A question of academics in the "blogosphere"

Recently my university has been in the news for a very complicated problem that involves an unhappy university president, and faculty member, and the university chancellor.  (For those who do not hang around universities, the Chancellor in corporate language is sort of the Chairman of the Board meaning that the position has power, but not in the same way as the president or CEO).

Not to get into the weeds too far, the president was just new, brought in with lots of fanfare and promise, but then suddenly quit in less than a year.  The faculty member decided to speculate on why he quit in her blog using less than appropriate language and inference to which the Chancellor took offense.  Then the faculty member in less than sterling behavior whined that by calling her on the inappropriateness of her blog speculations, that the Chancellor had intruded on her "academic freedom", which in turn then stole all the oxygen from the real story (ie why did the president really quit) and turned it onto this "poor me victim" drivel.  [ You can probably tell where my personal sympathies lie and don't lie].  

To bring this sad and complex story to an end,  the whole mess was reviewed by a very august retired judge who gave an opinion that what a university academic writes in a blog constitutes protected thoughts and should be afforded the same academic freedom protections.

If you enjoy in getting into the weeds more (and why would you?) you can Google "UBC President Resigns".

But my Question is, does everyone believe that what a person writes in a personal blog is some how sacrosanct and rises to the level of protected speech?  

In the US, I suspect that many would say that all opinion is indeed sacrosanct, and should be considered as protected under the first amendment as "protected speech" .  I may be a horse's ass with thoughts appropriate, but as long as I don't threaten anybody, what is written in a blog should be accepted "free speech".  I can live with that.

But it seems to me that academic freedom implies something different.  It implies some some of intellectual effort, that is associated with the creation of new knowledge, new insights, and some sort of intellectual rigor.  If you want to use your blog as an alternate vehicle from the traditional peer review process to hasten dissemination, you can do that.  That doesn't mean that the audience is honor bound to accept it as truth, but if it has the dimensions of new knowledge and some degree of rigor, you probably can make the argument that this is your academic opinion, and while you may be criticized for it, no one can prevent you from writing.

But most blogs that represent solely opinion and little or no substance and nothing resembling structure, opinion or new knowledge, are something else.  Blogs are more often about the writer's desire to write, than about creating information for others (did someone say narcissistic?) My blog is my opinion, good, bad or indifferent, but I personally would not consider it as something particularly special. I have never considered adding my blog entries into my curriculum vitae (resume), but I will include some as references in literature if I am trying to make a point.

But now that an august judge has decided that all these writings are indeed sacrosanct and protected, maybe I will have to consider them with more respect.

Horrors !!!

Invention and Innovation and “new knowledge”

Invention and Innovation and “new knowledge”

Our recent Canadian budget shone light on an issue critical to Quality.  Apparently Canadians are very good at invention and very poor at innovation. 

For purposes of this discussion it is important to see these two words as different.  Invention is the formulation of new ideas for products or processes, while Innovation is about developing practical application of new (or old) inventions into better products or services.  In the business entrepreneurial context “better” mean “marketable”.

The more that I explore the concept, the more I appreciate the continuum: Invention is at the top end and innovation happens downstream.  Moving from idea to product creates one form of innovation (innovation leading to new products), tweaking the process further downstream creates another (innovation leading to improved products).    According to our federal government, Canadians have a good track record on invention, but we stink at innovation, and that results in a poor record of falling productivity.

I have been thinking about this concept for a while, not only because of our federal governments concerns, but because it pertains to some things that I am very involved with right now. 

At my university the handbook for Graduate Supervision says to earn a master’s degree the student has to produce a significant scholarly work with some original contribution whenever possible, and to earn a doctoral degree the student shall develop a substantial and original contribution of new knowledge to the field of study.  To me that sounds a lot like my institution is expecting to produce doctors of invention and masters of innovation.  But when push comes to shove, I suspect that that represents more rhetoric than reality. 

For the longest time I have been both intrigued and confused by the term “new knowledge”.  The root seems to come from the Artificial Intelligence community who were talking about the synthesis of “new knowledge” from previously stored “information and knowledge” in the nineties, but I can find references going back thirty years previous.  Today it has become a new hot phraseology like “new knowledge economics” and “new knowledge society” and “new knowledge culture”.  So whatever it meant before, it means something different today.

I trust that what academia is trying to express when they require our PhD candidates to produce “new knowledge” is that after working on a project for several years that we should be able to expect something that represents some level of progress and innovation.  
Patentable new ideas and invention would be nice but innovative ideas that lead to progress in understanding are powerful in their own way. 

At a more immediate level, my proficiency testing program defines our mission as “innovation, education, continual quality improvement and quality management”.  Innovation comes first. 

So can we justify our bold statement.  I think we can. 

This year we have created a new tool for providing proficiency testing for detection of shiga toxin (aka verotoxin) in enterobacteria.  It works regardless of which method the laboratory uses for detection.  We have not put a patent on the material, but I think that this qualifies as both “invention” and product innovation.  At the same time we have redeveloped our gram stain slides so that we can now ensure that they will retain their quality for examination for up to a year so that we can be more productive in producing our materials for our various programs, and I would read this as clear evidence for process improvement.  

(Question to self: would this be a reasonable foundation that could lead to a PhD in Laboratory Quality?)

So here we are; reasonable evidence for invention, solid evidence for innovations and a pathway to better productivity.  I should let our finance minister (Jim Flaherty) know that we are innovative and productive Canadians.

And perhaps it has become time for our universities to work through some continual improvement process to ensure that it uses terms that we can all understand.

Note: minor revisions to spelling and grammar made June 16, 2012.

New Knowledge and MLQ.

If there is a core essence to research in academia it is the production of “new knowledge”, an idea that is by design both tangible and sufficiently vague.  Pieced together from a variety of sources, knowledge is about the appreciation of concepts and relationships that link the objects within a body or area of interest.  Knowledge may be derived from information or data, but it extends beyond both.  Knowledge extends beyond facts.  It embraces integration and understanding.

Research is the method by which new knowledge is created.  Research and knowledge build from foundations created by previous research and established knowledge, resulting in new concepts, new ideas, and new relationships resulting in  (ergo) new knowledge. 

Knowledge production in its traditional concept has been characterized as having its place in academia, focused primarily within specific disciplines.  It is said to be autonomous, that is it should be able to stand alone, but at the same time is dependent upon “peer review” for its quality control.  A more modern approach, described as Mode 2 new production of knowledge (NPK) turns most of that on its head and recognizes the knowledge production is much broader in its reach and embrace and capture. Mode 2 NPK speaks much more to the issues of ethics, and society and transdisciplinary impact.  Importantly it goes beyond traditional peer review as the sole criteria of quality and looks to broader political and economic and social and cultural impacts.  This is not so much a deterioration from “good science” but a recognition that “good science” need not be exclusively tied to the beliefs and practices of tradition and peers.

I bring this to mind because at the moment I am pushing very hard to raise the concept in my institution about the value, importance, and indeed criticality that Quality adds to laboratory medicine.  We need to recognize Medical Laboratory Quality (MLQ) as a discipline worthy of research and development of new knowledge.  At the same time I am preparing to be a part of an examination committee for a candidate’s thesis defence of her work being submitted for a PhD which addresses some extremely important concepts in laboratory quality.  I suspect that once the work is finalized and published and widely distributed, her work has the potential to result in new societal ideas and change for the better.

Given the caution that my institution is showing in moving forward on a proposal to recognize the importance and opportunities in new knowledge production, it would be easy to interpret this with frustration.  Perhaps.  But this is revolutionary change that I am proposing. 

MLQ as a focus of academic pursuit is the essence of Mode 2 NPK.  It crosses the traditional boundaries within and outside the pathology laboratory.  It goes beyond traditional medical practice.  It addresses economy, society and cultural issues.  Its peer group includes medical leaders and government and business and (perhaps especially) consumer and patient advocates.  This is not intended to denigrate traditional study that leads to improved concepts and novel diagnostics.  It is about recognizing that it is time to broaden our scope.

MLQ is a new and innovative (indeed foreign) to traditional medical academic faculties.  Quality has routinely been the responsibility of (interpret that as “relegated to”) the administrative managers.  It is not the stuff that folks with MDs and PhDs would want to tinker; it is not real science.  That is not to say that there are not leaders in the world of medical laboratory quality and its first cousin, patient safety (Dick Zarbo comes to mind), but while the discipline is growing and its advocates increasing, it has been a slow process.  The peer community is small, which may be one of the reasons that I get the opportunities that I do. 

So at this point I can not yet identify the university and department that has taken the progressive step to embrace MLQ nor can I identify the candidate.  That will come.  But I can and do hand to both kudos for taking an important indeed transformative step forward.