(August 10th, 2010) The recent football World Cup Finals in South Africa saw the usual array of commercial sponsors vying for advertising space, but it also inspired thoughts of a scientific nature. What does football have in common with science? Jeremy Garwood explains.
Howy Jacobs, editor of the journal EMBO reports was in raptures: “Science, similarly to football, is a beautiful game,” he wrote in his editorial (‘Name of the Game’ 11:487, 2010). Enthused footballing scientists may, however, be a little disappointed to read that Jacobs’ ideas on scientific football analogies are restricted to: “how scientific publishing might develop” if influenced by the rules of football. Furthermore, the “increasing professionalization of soccer is a warning to those who believe that science is a game for amateurs”!!
According to EMBO reports’ editor, a football-flavoured world of scientific publication would include author guidelines such as: “Scoring: in the end the only thing that counts is scoring. Authors should be aware that their manuscript will be judged solely on how many citations it generates.” Or, “Discussion: as on the field, discussion should be kept to a bare minimum.”
One might begin to wonder if Howy Jacobs has ever actually played a game of football. For a start, it features two teams of eleven players on a pre-defined playing field. Does this really resemble the relationship between the corresponding author of a submitted manuscript (the Team Captain?) and the semi-opaque editorial process of scientific journals, fielding their entirely anonymous team of peer reviewers? Some football game! One team running around opposite a dense cloud of dimly perceived opponents, trying to figure out how to take shots at a goal whose specifications they can only guess at.
Perhaps we would do better with our analogy if we considered like-with-like: opposing research teams in an open competition for research funds, manpower and prestigious trophies. Except that this soon brings us back to footballing reality. The World Cup is not a typical footballing situation. Most of the time, football is played in national leagues with the occasional international encounter in a cup competition. Most football teams are separated into hierarchical leagues according to their relative playing capacities – the top teams play in the premier divisions and can receive considerable sums of money from their spectators, television companies, and commercial sponsors. Poorer, less accomplished football teams play in lower divisions at regional, or even rural, levels.
Are scientific research teams as far advanced as this? One might think of top teams thriving at the elite institutions in cities. Yes, they could be in the First Division. But wait! In science, teams are more often competing with other teams in closely related research areas. And their opponents may be in smaller, quieter institutions, scattered in less populated corners of their respective countries. Are these modest teams really prepared for a match in the First Division? In fact, closer inspection of these research groups frequently suggests they wouldn’t be up to fielding a team at all! Once we have taken account of a team leader, a stranded student and a part-time technician, we’re not even looking at 5-a-side football team! How can they realistically compete with a squad of 11 or more?
In fact, what makes us think they’re competing on a level playing field during the match? Football has clearly defined rules and regulations. There’s a referee on the pitch to enforce their observation (albeit with occasional errors of judgement). Top teams perform before thousands of direct eyewitnesses. They might be watched by millions on television who benefit from multiple camera angles and slow motion replays, admiring and judging for themselves. Is science ever played this openly, allowing spectators to freely observe and comment on all the action?
Nevertheless, just like football, science has its winners and losers, its star players. In this respect, they do have similarities: professional football players may only have 10 years to perform in a top team. They are then passed over in favour of younger players. This is partially because younger players are cheaper and will usually follow the manager’s directions without question. They have performance potential and are still full of naïve enthusiasm.
What happens to retired professional footballers in their late twenties and early thirties? In many countries, exactly the same question might also be posed about those professional scientists who didn’t go on to a career in team management or scientific publishing.