Bitter and twisted

‘Bitter-and-twisted’ individuals are found in all academic institutions. The people most susceptible to this syndrome are those with high intelligence and deep personal aspirations to accomplish something important. The age of onset is quite variable; serious cases may first appear during graduate school, only to worsen over time. More mild cases may only develop after the age of 50. One of the early warning signs of the bitter-and-twisted syndrome is the tendency to comment in seminars that you have already done (but not necessarily published) what the speaker is describing. Another symptom is the compulsion to spend hours with Science Citation Index looking at who is citing (and not citing) your work. In more serious cases, individuals repeatedly write angry letters to journals, editors and other scientists, threatening severe recriminations if the writer’s work is not cited.At the root of the bitter-and-twisted’ syndrome is the tendency to feel underacknowledged, unloved and underappreciated; it’s hardly surprising that such feelings are common in academia. When I was in college, I remember a professor saying that the Iliad is a tale about the scarcity of honor. We scientists also live in a world where honor, glory and recognition feel scarce. Like soldiers, we are part of a collective enterprise that depends on collaboration and cooperation, yet rewards individual achievement. We live in a world that measures the impact of our papers (reliably or not), accords status not only on the basis of the quality of a paper (however this is judged) but according to the perceived excellence of the journal that published it, and rewards acknowledged achievement with the financial resources that facilitate additional achievement. We all wish to be scientific equivalents of Achilles, or even Michael Jordan, but most of us must content ourselves with the personal satisfaction of a job well done.Our sporting heroes expect to live in a world in which the accomplishments of yesteryear do not protect against the dire consequences of a bad season. We however, delude ourselves that our accomplishments have more lasting impact than they do. Work that time finds insignificant will be soon forgotten by all but a few. Even work that is truly significant soon passes from the purview of citation, in which the accomplishment is attributed to the individual, to being ‘general knowledge’. The first demonstrations of an important or paradigm-changing finding are often forgotten. The pioneer, as often as not, must be content with only the personal satisfaction of having changed the way people think, and not expect continued peer recognition of the achievement.The bitter-and-twisted syndrome is sometimes a symptom of a related disease: the paralysis that can result from perfectionism. The individual with ‘perfectionism paralysis’ will have endless reasons why an experiment isn’t worth doing because it won’t answer all of the questions in the universe. He or she will be unable to finish and publish any study for fear that it isn’t good enough (whatever that means). The inevitable consequence of this is that when someone else publishes the same results — often many years later — and receives credit for the work, the individual displays bitter-and-twisted behaviors.My husband and I have a serious disagreement about the diagnosis of bitter-and-twisted syndrome. He maintains that this diagnosis should be limited to those with incurable cases that pervade their entire approach to science and life. I have appropriated the term for symptoms that could affect all of us unless we are vigilant. Like many academic disagreements, we leave it to you, my gentle readers, to decide which definition you find most useful. He maintains that those with the incurable form of bitter-and-twisted are so because of early life experiences, and academic life only provides the opportunities for the scars of childhood and adolescence to reveal themselves. I am far more concerned with the, hopefully, milder form that could afflict most of us as we age. I believe that we all must guard against pernicious tendencies to slip into short bouts of bitter-and-twisted; if recognized and treated in time, these can be cured.What should you do if you find yourself displaying the symptoms? The first line of defense should be a close personal friend who, after 30 minutes of listening to you feeling sorry for yourself, will tell you to “rise above it”. Being able to laugh at yourself is necessary. Remembering why you wanted to be a scientist helps. Above all, the best preventive medicine is to attempt to emulate the grace and dignity with which some of our most senior and respected scientists support and encourage their junior colleagues.