Many years ago, my husband and I had the privilege of working in a large lab in California headed by a man whom I can only call a visionary scientist. He was one of those rare scientists who made things happen, whose ideas were ground-breaking and game-changers. It was an exciting time in our lives, when we ourselves were still young scientists who hadn’t yet built scientific careers. Even then, I was an observer in terms of watching how he led his lab, and I learned a lot from him. For starters, he surrounded himself with talented people who were smart and who worked hard. He expected a lot from them, but the rewards for producing were good. He was good at picking the right people to have around him—a good blend of visionaries like himself as well as scientists who were able to translate his ideas into practice using ingenuity and inventiveness and the more technical scientists who were able to use these new ideas and procedures to answer specific questions and to generate more questions. In all cases, these scientists were concerned with the practice of science, and they stuck to their business, to what they were good at. He was also an excellent grant writer who had paid his dues working in national government labs for most of his adult life; he had learned the practice of science and managed to draw in quite a lot of funding for the lab that he headed.
I remember that he visited us here in Oslo some years later.
I picked him up at his hotel to drive him back to our house for dinner, to
which we had invited another couple who also worked in science. It was a
pleasant evening. But what I remember most was the conversation I had with him
when we were driving to our house at the beginning of the evening. I had just
finished my doctoral work and was starting on my postdoctoral work, but I had
some misgivings about pursuing an academic career. I was describing to him my
different interests and how I felt pulled in several different directions. I
remember exactly what he said to me--‘stick to your business’. That was about
twenty years ago. Since then, the world of academic research science has
changed tremendously, and it has become harder to stick to the business of just doing science. Business administration, leadership education, public
relations and social networking have become part and parcel of an academic scientific
career. To some extent, they always were, from the standpoint that it was good
to know how to run a lab or to run a research group, but they weren’t the main
focus. The main focus was always on the science. Nowadays, it is quite
different. There is a multifocal approach to science that I don’t think
benefits the profession because the multifocal aspects are time-drainers.
Academic scientists are pulled in all directions now; they are supposed to be
scientists, grant writers, business leaders, networkers, sales people, administrators,
technical managers, and personnel managers. They are expected to understand
complicated accounting and budget practices. They are expected to understand a
multitude of bureaucratic procedures, all of which involve complicated legal
aspects having to do with e.g. patient confidentiality if one works with
patient data. One should understand the use of databases, registers, and
complex statistical programs. There are lengthy leadership courses to attend so
that one can become a good business leader. There are courses having to do with
animal welfare if you plan on using animals for experiments, courses about good
clinical practice, how to biobank, how to use quality registers, how to create quality
presentations, how to write fundable grants, LEAN for hospital administration, and
so on. It all ‘sounds’ good in theory, but in practice, they all take valuable time
away from the actual doing of science, which is the only activity that will
make you a good scientist. Working in the lab and actually doing science are
what make you a good scientist. Reading scientific articles, coming up with new
ideas based on what you’ve read, trying and failing, making mistakes, learning and
following procedures and recipes, making solutions and buffers, reading technical
manuals for complicated instrumentation, writing and publishing scientific
articles, writing grants—all of those things will ensure that you become a good
scientist. Taking a course here and there to learn a new lab procedure that
will aid your scientific project is a good idea. Mentoring Masters and PhD
students is also a good idea and will help you become a good mentor and
manager. Training research technicians and working closely together with them
on research projects will make you a good manager, or at least reveal to you
whether or not you will qualify to be a research group leader. The rewards for
such mentoring and training will be competent workers and independent thinkers
who will further your research projects. That is sticking to your business.
Attending generalized business leadership courses, although interesting, will
not make you a better scientist. But nowadays, it is the norm to be all things
to all people. In the space of twenty years, academic science has become less
scientific and more business-like. It has been a strange evolution that I don’t
think has been beneficial for the profession. The overall idea is perhaps that
scientists should be able to adapt themselves to any profession if necessary.
But the visionary aspect of science loses out. The purity of science loses out.
Academic science has moved in a more mundane direction, concerned more with
business administration/practices, PR, salesmanship, networking, self-improvement, public speaking, and interpersonal skills than with much else.
Yes, it helps to be able to hold a polished presentation, or to know how to
network, but something has been lost in the process. Perhaps it is what I call
the eccentricities and difficulties of science and scientists. The practice of
science is not supposed to be smooth and predictable, or controllable, or able
to be perfectly regulated. The unpredictability of doing research, the not knowing how it all will turn out, is what makes academic science interesting and rewarding. It is the eureka moments in the lab that one remembers, those moments when you know that the practice of pure science is worth it.
