People like the old, tried ways. We resist change, we like the known and feel at home in it. And as much as we may like to think of ourselves as avant-garde rebels of society, we value tradition – if not the ones of our fathers – than the traditions we ourselves choose to forge. We are, afterall, human.
Now science, believe it or not, isn’t super human. It is a human endeavor as much as any other. And yet the very essence of science is change, something which we are by nature resistant to!
In the past, the scientists of old discovered monumental principles, laws and truths about the world we live in. In those days, science didn’t advance by tiny, almost invisible steps as is the case nowadays. Those discoveries caused entire civilizations to grow by leaps and bounds.
Yet in our time, science has entered an era never before seen under the sun. Hordes of scientists around the globe have access not only to eachother’s work, but to almost all the sum of human knowledge ever collected. Never before has information, data and knowledge been so easy to come by, by such vast millions of souls across the planet. As a result – though the average scientific discovery is but a drop in a bucket – science is accelerating at record-breaking rates, scarcely imaginable to the great scientific minds of, among many others, Einstein, Newton, Ibn el Haytham or Plato.
This is why as a young scientist-to-be, change is something you need to get accustomed to.
I endeavor to teach this to my students. I loathe generalizations. Biology, for example, is a world where exceptions have become so common so as to become the norm. The clear cut, boxed-in, neat & tidy ideas that defined this discipline of the study of life in the mid-20th century are crumbling away. Biology is an ever expanding country whose borders are ephemeral and undefined, yet constantly advancing ferociously.
During my Ph.D. years, while brainstorming with a colleague about some interesting observations, we came up with a plan – a plan whose mission was to definitely and finally prove that a certain concept so seared in the consciousness of many of our co-workers in the field, young and old, was actually wrong. While this was no Nobel Prize, earth-shattering work, it was certainly challenging what we called “textbook” dogma. The work was done, the manuscript submitted* and the response received. Interestingly, the editor did not select just three reviewers, as is normally the case, but belatedly added a fourth – someone whom we strongly suspect was a veteran scientist whose decades old work we respectfully, but directly, challenged. This reviewer wrote little in the way of a normal rebuttal. No evidence was cited and no attempt at logically dealing with our claims was made. His rebuttal can be summed up in a fiery statement where he lashed out,
“It’s in the ‘textbook’ because it’s true!”
I truly hope that this offended scientist’s mentality doesn’t become my own in the many decades to come but it certainly illustrates the point I'm making. We don’t like change. We zealously guard the old, even when it becomes dragging weights, so painfully and awkwardly carried about just like the thick textbooks in your backpacks!
Embrace the impossible, get comfortable with the unknown and sail the winds of what real science should look like… And that’s when you’ll start to the see shores of even greater things to come!
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| Courtesy of Flick-Tilling 67 |
In the past, the scientists of old discovered monumental principles, laws and truths about the world we live in. In those days, science didn’t advance by tiny, almost invisible steps as is the case nowadays. Those discoveries caused entire civilizations to grow by leaps and bounds.
Yet in our time, science has entered an era never before seen under the sun. Hordes of scientists around the globe have access not only to eachother’s work, but to almost all the sum of human knowledge ever collected. Never before has information, data and knowledge been so easy to come by, by such vast millions of souls across the planet. As a result – though the average scientific discovery is but a drop in a bucket – science is accelerating at record-breaking rates, scarcely imaginable to the great scientific minds of, among many others, Einstein, Newton, Ibn el Haytham or Plato.
This is why as a young scientist-to-be, change is something you need to get accustomed to.
The engraved facts of the past are easily revised as weak generalizations in the future.
The impossibilities of yesterday become obsolete and forgotten notions as they give way to the very real possibilities of the present.
Engraved words on stone are no match for the forces of time.
I endeavor to teach this to my students. I loathe generalizations. Biology, for example, is a world where exceptions have become so common so as to become the norm. The clear cut, boxed-in, neat & tidy ideas that defined this discipline of the study of life in the mid-20th century are crumbling away. Biology is an ever expanding country whose borders are ephemeral and undefined, yet constantly advancing ferociously.
During my Ph.D. years, while brainstorming with a colleague about some interesting observations, we came up with a plan – a plan whose mission was to definitely and finally prove that a certain concept so seared in the consciousness of many of our co-workers in the field, young and old, was actually wrong. While this was no Nobel Prize, earth-shattering work, it was certainly challenging what we called “textbook” dogma. The work was done, the manuscript submitted* and the response received. Interestingly, the editor did not select just three reviewers, as is normally the case, but belatedly added a fourth – someone whom we strongly suspect was a veteran scientist whose decades old work we respectfully, but directly, challenged. This reviewer wrote little in the way of a normal rebuttal. No evidence was cited and no attempt at logically dealing with our claims was made. His rebuttal can be summed up in a fiery statement where he lashed out,
“It’s in the ‘textbook’ because it’s true!”
I truly hope that this offended scientist’s mentality doesn’t become my own in the many decades to come but it certainly illustrates the point I'm making. We don’t like change. We zealously guard the old, even when it becomes dragging weights, so painfully and awkwardly carried about just like the thick textbooks in your backpacks!
Embrace the impossible, get comfortable with the unknown and sail the winds of what real science should look like… And that’s when you’ll start to the see shores of even greater things to come!
Marc Mikhael, Ph.D
The Apprentice's Compass
*Ferritin does not donate its iron for haem synthesis in macrophages. Mikhael M, Sheftel AD, Ponka P. Biochem J. 2010 Aug 1;429(3):463-71.
The Apprentice's Compass
*Ferritin does not donate its iron for haem synthesis in macrophages. Mikhael M, Sheftel AD, Ponka P. Biochem J. 2010 Aug 1;429(3):463-71.
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