right.
He invited me back when I finished my fieldwork in the Kalahari. I left the Kalahari on 15 October and drove to Cape Town, where I shipped and or lizards back to the USA. I then hitchhiked to Chobe (~ 2600 km, 1600 miles) and spent about ten amazing days with David (Chapter 28).
At one point, he chided me for not expressing my emotions. He said I can tell you are having a great time here, but you’ve never said so. He then said,
“When you get home, buy a dog. You’ll have to learn to say ‘Good dog!’ or ‘Bad dog!’ Your dog will teach you how to share your emotions.”
Leaving Africa, I stopped briefly in Austin and California before moving to Cambridge to restart graduate school. I was lucky to move into “Prentiss Street,” the upper two stories of a house just off Mass Avenue (sec-prentiss). Prentiss Street was home to 4 to 9 people (mainly grad students), and one big dog, ‘The Droog.’ And, yes, I learned to say ‘Good dog!’ and ’*Bad dog!’, and I learned an essential lesson about providing feedback.
61.3 Seeking feedback on behavioral ‘inertia’ versus behavioral ‘drive’
At some point after graduate school, Paul Hertz and I came up with an idea about behavioral “inertia.” Our idea was that behavioral adjustments can buffer selection on physiological traits. Our idea was a response to Ernst Mayr (Chapter 52), who championed the idea that most major transitions in evolution were initiated by a behavioral shift, which then favored a correlated shift in morphology and ecology. If, for example, a bird learns that milk bottles contain a novel source of nutrition, this benefit favors selection for enhanced abilities to pry off lids and to digest milk. This concept is often called “behavioral drive.”
Mayr’s view dominated the evolutionary literature for decades. However, back in 1949, Charles Bogert proposed a different view, namely that behavior can inhibit evolution. Bogert was a herpetologist at the American Museum of Natural History, and in 1944 he and Raymond Cowles published a famous monograph on the thermal biology of reptiles. They showed that supposedly ‘cold-blooded’ lizards could use behavior to control their body temperature at high levels. When cold, for example, lizards could bask in the sun and thus raise their temperature. When hot, they could move into shade or go down a burrow.
In a 1949 study, Bogert surveyed the field body temperatures of two genera of lizards in diverse habitats in the USA and Mexico. He found that species and populations within a genus had remarkably similar body temperatures even when they lived in very different habitats (for example, hot deserts versus cold cloud forests). Bogert attributed this similarity to the efficacy of behavioral thermoregulation. In a hot habitats, lizards would stay in the shade most of the time, but in cold habitats, they would remain in the sun. Such behavioral shifts could thus enable lizards to achieve their preferred body temperatures, independent of habitat. If body temperature was independent of habitat, then selection would not favor a shift in thermal sensitivity.
Bogert never used a term like “behavioral inertia,” but he probably the concept in mind. In any case, his paper was overlooked in subsequent discussions of the role of behavior in evolution.
When Paul Hertz and I started working on thermal biology in the early 1970s, we “grew up” with Bogert’s paper and considered it as dogma. But having read many references supporting Mayr’s advocacy of behavioral drive, we decided to resurrect Bogert’s ideas.
We started writing a manuscript but let it sit in a file drawer for over a decade. Other papers had priority for us; and Bogert’s idea seemed so obvious to us that we did’t find it interesting.
In 1994, I described the idea to Barry Sinervo (a former grad student and postdoc of mine). He liked the concept and added a short section. Despite Barry’s enthusiasm, we put the paper back in the file drawer. Our paper was still low priority.
Finally, I decided to present the idea in a talk at the Evolution meetings (2000, Bloomington). This would be a good venue to find out whether behavioral inertia was interest to colleagues. If not, then I’d just forget about it. [It already had a place in my files.]
After my talk, Jonathan Losos told me he liked it. I was pleasantly surprised. At least one other person – and a person I respected – found behavioral inertia of interest.
Jonathan’s comments inspired me to retrieve the manuscript from the file cabinet. We updated the text and developed the argument that regulatory behaviors can shield organisms selection. We called this “The Bogert Effect,” in honor of Chales Bogert and his insights.
We submitted our manuscript to The American Naturalist, a top journal. It sailed through the reviews and won the Presidential Award as the best paper of the year (2003) in the journal. Martha Muñoz has recently reviewed the history and applications of the concept, and she has greatly expanded its relevance to evolutionary biology.
One emergent lesson is that we sometimes fail to appreciate what others find interesting. This has happened to me several times. The first was in Costa Rica when I observed that juvenile pelicans were less successful foragers than adults (Chapter 12). I was unfamiliar with the literature and assumed this pattern must be well known and thus uninteresting. The second was when Paul and I conceived The Bogert Effect paper. In this case, we were too familiar with the idea and failed to appreciate that others found it novel.
61.4 Dealing with students
These stories are relevant to students and their advisors. We all need to give honest feedback to each other, especially from advisors to students. When we like a presentation at a meeting, or when we like a paper – we should say something. Everyone benefits.
In autumn of 2014, I dropped an e-mail to a young assistant professor in Australia and told him that I enjoyed his recent paper. He thanked me and said how nice – and rare – it was to receive positive feedback.
What happens if we don’t provide feedback? I suspect that many young students take the lack of feedback as a signal that their work is uninteresting, when the lack of feedback may say more about the advisor than the student. A few people don’t need feedback – they are entirely self-motivated. And a few may not need feedback – they are oblivious to any feedback. But most of us, especially young scientists, need feedback. In any case we learn how to interpret feedback or its absence, otherwise “L’enfer, ces les autres.”