The rat race

Abstract

Labmates are colleagues, friends, comforters…and competitors.

“Every time a friend succeeds”, Gore Vidal quipped, “something inside me dies”. Though Vidal's peer group were writers, his remark captures a predicament that is common to novelists, scientists and indeed many spheres of human activity: your colleagues are your competitors.

In science, that in‐group jostling occurs at every stage of the career ladder, from PhDs to postdocs and beyond. The “groups” need not be research groups per se, only collections of peers—as hapless junior faculty can find when they learn they are all vying for a single professorial appointment—but they share one characteristic that makes that competition psychologically viable: structural equivalence. This state was defined by the sociologist Roger V. Gould as occurring when two people have the same relations with the same third parties—such as two postdocs who either just started in a research group or are nearing the end of their term at roughly the same time.

A consequence of structural equivalence is that the members of such groups are unaware of their relative standing in the pecking order and, as a result, more likely to come into conflict. A recent study by Piezunka et al 1 examined the implications of structural equivalence in a competitive environment. Analysing Formula 1 race data over a mind‐boggling 34‐year period, they found that the probability of two drivers crashing into each other—a manifestation of conflict, not bad driving—was highest when the drivers were close in age, both high‐performing and nearing the end of a season when the opportunity to establish dominance was becoming limited.

Scientific peers don't physically crash into one another, but the comparison with racing is apt because members of a structurally equivalent research group obsess about speed. Rate of progress. Productivity. In any research group, there will inevitably be a mix of velocities, ideally all at least in a forward direction. Some people will be on a roll, others will be going slower, some will feel like they're hitting a wall, or—worst of all—simply parked. It is easy to see how such a mixture of ambition and adversity can create a toxic environment. Although the Formula 1 study looked at crashes, what racing drivers would really do if they could is to slow down their rivals. We know that because when they can, they do. Lewis Hamilton drove slowly in the 2016 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in the hope that his teammate and championship rival Nico Rosberg would be caught and overtaken; Michael Schumacher deliberately parked his car during qualifying for the 2006 Monaco Grand Prix to stop rival Fernando Alonso from getting the pole position.

Similarly, scientists have a range of tactics—some clandestine, others more overt—to retard a perceived rival's progress. The most time‐honoured, of course, is peer review. An experienced reviewer knows that it is not necessary to pour poison all over a manuscript in order to slow its progress, and a disingenuous call for more data can be enough to extend the paper's publication date by many months. Public presentations of data in group meetings, seminars and conferences likewise offer a means of calling perfectly sound results into question, undermining rigour and gently insinuating that someone's work is either slapdash or somewhat untrustworthy.

In the laboratory, when members are often unsupervised amid a shared set of reagents and equipment, there is an even greater potential for slowing down competitors, even as far as crossing the line into unethical if not criminal conduct. The case of Vipal Bhrigu at the University of Michigan in 2010 offers an extreme illustration of what can happen. Bhrigu was filmed using an ethanol spray bottle in a cell culture refrigerator containing media belonging to graduate student Heather Ames. Ames’ work had been suffering for months from unexplained phenomena that seemed likely to be due to switched labels on cell culture flasks or even outright sabotage of her media. Most telling in terms of group dynamics is that Bhrigu's own project was unrelated to that of Ames; in his confession, he pleaded “I just got jealous of others moving ahead and I wanted to slow them down”. Here again is the giveaway that structural equivalence, not direct competition, is what underpins the scientific rat race—and all but the most saintly of scientific practitioners are bound to be unnerved by the successes of their assumed equals.

So what is the solution? Is there a solution, when any kind of grouping is bound to have an overt or assumed pecking order, which inevitably causes structural equivalence? Especially, when that order itself is so heavily dependent on serendipity and good fortune on top of smarts and hard work?

The remedy, if it is one, can come from within, but comes best from the top. In research groups, that means from the principal investigator; within departments from the head; and within research communities from the leaders of that discipline. That remedy is to promote a sense of equality between peers. It is also about focusing on the unique contributions each person can bring to an endeavour, not on who does one thing best. With such a welter of techniques, knowledge and expertise in the scientific world, the very notion that two people can even compare themselves is daft in some measure. Everyone brings their own strengths to the project.

One of the great things with science is the way it combats nepotism and cronyism through competitive allocation of research funds and community‐led assessment of research data. An awkward corollary is that this culture of self‐regulation through unremitting but ideally constructive criticism can easily be misinterpreted to mean that each individual is in competition with all other members. This is not the case. Even allowing for the instinctive tribalism of human beings, science can and should be viewed as a pack activity in which members spur on others to greater achievements. But such a perspective is dependent on a feeling of inclusion. It is up to leaders to create an environment in which all members feel they can share either directly or vicariously in others’ successes, where the community pulls together, and where the ensemble as a whole is invested in forward momentum.

Structural equivalence may be a breeding ground for conflict, but it also proves the existence of a cohort of people, who may fare better when pulling together than by standing alone. This is not trivial. It requires fostering an environment of openness and good communication, in which individuals celebrate their successes humbly and their setbacks stoically, and are on the lookout for peers succumbing to dominant negative behaviour.

Sports teams are never successful when their members play as individuals; indeed, any group will be at its most productive when its members are working together towards some kind of shared goal. Articulating and sustaining that goal is one of the most overlooked but essential requirements of leadership—not just in science, but anywhere where Gould's definition applies.

Brooke Morriswood is a junior group leader at the University of Würzburg; Oliver Hoeller is a freelance science illustrator based in the California Bay Area. Together they produce the science blog Total Internal Reflection (https://totalinternalreflectionblog.com).

EMBO Reports (2019) 20: e48528