A Healthy Scientific Community - How to build one?

What hinders the growth of a healthy scientific temperament?

Scientific progress is measured in units of courage, not intelligence. - Paul Dirac

Greetings, fellow Bohron

Science! Stars twinkling, atoms dancing and rainbow shining. That’s how we are introduced to the wonders of science. Those colourful graphics in the fascinating books that we read as children grab our attention and we believe our life goal is set: to be a scientist one day.

Fast forward to years ahead when we are ‘actually’ doing science. Enrolled in graduate and undergraduate programs in prestigious institutions, we are learning the ins and outs of all the beautifully mysterious phenomena that fascinated us as kids. A lot of learning leads to an urge to share our knowledge with others and this is the seed of all of science communication. However, at this point, the spirit of science popularization is confronted by a dilemma:

1. Either we’ve no one to interact with because no one takes an active interest in science. This happens in an environment where scientific motivation is little.

2. Or we don’t want to share our knowledge because we believe we deserve all the limelight. This can happen in any environment.

Sights like these aren’t common in areas where scientific awareness is little. Source

And that sets up the problem I’m going to discuss today.

The Problem - Years of Brainwashing

The problem lies in the intermediate years we spend between our scientific fantasies as a child and the years we began ‘doing’ science.

Why do we refuse to do science?

Society has taught us to accept a few societal beliefs with questioning. Years of conforming to these norms have slowly demolished our inquisitive selves. So when we actually set out to do science, the art of questioning doesn't come naturally to us. We have to look for it outside. Needless to say, we struggle.

Don’t mistake the act of committing yourself to your academic program with true science. Academic studies done without freeing yourself of any bias and without giving you the freedom to be fearless in the pursuit of truth merely reduce your efforts as something you’re doing to be financially stable one day.

Why do we refuse to share our knowledge with others?

Society tricks us into believing that our lives are exclusive and that we are born to compete and do things that yield results only meant for us. So when we work hard on a task and learn something incredible in the end, we refuse to share it with others because we’re saying to ourselves in our head, “I did all the work. I own this. So I should keep it to myself. Why share my findings and divide the credit?”

Everyone is hungry for attention. Source

But from where does this problem arise?

The Cause - Odd One Out

Among the main reasons that keep a healthy scientific community from developing, ‘selectivity’ is the one I believe is the most consequential.

Selectivity is the act of intentionally choosing some people or things and not others.

Since most of my readers are students like me, I’ll explain through a very relatable example. Consider a science student from a batch of 40 students.

Every day, he wakes up, heads to his department and enters his classroom. He sits on ‘his’ same chair because the same people occupy ‘their’ other chairs. Hence he sits between the same people. He attends the lectures which offer little room for student-teacher interaction (not much to blame here though). During the break, he relaxes with the same people he sat among and has lunch with the same people. He comes back with the same people and works in the laboratories with the same people. Once in a while, an extra-curricular event is announced. He participates but guess what? He collaborates with the same people!

The cycle repeats every day. What a boring life!

Selectivity can also breed other negative elements like hatred and jealousy. Source

What made us selective?

Remember those intermediate years. We have been taught that competition can bring only two results for an individual: success or failure. If I win, others lose and vice versa. And rarely does someone take pleasure in the win of others. To guarantee individual success, we abandon the notion of ‘common good’. A race begins and we become selective. We choose to be with people who look like us, share similar fashion sense, are of the same religion, and think and make choices like us. Individuals whose interests don’t align become outcasts for each other.

Rarely you will find a group whose chief objective is to promote rationality, logical reasoning and the free pursuit of truth, all of which are essential traits of a healthy scientific community.

Being choosy isn’t always beneficial. Source

This old and famous “Divide and Rule” strategy hasn’t flowed within the science just recently. Secrecy of knowledge was practised by Pythagoreans, Plato and Aristotle. In WWII, the United States and the Soviet Union refused to cooperate, resulting in a Cold War with the sole objective of outdoing each other via the maximum procurement of knowledge and resources.

The Effect - A Lifeless Society

This ‘divide and rule’ strategy splits our batch of 40 into several small groups comprising only 3-4 students. The ideas that initiate within one group stay in it forever. The knowledge becomes secret, each group works for its agenda disregarding the interests of others and guess who loses? Science!

How does being selective affect us?

If I spend my whole time with the same 2-3 individuals in the same environment, I’m robbing myself of the other 35 perspectives/stories. One of them might hold the key to the problem I’ve been trying to solve for weeks, change my heretic views about a subject or open me to new career opportunities. I will never know if I’m never willing to open myself to experience. The label of ‘science student’ on my head fails to be justified.

I find that the students in this batch are merely competitive consumers who have rented a room for a couple of years to stare in one direction for hours every day trying to make up for the money their families paid for them.

The Solution…?

To build a healthy scientific community, we need to know how each individual can contribute to science. What are humans? I find two interpretations the most appropriate.

1. Humans are enormous storehouses of energy expected to be expended for the right causes.

2. Humans are exciting stories waiting to be narrated. Everyone views the world differently and hence has something new to add to the ‘reality’ of our world.

This is the basic essence of scientific progress. The transition from Ptolemy’s geocentrism to Copernicus’ heliocentrism and from Classical to Quantum reality was possible because certain individuals dared to break free from the existing dogmas that allowed them to view our world from a different angle.

I guess even though the body evolved, the monkey mindset didn’t. Source

It is a well-known belief that every human is gifted with a unique quality. People who identified these qualities within them went on to become excellent communicators and popularizers.

• A captivating voice made Morgan Freeman an eloquent speaker.

• Adept writing skills made Carl Sagan an accomplished writer.

• A charismatic personality made Neil D. Tyson a great on-screen presenter.

• Excellent puzzle-solving skills made Tim Berners-Lee an expert programmer.

• A knack for simplifying complex topics made Richard Feynman a great explainer.

• The curiosity to deconstruct machines made Kia Silverbrook the most prolific inventor of our age.

Clockwise from the top left: Dianna Cowern, Toby Hendy, Dave Farina, Derek Muller, Henry Reich, Jade Tan-Holmes, Michael Stevens and Grant Sanderson are some of the most famous science communicators on YouTube.

I wonder what would have happened if all these wonderful personalities were batchmates. We don’t even need to imagine it. Mostly all science batches are comprised of students from different backgrounds. If everyone is aware of the special quality within them, we have all the resources to build a healthy community out of these young minds. Imagine what could your batch achieve if a YouTuber, a programmer, a writer, a teacher, an engineer and a speaker worked together on a project. Everyone will play their part to the fullest, and by putting together the pieces of each one’s job, you could create something phenomenal.

But then again, to persuade them to collaborate is the hard part! How do you make them leave their personal interest behind to work for the common good? If hundreds of books, songs and movies have failed to inspire you, how can I or anyone else? Uff! I guess I’ll have to leave it up to you.

I wonder how many among the audience are actually interested. Source

May we all do justice to science by keeping alive the scientific spirit within us!

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