Comments about the 'Evolution of Science*

I read a very interesting short article the other day, published in a magazine called The Scientist. The article is entitled ‘Evolution of Science’ and was written by Lauren Urban. You can read it here http://www.the-scientist.com/article/display/57368/. Urban writes about a scientist named Alex Shneider who has attempted to describe the different types of research scientists by putting them into stages: stage 1, 2, 3, and 4, in essence, categorizing them, which is a scientific approach in and of itself. Shneider describes the characteristics and talents of scientists in these different stages, and makes the point that there can be an evolution, so to speak, from one stage to the other. It really is the first article of its kind that I have read, and it resonated with me. Shneider describes first-stage scientists as the great innovators and risk-takers. Of course, Craig Venter, whose company Celera Genomics competed with the publicly-funded Human Genome Project to sequence the human genome, comes to mind. He lives in another world than ‘us ordinary folks’, and listening to him talk about his ideas for the future and for the planet (via his new company--Synthetic Genomics which he co-founded) is awe-inspiring and exciting. It must also be said that he has the capital and the chutzpah to take the necessary risks to move science forward, and if he doesn’t have the money he isn’t afraid to ask private investors for it. I remember seeing photos of the sequencing labs at Celera, and they showed rooms full of DNA sequencers that operated around the clock. First-stagers move the world forward, but they are not necessarily the ones who translate their ideas into practice. This is where the stage two scientists come into the picture. Shneider describes them as having “ingenuity, inventiveness, and high risk tolerance”. Most scientists fall into the third-stage category, which Shneider describes as those scientists who “use those new tools to answer new questions, thereby coming up with new insights and more questions”. They are, in his words “more methodical, detail-oriented, and concerned with absolute correctness”. Fourth-stage scientists are those who write about and chronicle science in an attempt to organize scientific data, but they are not the discoverers and inventers.

It struck me while reading the article that I have had the privilege of working in two dynamic research laboratories during the past twenty years, both of them American. One was located in New York City and the other in San Francisco, California. If I could sum up my experiences in both laboratories, I would have to say that the laboratory leaders were a mixture of stage one and stage two scientists in their respective fields, and they managed to impart their ideas and enthusiasm to the third-stage scientists who worked for them. More importantly, these leaders functioned as a tight-knit team. They knew how to communicate and collaborate with each other and they respected each other’s ideas. If you have experienced the opposite--leaders who fight and compete among themselves and do not know how to collaborate--you will appreciate how necessary leader teamwork is to create a dynamic work environment where people feel like they are a part of something important, where they feel valued, and where they want to come to work. It is perhaps the best argument against having business administrators take over all aspects of research science. They have null understanding for the necessity of this type of dynamic work environment. They are only concerned with the fiscal bottom-line, which ultimately leads to workplace boredom and lethargy.

The laboratory in San Francisco was run by a man who was rumored to be a difficult personality when he was younger. I’m guessing that these rumors were spread by small-minded people who did not have his vision or his energy. In any case, he paid little attention to them and reached the top without them. He is still an innovator. He collaborated well with other innovators, both American and European, and his lab was truly an international lab, as was the New York lab I worked in. At the time I worked in New York, we had scientists from Poland, Italy, Spain, Sweden and Germany working there as well. It felt like we were part of the ‘larger picture’, that what we did had meaning outside of our lab, and that we were contributing to making the world a better place. I believe these are necessary feelings if one is to do a good job.

Shneider states that all four stages of scientific discipline are valuable and that what characterizes each stage is a particular type of talent. The challenge therefore for each scientist becomes identifying your particular talent and finding your niche. The original article by Shneider upon which Urban based her article is worth reading. It is entitled ‘Four stages of a scientific discipline; four types of scientist’ and was published in the journal Trends in Biochemical Sciences, volume 34, issue 5, in 2009. It is probably best to contact the author directly by email in order to obtain a reprint: ashneider@curelab.com.