Matt Fox, DSc on academic kindness and deli meat sheets

Matt Fox, DSc, infectious disease epidemiologist and epi methods expert, discusses kindness in academia: what is it, why it's not as common, and how we can change the culture. We also talk funny zoom call goodbyes, armpit farts, deli meat sheets, and more! 

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Lisa Bodnar:

Do you want to talk about your grandma? Weren't you going to say something about that?

Guest:

Yeah.

Lisa Bodnar:

Okay. Go ahead. Do you need a lead in?

Guest:

Yeah. Give me a lead in.

Lisa Bodnar:

Okay. Like what?

Guest:

Like, "Tell us about your grandma."

Lisa Bodnar:

Hey everyone. Welcome to Shiny Epi People. I'm Lisa Bodnar. I'm an epidemiologist at the University of Pittsburgh. Today I have the great pleasure of talking with my good friend, Matt Fox. Matt is a professor in the departments of epidemiology and global health at Boston University. Not long ago, a friend who I can't exactly remember who it was, they called Matt the unofficial mayor of epidemiology, and I can't think of a better way to describe him. Today we talk about kindness in academia, then we talk about a lot of other really silly stuff. So, I hope you enjoy this chat. Matt, welcome to Shiny Epi People.

Guest:

So good to be here, wherever it is that we are.

Lisa Bodnar:

Matt, do you remember how we met?

Guest:

Yes. That was when we did our seminar for SER and we spent hours and hours trying to come up with the funniest title we could possibly come up with.

Lisa Bodnar:

That's not even the time. There's a time before that.

Guest:

There's a time before that?

Lisa Bodnar:

Yeah.

Guest:

When is that?

Lisa Bodnar:

So, I reached out to Tim. I was a postdoc. This was like 17 years ago. I was a post doc and I was trying to do bias analysis and he was like, "Talk to Matt Fox." And this was a perfect example for our show today on kindness, because you were so kind to me. You were in South Africa-

Guest:

I was?

Lisa Bodnar:

Yes. You had a billion things to do and you were helping me write SAS code. You didn't know me from Adam and you were just like, "Sure, I'd be happy to help you." It was so nice.

Guest:

Huh? Wow.

Lisa Bodnar:

Yeah. Let's talk about kindness today. So Matt, are you a kind person?

Guest:

I think I try to be a kind person. I will tell you that I value kindness and it's something that I strive for. I don't know that I'd say that I meet the standard by which I would want to think of myself. So, I don't know about you, but I am haunted by times when I was not a kind person.

Lisa Bodnar:

Do you have some of those memories since you've been on faculty? Because I do.

Guest:

Well, I can think of some times when I haven't been probably generous of spirit, particularly a younger faculty member, not really knowing the ropes. I mean, academia is this weird place where there are all these rules that you don't know about. You feel like you're on the outside until you get on the inside. And obviously, many people never feel like they get to the inside, but when you do, it's this feeling like, oh, I'm in this special club and that has meaning therefore I'm important. And then, you start to realize actually, no, it's actually kind of mean and it keeps people out who just don't know the rules or can't make their way in, and that's not my favorite aspect of academia. I should say, I love academia, so I don't want to be overly negative here, but there are aspects of it that I find upsetting.

Lisa Bodnar:

Why is kindness in academia a topic that you spend a lot of time thinking about? When did this start becoming part of your consciousness?

Guest:

It's something that I spend a lot of time thinking about, I think because personally it's just something that when people are kind to me, it changes my whole day or one small act of kindness can really make my entire day. And it's something that I spend thinking about.

Guest:

But also because like with many industries, but academia, I think in some ways in particular we're not in a space where kindness is always encouraged. That in a lot of ways, we have so much of our time taken up by doing things that are competitive in nature and therefore require us to very much focus on ourselves or maybe our small group that we're a part of. That is not particularly conducive to just thinking about other people as human beings and what their needs are and you know how to make their lives just a little bit better. For me, it goes back to my grandmother, my nana, we have a saying in my family when I was growing up and we use it now, it's not unique to us in any way, I'm sure lots of people say this, but the thing that I grew up on was, "It's more important to do good than to do well."

Guest:

My mom always used to say, "I care that you get good grades in school, but I care more that you come out of school as a good person." Someday, if I'm ever fortunate enough to be able to fund an award for academics, through SER or otherwise, it would be an award named after her. That would be the award for kindness, for caring, for people who exist in a space professionally but treat people as human beings and treat people the way they want to be treated." And we're in a field that is by definition, critical. We are taught to look for the errors and the biases and all the problems with everybody's research and there is reward in being critical. And that's okay, I mean, I am supportive of critique, I believe strongly in critique, but we can also think very carefully about the people who are doing the work and make sure that the critiques that we're doing are not personal.

Guest:

So, I will never regret the minutes that I have spent writing emails to people whose work I really liked. One thing that I have regretted is I have no problem with the idea of being critical. And in fact, there can be kindness in the honesty of being critical, as long as it is constructive and helpful and kind in where it comes from. But we can publish papers that talk about all the problems in people's work, or we can talk about it, but we can also talk to those people and make sure that they understand that it's not personal, that we still respect them as people, even if we disagree about a particular paper. And I just think there's not enough of that.

Lisa Bodnar:

I think that showing empathy, being in that moment and remembering, oh, I remember what it was like to be a student, when I was so nervous to present my poster and have someone come by. Putting your self back in those shoes, I think really allows you to treat more people with kindness because you think about who they are and what circumstance they're in.

Guest:

Yeah. Absolutely. And thinking about what is it that you could say to them that would be helpful to them in advancing their research, their career, but also lets them feel good about themselves and helps them know that you're a person who cares that they exist and cares that they feel good about themselves too. My favorite way to try to be kind to people is to talk nicely about people behind their backs. I will never forget some very clear instances where people have said to me, "Oh, I was talking to so-and-so and they're a fan of yours." Or, "They really like this particular piece of work." Whenever you talk about somebody nicely behind their back, it will get back to them. If you and I are having a conversation and I say something nice about you, you may be wondering, does he really mean it or is he just saying it to make me feel good? But if I say it to somebody else and it gets back to you, it feels so much more genuine.

Guest:

There are less obvious versions of that, that you can do. Like if there's somebody's paper that you like, go on to Twitter and tweet about it, because it's going to be more meaningful when it comes as you talking about their paper in public than it is if you just say it to somebody in your office. If there are things that you like, work that you appreciate, let people know about it.

Lisa Bodnar:

So, I have a couple of examples of times when people were really kind to me that have made such a mark.

Guest:

Oh, tell me.

Lisa Bodnar:

So, one was when I was a postdoc and I was giving an oral presentation, a very senior person came up to me afterwards and he said, "There was something in your analysis that was wrong and it was pretty wrong." And we talked it through and I remember just thinking, "Wow, he could have totally embarrassed me in front of the entire room and he didn't." The other thing that happened to me, I was also a postdoc. I was at SER. I had published a paper, it used a mediation analysis and it was wrong. It was just wrong.

Guest:

Okay. Okay. I have a story very similar then. Go ahead.

Lisa Bodnar:

And I was pretty proud of myself, published it in this cool paper, and a very senior methods person came up to me and he said, "That paper isn't right, here's why." And again, I was horrified and I actually said to him, "Are you going to write a letter to the editor and say why it was wrong?" And he was like, "No, I'm telling you. I'm not going to put a letter to the editor in. You just need to know that that's not how you do it." It was just so kind that he didn't call me out.

Guest:

So, I can say I had a similar experience, in that I had somebody who found a mistake in a paper that we had published. It was a mistake that actually in the end didn't change the results, but there was no way of knowing that and the person who found it put together a letter to the editor to explain, but they sent it to me and said, "I just wanted to get your sense. I think it's important to fix and what do you think?" And we looked at it and the person was absolutely right, and they let us write our own errata to fix it rather than writing this letter. I thought it was incredibly kind to have come to us first because, again, kindness isn't letting everything go. I don't think actually it is kind to ignore real problems. I think there is a kindness in honesty, but just thinking about like, if I'm in this situation, how do I want this dealt with and what is the way I want to be treated? And rarely do I want to be humiliated in front of all my peers.

Lisa Bodnar:

It really felt like a kindness, the way that they handled these two situations, they wanted me to understand, they wanted me to do it better next time. That was really kind because they could have just ignored it and said, "Oh well, she doesn't know what she's doing," but they actually took time to tell me very gently how I fucked up. Great.

Guest:

Can I say one thing, I have a worry about kindness though, which is that, I think one of the things that we are not so good at is just getting outside of our own networks and our networks look very much like we do. I think often our thinking about kindness, or at least I am, being kind to the people who are within my network, who are closest to me. And that, I think has the advantage of pulling people closer to me and developing those relationships better, but it also reinforces that same system that we talked about in the beginning, of a set of rules that not everybody feels included in that club.

Guest:

And so, one of the things I'm spending a lot of time thinking about right now is, how do you be kind to people that you don't know, without being creepy? Because some of the things that you would normally do for a person as an act of kindness, when you do them for somebody you don't know, that could seem weird and like, what's that all about? I do worry, as a white male professor, coming from a position with a lot of privilege, I think that sometimes, reaching out to people can just come across as a little weird. You're not aware of how your acts are affecting other people.

Lisa Bodnar:

And it seems like we can't separate kindness from inclusion and it is less comfortable to me to reach out to people who are outside of my circle, and I've realized that that's something I need to work on. What do you think that we can do to create a culture of kindness in academia?

Guest:

I mean, obviously the incentives that we have available to us, they're not set up for kindness. They're set up around productivity and particularly around grants and manuscripts and having a demonstrable impact. And there are certainly people who think that if you can make a difference in saving lives, I don't care if you're a good person, that's just not me, but in terms of, so how do we create that culture? I mean, I think it has to be modeled by those above us so that it's made clear that it's a value of the institution. That we aren't just here to do our work, but that we are human beings who go home to complicated lives that make doing our everyday jobs more difficult because we have responsibilities at home.

Guest:

Some of us are dealing with physical issues ourselves or depression, or just having a hard time and having an institution that says, "We understand and we recognize that that's a part of life. When these kinds of things happen, we treat people the way we would want to be treated," is the way that the organization sends the message that that's what we value.

Lisa Bodnar:

I think that so often we don't treat ourselves kindly therefore it's hard to treat others with kindness too, because we're not paying enough attention to it within ourselves. If you can be empathetic towards yourself, it is much easier to be empathetic towards others. Matt, what stats of your life would you like to see?

Guest:

So, I would like to know about my life, I would like to know cumulative number of Pop-Tarts that I've eaten. I'd like to know the number of times that I have walked to the copier only to find out that I'd never hit print. I'd like to watch in sequence, in order, every single time I had to reset my password to submit a journal article. I'd like to know the lifetime number of miles that I've traveled, and I would like to know my lifetime high score in Tetris.

Lisa Bodnar:

If you were a dictator of a small island nation, what crazy dictator stuff would you do?

Guest:

Okay. So, I don't know if you know this about me, but I actually lived in a country with a crazy dictator. So, I was in the Peace Corps in Turkmenistan, and he did really amazing stuff like rename all of the months of the year after himself and his mother. And so, I feel like I have a little bit of a template to follow here. Let's see, all roads would be ... Or all means of transport would be rollercoasters. If you could go to work on a rollercoaster every day, how awesome would that be?

Lisa Bodnar:

All the screaming on a rollercoaster is the most cathartic thing ever.

Guest:

Oh, it's fantastic. And lastly, waffles would be declared a vegetable.

Lisa Bodnar:

What are you really good at but kind of embarrassed to be really good at it?

Guest:

I am, in my opinion, really good at loading the dishwasher, but that is disputed within my house. So, even though I think this is true, it is not universally accepted and I think I'm really good at giving high-fives.

Lisa Bodnar:

Would win a fist fight between Jay Kaufman and Jamie Robins?

Guest:

I'm going to go with [BEEP].

Lisa Bodnar:

When I asked you that, I thought you were going to be like, "No comment, next."

Guest:

Maybe that's what I should have said. Sorry. No comment.

Lisa Bodnar:

Okay. What's the funniest way you'd like to see people say goodbye on a Zoom call?

Guest:

I don't have an answer to that, but what I can tell you is my favorite thing on a Zoom call is the moment when everyone says goodbye and then you sit around awkwardly trying to find the button and you're like, "Do I say anything? What do I do here? Do I try to explain to people, oh I'm just trying to find the button." That is my favorite part of Zoom calls. Funniest way to say goodbye, how about just yelling, "Yahtzee."?

Lisa Bodnar:

So, I prefer an armpit fart, you know? One of these, where you do the elbow thing and you fart in your armpit.

Guest:

I have no idea what you're talking about. I've never really witnessed such a thing. Can you make the noise?

Lisa Bodnar:

No. We shouldn't do that. That'll give us an explicit rating. I had a good friend who was giving a talk to the entire school and she was doing an awesome job and very serious, and I was not in the mood to sit there. And so, I went to the back of the room and I did armpit farts. I stood in the back. She made eye contact with me and got totally red, completely lost her train of thought, I just silently laughed, and then I went and sat down. And afterwards she was like, "What the fuck are you doing?" I said, "I don't know, I just thought it'd be fun."

Guest:

Do you have a ... Because there's the armpit, but there's also the leg. Can you do the leg?

Lisa Bodnar:

I haven't tried that in a while. I think I would need to be sweaty. Don't you think?

Guest:

Yeah.

Lisa Bodnar:

Yeah.

Guest:

Yeah. Yeah. It definitely helps.

Lisa Bodnar:

Were you a pimply teenager?

Guest:

No, I was not. It was not a big issue for me. But I mean, you look at me and you can tell, I was cool when I was a kid. I mean, you can just see it, right?

Lisa Bodnar:

No comment. If your bedsheets had to be made of deli meat, what kind of deli meat would you want them to be made of?

Guest:

Okay. Point of clarification, before I answer that, is my pillow made of condiments, condiments that I can pair with the deli meat sheets?

Lisa Bodnar:

No. So, the pillow is the bun or the bread

Guest:

The pillow is the bun.

Lisa Bodnar:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Guest:

Okay. So, then I'm going to go with turkey.

Lisa Bodnar:

Me too.

Guest:

But there's a part of me that wants to go with corned beef, but I'm going to go with turkey because I think it's more versatile.

Lisa Bodnar:

I think it would be less moist.

Guest:

Okay. Can we take that word out?

Lisa Bodnar:

What breakfast cereal has influenced your life the most?

Guest:

See, that's an easy one, it's Fruity Pebbles. When I was a kid, I was at summer camp and Fruity Pebbles were considered a form of currency. The different colored Fruity Pebbles had different values and you could use them as currency. So, Fruity Pebbles have absolutely influenced my life.

Lisa Bodnar:

The get so mushy though.

Guest:

I know. And I wouldn't eat them now, but they definitely influenced me as a kid.

Lisa Bodnar:

Yeah. Okay.

Guest:

Okay. So, here's the thing. So, my feeling is the best defense is a good offense. So, for every question you asked me, I get to ask you one. Who's your favorite Backstreet Boy?

Lisa Bodnar:

Is that the group with Justin Timberlake?

Guest:

You're asking the wrong person.

Lisa Bodnar:

I don't know. Is that the Wahlberg?

Guest:

No. That was NKOTB.

Lisa Bodnar:

Oh, okay. I don't know.

Guest:

Oh, wow. Okay.

Lisa Bodnar:

Yeah. What is the maximum number of rejections, did you get from journals on a single paper before the paper was finally accepted?

Guest:

Okay. I think I'm still on that one right now. I think I have a paper that has yet to succeed and I think I'm up to five, but if you ever read it, it's a great paper, I promise.

Lisa Bodnar:

It just needs to find the right audience, right?

Guest:

It just needs the right home.

Lisa Bodnar:

It just does.

Guest:

Do you have a place that you hide food from your kids?

Lisa Bodnar:

Yes.

Guest:

And will you tell us where it is?

Lisa Bodnar:

Do you want to see it? It's right here. Look. I have it in my closet. Look, there's candy right there, and then even down below those packages, there are a ton of cookies back there.

Guest:

Nice.

Lisa Bodnar:

Do you have a secret spot?

Guest:

No. Except that during the early days of the pandemic, I was hoarding cookies in my room, I was.

Lisa Bodnar:

But why just in the early days of the pandemic?

Guest:

I think I thought that everybody was going to buy up all the cookies, but I didn't want to put them in the cabinets because then they would get eaten.

Lisa Bodnar:

I want to add one thing about the candy stash. So my kids, just my girls, stash their candy in another part of my closet so that their brother can't get it. It is literally, Matt, there is so much stuff in there. There are Gushers, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups-

Guest:

Yum.

Lisa Bodnar:

... Sour Patch Kids. There is so much stuff in there, they often forget it's there. I'm like, "You guys, there's an entire shelf of your candy in my closet." They're like, "It's the only place that Cole won't eat it."

Guest:

Fair enough.

Lisa Bodnar:

Assume we're back at work.

Guest:

Okay.

Lisa Bodnar:

Would you rather there be a perpetual water balloon fight going on in your department or a perpetual food fight?

Guest:

If I had to choose one, I'd go with the water balloon fight. Water balloon fights are much more fun depending on what the food is. If we're talking about whipped cream pies, that's one thing, but regular food is just kind of gross.

Lisa Bodnar:

Yeah. Like someone throwing a sweet potato at you. No.

Guest:

Yup.

Lisa Bodnar:

But what if it was a huge sheet cake, white cake, that you scooped up with your hands and chucked it at people?

Guest:

Yeah. That would be fun. On a scale from one to 10, how embarrassed would you be if you had to pull out your phone right now and read off your last five Google searches?

Lisa Bodnar:

So, there's nothing explicit because my kids get my phone, that's the only reason why. I have to look up definitions of words a lot. I'm going to text a word and then I'm like, uh-oh, is that really what that means? And then I'm like, what if I write that and then it's wrong, and people think I'm an idiot?

Guest:

Yeah. I do a fair bit of that myself.

Lisa Bodnar:

Name as many characters as you can from Happy Days.

Guest:

Okay. Richie Cunningham, Fonzie, Ralph Malph, Potsie Weber, Joanie, Chachi, Marion, Howard. Yeah.

Lisa Bodnar:

To end the episode, I'm wondering if you could sing the theme song of Happy Days?

Guest:

(singing)

Lisa Bodnar:

(singing)

Guest:

(singing) That's all I remember.

Lisa Bodnar:

Thank you, Matt. Goodbye.

Guest:

Bye.

Lisa Bodnar:

Who would win a fist fight between Rich MacLehose and me?

Guest:

If it was a fair fight, then it would definitely be you. Rich fights dirty. Can I just ask, what are you guys fighting over? Is it me?

Lisa Bodnar:

Yeah. It is.