S11, E4: Bonfire of the Ironies
Series 11: The Collateral Damage of Revenge in Science
The context of this series are the circumstance that led to Geoff Marcy’s forced early retirement from his professorship at Berkeley and the attempt to ‘cancel’ him and a select few who were deemed to be ‘guilty by association’, for working with him since his resignation in 2015. I rebooted this series in January 2024 with S11,E3:Breaking Radio Silence.
Marcy’s prominent scientific career where he led the research into exoplanets had been abruptly razed but it hadn’t stopped him publishing. Some were solo submissions but he had also co-authored with others, including some who had previously denounced him in the media or had signed petitions to have him censured.
Since 2016 Marcy has been credited with contributing to many publications, seemingly without re-igniting any issue. Perhaps it was a bit like a favourite movie scene of mine, where Jack Lemmon’s character Felix Ungar, laments his ruined meatloaf.
‘I’d throw it down the incinerator but it won’t burn twice’
“The Odd Couple” by Neil Simon (1968)
Of course, after the heady feeling of hounding Marcy into oblivion it may have seemed anti-climatic and rather unsporting, that he didn’t stay in obscurity. To immolate a person’s career is one thing but to erase their name is another. Having gone to the trouble of doing that once, it may have been a bit embarrassing to find the name ‘Marcy’ doing phoenix impressions. Yet to target his entire contribution would be like sawing on the branch they are sitting on.
It seems that Marcy became ‘he who could be named (again)’ very quickly, in fact he has been cited more times in the last eight years since being exiled, than in the first thirty-six of his career.
To give you a quick sense of how influential his work has been, apart from founding the specialisation, there is his citation record. According to AD Scientific Index accessed January 2024, his publication count (author/co-author) is at least 741, with 79,432 citations. He has an h-index of 147 - up from 123 around four years ago. That means that 147 of his publications have been cited at least 147 times.
An incredible feat but let’s try to get some more perspective on this. There are probably no more than 15,000 researchers working in the broad field of astronomy, with exoplanet investigation being a subset of that, perhaps 5,000 globally. With that in mind, how many degrees of separation can there be between Marcy, his contribution and any other exoplanet project, publication, citation or scientist?
Where should the lines be drawn through the body of work and is it possible to decouple exoplanet research from it’s research history? How much benefit is it acceptable to take from Marcy’s contribution given ‘zero benefit’ isn’t an option?
These are not things to be decided by those making mindless conflations in social media, but how can science be preserved, if scientists are too busy prostrating themselves at the feet of popular opinion to protect it? Cowardice aside, anyone simultaneously investigating exoplanets and attacking others because of their association with Marcy, has to be a hypocrite on an impressive scale, or else, operating at Jedi levels of cognitive dissonance.
I return to this in S11, E10: Fear of Flying and the Zipless Citation.
Evidently it was fairly safe to cite or even co-author Marcy, until it seems, his name became associated with two pieces of work that happened to be led by female researchers. Unlike others who had produced papers that credited his contribution since 2016, two papers with principals
and Lauren Weiss were ‘collaborators’ in a different sense, apparently for being women. Anyone can be forgiven for mislaying the fact that this was supposed to be about making astronomy safe for them.I come to the Weiss’ case in S11,E5: Ignition Timing.
Beatriz Villarroel
Leading - Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO)
Paper: Exploring nine simultaneously occurring transients on April 12th 1950
When I published my first-author paper with Geoff as a co-author in Scientific Reports in 2021, Tweets were circulating showing a screenshot of my and Geoff’s names saying, among other things, “Yes women participate in rape culture”.
“A testimony of “guilt-by-association” harassment in astronomy”, Heterodox STEM, Beatriz Villarroel
Side Bar
Since overhearing a crude joke may be passive sexual harassment and words directed at a person can be violence how do we categorise Tweets that call a woman a participant in rape culture? Well let’s tick the boxes.
Sexual innuendo targeting a particular woman (sexual harassment) ✔
Heinous slur intended to cause harm (assault) ✔
By current definitions the sum of 1 and 2 look like sexual assault. Seems like the professional institutions should be interested to hear about that.
Side Bar Ends
In the last month, I sent a letter to several of the major organizations for professional astronomers explaining the issue. I hope so much for one of these organizations to help. As the letter circulated, the American Astronomical Society invited me to report the separate instances of harassment and discrimination to their “Code of Ethics Committee”, but sadly, they have so far not taken a single action to prevent further harassment and informed me that they “consider these cases closed”. The bullying can freely go on.
ibid.
Does that make the American Astronomical Society (AAS) organisationally complicit in sexual assault? If so, what does it say about the type of culture are they participating in?
Before you form a conclusion about whether you ‘consider these cases’ should have been closed, take a look at some more examples of bullying, provided by Villarroel that show this wasn’t an aberration.
Blacklisting
Other Tweets called for scientists not to cite or promote the paper […]
ibid.
Harassment
I received intimidating emails and calls from other astronomers.
ibid.
Shadow Banning
[…]My first-author paper was excluded from a monthly newsletter […]
ibid.
Diagnosable Harm to Health (de facto assault?)
I was subjected to direct intimidation (threat-like) and allegations, which caused so much stress that I ended up in the emergency room some weeks later.
ibid.
I don’t know how well these incidents were documented but I dare say that if the AAS took an interest at the time they could have found out. From here this series might double as a crash-course in irony.
It’s ironic that Berkeley were castigated because they did not want to follow up on anonymous complaints, yet the AAS refused to investigate when someone (who didn’t have to be coerced into coming forward) looked to them for help. As a minimum surely their members should have been given a warning about their conduct. The decision (if you can call it a decision) to do nothing, had to be political, but that being the case AAS deem that misogyny is acceptable in certain circumstances.
It’s ironic that under the presidency of Kelsey Johnson, an avowed champion of diversity, the AAS somehow became more indifferent to the plight of women in science, than the institutions it criticises.
It is ironic that the AAS ethics working group (chaired by Alison L. Coil) refused to see that the behaviours Villaroel reported were unethical, and by ‘refused’ I mean willfully negligent.
It’s interesting to contrast Villaroel’s experience with the lead authors of a series of papers for the Kepler project, all of which listed Marcy as a contributor, viz.
The California-Kepler Survey. I. High-resolution Spectroscopy of 1305 Stars Hosting Kepler Transiting Planets, September 2017
The California-Kepler Survey. II. Precise Physical Properties of 2025 Kepler Planets and Their Host Stars, September 2017 (Asher leads)
The California-Kepler Survey. III. A Gap in the Radius Distribution of Small Planets, September 2017
The California-Kepler Survey. IV. Metal-rich Stars Host a Greater Diversity of Planets, February 2018
None of the lead authors were singled out for repercussions. John Asher Johnson for example, was an author in all four papers and he led one of them. In fact his name has appeared alongside Marcy‘s on other occasions since the beginning of 2016.
It so happens, he has publicly condemned Marcy so perhaps that is an offset that makes him guiltless by association, or blame-neutral. I found what he said to BuzzFeed interesting in a way the journalist failed to notice. I will come to that in S11,E7: The Pre-Emptive Strike when we will also say aloha for the first time to context of the allegations.
The Kepler programme’s association with Marcy was unavoidable as he had done so much of the formative work. In the end though, all that was required for the resentment to find its voice, was for the principal investigator to be female. That’s a story for the next episode.
Next: S11,E5: Ignition Timing
The B-Side
From March on selected series I will provide some paid companion ‘episodes’ (my work is typically episodic). These will generally complement the free episode without being essential to it. If this is unclear or you are curious about what this is about please see ‘The B-Side Explainer’.
The B-Side Explainer
The link below is to the free B-Side.