| Issue 62 (WAIS 2) Contents
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Science with a Passion:
Incidental Careers and Pland Experiments
Gisela Kaplan & Lesley J. Rogers
Centre for Neuroscience and Animal Behaviour
University of New England
Capacity to stand-alone
Last
year we were invited to speak at a conference in Stockholm and afterwards we
visited the museum devoted to displaying the history of the prize itself and
all Nobel laureates. The museum has a small cinema playing film clips and
interviews with the prize-winners. Although each vignette lasts for no more
than a few minutes, it reveals a surprising amount of information about their
personalities as well as information about their discoveries. We were
fascinated. Did these eminent scientists have any characteristics in common?
We listened especially to what the female prize-winners had to say. To date,
there are only few women amongst the ranks of Nobel laureates but to us it
seemed that their main secret to success was holding on to their ideas against
opposition and, hand in hand with this, being able to stand-alone.
The scientific life of Barbara McClintock might serve as a prime example of the capacity to follow one’s own mind against the odds (Keller, 1983). She won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1983 for her visionary work showing genetic “transposition”, which refers to her discovery that genetic elements can move from one site on a chromosome to another and even dissociate from one chromosome to be inserted in another. This introduced an entirely new conception of the genome as dynamic, rather than being a static linear message, and it placed more emphasis on environmental influences (both internal in the cell and external to it) than the central dogma allowed. Hers was a far less reductionist understanding of the flow of information. She worked on the cytogenetics of maize. Using techniques of analysis that were at the time considered to be unfashionable, in the 1950s and 1960s she swam against the current of the new molecular genetics, soldiering on while no one listened to her. In the interview on film she thanked the chairman of her department for allowing her to continue researching without interference. She worked in virtual isolation and, as she says, people thought she was doing odd things that were of no particular interest, but they let her get on with it.
Keller (1983) points out that McClintock’s life is not merely “a tale of dedication and reward after years of neglect – of prejudice or indifference eventually routed by courage and truth….It is a story about the nature of scientific knowledge, and of the tangled web of individual and group dynamics that define its growth” (page xii). It is one thing to have a groundbreaking idea, another to have the where-with-all to follow it through in research, and yet another to make sure the idea and the research are recognised and so find their way into the body of scientific knowledge. To practise science successfully at the level of discovery demands the interplay of (1) an individual following a highly personal train of ideas and (2) a worker within the community of scientists. Obtaining funding for the research and a salary on which to live are set firmly within the domain of the community of scientists. Finding time for research depends on an interaction between (1) and (2) and, of course, having original ideas is almost entirely (1). McClintock was extraordinarily successful at the latter but she had great difficulty in obtaining any continuous funding, particularly in terms of a salary.
In fact, there is an uneasy balance between individuality and group acceptance in scientific research and a woman scientist almost certainly balances on a much sharper edge than does her male counterpart. On the one hand, women are taught to conform in a male-dominated world and, as the scientific community is still an extreme example of male domination, apart from some and an increasing number of exceptions, women scientists tend to take up and work with the ideas of male scientists rather than striking out on their own. On the other hand, when women express dissent and arrive at new ideas, they may well face a harder battle than men in the same situation to find acceptance of their ideas, let alone be rewarded for them. Women are generally afforded far less opportunity to be free to follow their own ideas and, when they do so, they are often ridiculed. McClintock experienced just this.
We do not see McClintock’s life as some sort of role model for women scientists in general. In fact, she herself was of the same opinion, seeing herself as too different and too much of a maverick to impart anything of direct value to other women scientists. Nevertheless, her life in research reveals many of the forces that interplay in the life of a woman scientist. From it might come some wisdom for at least some of us. Of course, few if any of us, women or men, could follow her to the heights of her achievements but there might be something essential that pertains to a broad spectrum of women scientists.
To our modern life styles, her words to “take time and look” sound loudly but yet seem to disappear amid the details of life that currently surround existence in our universities - the forms to be completed, the number of students to teach, the meetings to attend, and so on. Somewhere, somehow it must be possible to make the time to think and to look, to be an individual thinker and to be not just a good scientist but to be an excellent one. There must be uninterrupted time to become absorbed in seeking answers. McClintock remembers being so absorbed that she would forget even her own name! When she looked at a cell under the microscope, she would “get down in that cell and look around” (cited in Keller, p. 69) and, again in her words, “…when I was really working with them I wasn’t outside, I was down there. I was part of the system.” (Cited in Keller, p.117).
The current structure of funding research in Australia goes against McClintock’s maxim of taking time to look and, in so doing, losing oneself in the object or system being studied, or within the hypothesis being tested. Today’s funding has shifted away from supporting individuals toward team efforts. There may be nothing especially wrong with this change of focus in meeting predetermined and, usually, applied aims but the Barbara McClintocks amongst us will fall by the wayside and, along with them, science will lose its essential characteristic, its spontaneous and reflective creativity. A certain degree of creativity (or is it a different type of creativity?) will emerge from teams of scientists but real leaps in thinking have, as the interviews screening at the museum of Nobel laureates show, been made by individuals allowed to follow ideas that may have seemed rather mad at their inception.
Career planning and motivation
Albert Einstein once said (and it is one of his sayings available as a poster) that imagination is more important than knowledge. We know that Einstein had a substantial knowledge base and that there is no substitute for solid knowledge in one’s chosen field. However, what he meant is that knowledge binds one to the known world, whereas imagination can take one into the unknown. Science becomes exciting when it is used to discover the unknown world. To think up what has not been, to make cross-connections that have not been made before and to discover new principles invariably requires some flights of fancy, quiet think-time, and perhaps even a kind of obsession. Here, instead of a well-laid out plan of action what is needed is adaptability, flexibility and non-conformity.
In today’s world there are few places left where scientists are given this kind of freedom. The lesser the amount of such freedom made available, the lesser the likelihood of great discoveries (other than those planned in advance, which begs the question whether they are discoveries). Women tend to be trained into conformism and, with such background, obstreperous and individualistic research behaviours later in life are often very difficult to achieve.
To obtain a measure of scientific achievement is not really a matter solely of career planning, especially not in the way the latter is often presented. A person may be talented in a particular area, discipline or calling but, no matter how exceptional that talent may be, that person will not perform well, let alone outstandingly, if motivation is lacking. The very first rule of any career, particularly in research, is that one must like it, and not just superficially (i.e. the professional ‘trappings’ of the field), but with an all abiding and even consuming interest in the area. It is most unlikely indeed to sustain interest and motivation over a lifetime without the motivational engine running reliably and continually. Indeed, all good researchers have made their area their own. It has become so much part of their life that it is inconceivable to be taken away from this. It is something that does not just dwell in the mind between 9am and 5pm but that lurks there constantly and drives one back to the bench, the microscope, into the field or to the desk or the computer (‘let me just try another thing..’ may be the phrase that exasperates friends or family). Moreover, careers do not have to be serious-faced, tight-lipped or earnest undertakings—they are meant to reflect what you think you can do best and in an area where you hold the strongest convictions (based on knowledge and imagination) and that you therefore might enjoy most.
Neither of the authors of this paper planned their respective careers. We knew what we wanted to do but not so much in terms of promotion or future responsibilities but in terms of the substance of the field. We did not ever look to see whether or not good career chances existed in the areas we had chosen. Our view would be that one tends to be able to make a contribution to one’s field, one’s society and one’s life by following one’s interests and doing this well. Doing something well and liking what one is doing are closely linked.
Career planning is increasingly linked with competition and a great deal of this has crept into education and learning. There may be some necessity for this to occur. However, far more important is the ability to make oneself the sternest judge of one’s own performance—not anyone out there, not any grades should be the first judge but one’s own inner voice. The measuring stick of one’s performance should be one’s own sense of satisfaction and drive. Perhaps, this could be compared to an athletic competition at the highest level. A good race is run not by the people who look over their shoulders but by those who concentrate entirely and exclusively on their own performance. Ironically, the most competitive races are won by people who are not competing against others. In the book ‘The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner’ the chief ingredient of equilibrium and euphoria achieved is a sense of being on one’s own in a quest and on mustering all existing reserves to conquer what one set out to conquer (not defeating someone else but conquering a problem of knowledge, a puzzle, a contradiction, a weakness within one’s own mind). Hence, the greatest ambition is not related to one’s fellow human beings but to one’s own limits.
Is this simply a rephrasing of western individualism? We don’t believe so — individualism, in its negative aspects, has always had embedded in it notions of selfishness, of competition against another person, and of a certain ruthlessness. As societies we may have excelled in the negative aspects of individualism but have done rather poorly on the positive aspects of individualism. Positive individualism, at its most productive, gives back to the community. It makes little difference to the world whether someone is a senior lecturer or a professor (narrow career goal) but it could make a difference whether someone has found an answer to a puzzling human question and, of course, that should be rewarded. Here, in our definition, individualism means to stand alone (a Thomas Moore problem) be this in concerns of ethics, knowledge or social decisions. In research, this may mean being able to muster sufficient strength from within to go against established thinking. Ultimately, any progress in human insight has relied on this paradigm. However, current developments in science go distinctly against an individualistic model (increasingly encouraging team work and large cross-group collaborations). But even at the time of Marie Curie or of Albert Einstein or of Barbara McClintock, the best they could hope for was not to be prevented from doing what they wanted to do. Marie Curie worked for years without much remuneration and under very difficult circumstances. Einstein was thrown out of school for failing to conform and Barbara McClintock was simply not taken seriously and so earned some space of her own.
Although we may not be all Nobel prize-winners, the same principles still apply for research and discovery in everyday life. Most discoveries appear to be simpler than they actually are and the path to that discovery may be exceedingly long and laborious (testing and testing again) with few rewards along the way. Motivation and conviction are essential to carry one through the less glorious times, over the seeming drudgeries of day-to-day activity.
Surviving in the system and making the data known
There are some concrete ways to pursue of one’s own interests. Of course, this does involve some career planning. Sally Boyson, a well known American primatologist, explained at one of our international meetings that she was so totally enthralled and obsessed by the idea of working with chimpanzees that, as an undergraduate, she enrolled in any discipline that might lead her to doing that. She ended up completing double majors in zoology and another area of biological science on the one hand and anthropology and psychology on the other. She chose whatever she did (in courses and jobs) so she would always be able to work with chimpanzees. Indeed, she has never worked with any other species and has stayed with chimpanzees all her life. She still talks today about chimpanzees with as much excitement and wonder as she did twenty years ago. As a consequence of her absorbing passion, she is a most inspiring teacher and has become a full professor precisely because she now is a leader in her field. But she never once thought of a ‘career’ as a series of promotions. The fact is that content free notions of career are barren, at least in science. Although they may perhaps work in some other fields, they definitely do not do so in science and in the realm of ideas. Here success is in ideas rather than in promotions. In other words, we will not succeed by setting our sights on promotion and the best jobs. Of course, the latter should be as open to women as they are to men but, if we have to consume ourselves achieving such goals no matter how deserved they are and how unjust the system may still be, we will lose the time and the focus to think and to look.
Having been placed in a good position where one can follow one’s own research interests, it is likewise important to ensure that one’s ideas and possible contributions to the field are not swamped, suppressed or ignored. You may well need to be a member of a group, but you need to ensure that the group does not suppress your own ideas or subsume your time to work and think alone. It is a fact that this happens more often for women than for men: as we have said, even today women’s ideas are not achieving the same visibility and are not being cited as often as those by male peers (Rose, 1994).
And of course, we have learned as women academics that there is generally no help out there to correct any unfairness. You have to do that yourself and stand your ground. For instance, if your papers are not being cited in an article where they should have been known, it is polite and, in our view, necessary to send your own papers to the authors and perhaps to some other key people in the area. Speak at conferences, nationally and internationally, and, even if no one will give you any funds to do so, use your own money as an investment to get to them. You are not promoting yourself but you want your ideas promoted and you need a forum to do that. We have spent many years of our own paltry income at the beginning of our careers, quite independently, to attend conferences. Ideally, some funding should be available (and sometimes situations are more favourable today than they were twenty years ago), but the point is that ideas travel via people and a forum where you can showcase and convince them of your research will ultimately help to sustain publications, research funding and thus opportunities to continue in your work. The same is true of your immediate research group. Make its members listen to your ideas.
Women might well seek to be players in the team of science
but we should not forget that women have always been the “doers” of science,
the one’s at the laboratory bench pipetting out the solutions, sequencing the
next piece of DNA, washing the petri dishes, counting the number of nerve
cells, ordering the chemicals and many more of the tasks that keep a
laboratory running. What we need is to find our way to the ideas level, not as
managers of science but as creative participants in our own right. We will not
do that necessarily by conforming, by ‘fitting in’ or by jumping onto
band-wagons for simple fast explanations. One may need courage at times and
one may work for years without any noticeable recognition. If, however, one is
convinced of one’s research, has rigorously pursued it in the best scientific
practice and followed one’s intuition, there will be satisfaction. Women can
do science as well as men and, in future, more women might choose science as a
life’s occupation and more might reach the heights of Marie Curie or Barbara
McClintock. They built up an almost unassailable cocoon spun in their own
world. They became famous almost despite themselves not because they sought it
but because they sought answers to their questions. The point is not that
women set out to become Nobel laureates but that they ought to set out, with
confidence and passion, to follow their own
paths of interest to the fulfilment of their dreams and talents.
References
Keller, E.F. (1983) A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock. W.H. Freeman and Co., New York.
Rose, Hilary (1994) Love, Power and Knowledge. Polity Press, Cambridge.
Waterhouse, Keith (1966) The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Longman, London.
Boysen, Sally (1996) Roundtable discussions, International Primatology Society (IPS) Congress, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA, August.
Professor Gisela Kaplan is a research professor in Biology and Education at the University of New England. She has authored 15 books on animal behaviour and feminism and a large number of research papers. She is a member of various inter-national scientific committees, such as Primatology, and serves in an advisory capacity on animal welfare for state government. She rehabilitates wildlife in her spare time and is often in the media.
Professor Lesley Rogers is Professor of Neuroscience and Animal Behaviour at the University of New England. She has a Doctor or Philosophy and Doctor of Science from the University of Sussex and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. She has a leading international reputation for her research on brain development and behaviour, with a particular emphasis on lateralization of brain function. She has published a large number of scientific papers and books, many of the latter jointly with Prof Gisela Kaplan.