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the music is Leonard Cohen
Mike takes you down
to a place by the centrifuges,
its your first day in the lab
and you don’t know what a centrifuge is
and he hands you precious flasks
and you drop them and they shatter
and you look at him quite meekly
but he says it doesn’t matter,
they were only the controls.
and he gives you of his buffer
and he gives you of his strains
and you wish you had his genome,
or at least you had his brains.
I came to him one morning,
an idea had been forming,
my transformants weren’t transforming
and my swarmers were not swarming,
I said Mike, I feel like a failure,
I want to work at Lord and Taylor's,
I think I’m quitting science
but he says now don’t be hasty
you see science, like the food in our science cafeteria
is sometimes nasty and sometimes tasty.
and he soothes you so discretely
and you trust in him completely,
and your mind it has been freed
and you know that somewhere something will succeed.
now Mike is packing,
his papers in a folder,
ther's a knapsack on his shoulder,
his pipette is in a holder,
and as he leaves the floor,
the shakers all stop shaking,
the columns all run dry
and the autoclave stops baking,
it will never be the same.
and you know that you must keep him
or at least that you must clone him
and you know that you will miss him
and you know that you will phone him all the time.
Mike takes you down...
science has a culture
maybe you can imagine for a second
that you have a person like that in your life,
how does that feel
that plays a very important emotional role,
notice that that person doesn’t have to be high in the hierarchy,
could be another post doc working near you or maybe beneath you in the power hierarchy
their emotional role is truly essential
is this valued in our culture
culture can be changed
now, this is happening all the time, it's been studied and documented
imagine, think and consider of course, that women in this country couldn’t vote 100 years ago
and, that...
newspapers... people talked in a way...
the language was very important
how people talked ‘women should be in the kitchen', 'they are not able to cite things about political life'
and of course they shouldn’t vote, it would be a disaster if they voted
it took several decades of struggle to change it
and now, people haven’t changed of course, the culture has changed
so, the way we talk about it changed there are still people with chauvinistic opinions
but they would never dream to say 'take back the vote'
so, I guess maybe I should just write down the premise for the talk
the premise of course is the central idea trying to unite everything I say
adding education, language and discussion about subjective emotional aspects
will improve our well being and our scientific productivity, originality, potential
that's how we can change the culture of science and very specifically how we can do that soon
every scientist knows specific words like atom
I'm envisioning a science where every scientist knows words like 'active listening'
which is when somebody comes with a problem you don’t give them advice,
you first listen to their feelings and their needs and find a solution that addresses everybody’s needs
that's a basic word in many fields
this sounds very far from where science is right now
but vision is like a compass that points us in a certain direction,
suggests very specific ways that are happening right now in science, to change it
so this language, just talking about something puts a spotlight on it.
I just want to share with you one word
that has been very helpful for me as a mentor to students in science.
it has to do with the mental schema of research.
that is to say a human being trying to do something, has a schema of how he/she thinks it will turn out.
that schema is very important
because if things are different from the schema then you experience extra stress.
if you read scientific papers and textbooks
then you're prone to believing that this is the schema of research,
and this is something quiet common in science.
this is the problem, and this is the solution and this is research.
that means, it's certainty
now, if something goes wrong and the experiments don’t work, or your student gets depressed,
that is perceived as a cognitive disonance
something to be eradicated,
but people who are in science recognize that you can adopt a different schema, which is more realistic.
and that's the following: this is the problem, and this is the solution
you start with researching and it doesnt work, experiments don’t work.
at some point you reach a point where the basic assumptions have broken down,
and it doesn’t work and this is linked with negative emotions
and we call this space, in my lab: the cloud.
it seems to stand at the boundary between the known and the unknown,
guarding the boundary, why is that? it is to go into the unknown and discover something new.
at least one of your first assumptions has to change.
if you don’t go through a cloud then you are cooking by recipe,
let's say, going from the known to the known.
going into the unknown has built into it the cloud,
and therefore science is kind of a hero's journey.
it is going into the unknown and bringing back something useful.
so you have to again and again fight the cloud.
now as a graduate student, of course I wasn't told about this fact
and when I got into the cloud the first time, I got so depressed
that I decided I couldn’t come back to university. I was not worthy of stepping into the university
and I recovered somehow, with my relationships and support
and the second time I got into the cloud, I said maybe there is a pattern here,
maybe it it’s not me.
and now I teach this because, in fact, if you know about the cloud at least
you don't feel that something is wrong with you, it's something with the craft
and actually you learn to love the cloud because it is a signal that you are going into the unknown.
it's a signal that you are about to make a discovery, but I cant tell you how long it will take.
the mentor's role at this phase is to give emotional support
why? because research shows very clearly that when you are trying to solve a creative task
and you are under stress and fear, your performance goes way down,
because the mind stops looking at unexpected risky directions.
and in order to solve creative problems
you have to have a safe supported environment of positive regard.
so if we want better science we better understand that this is part of the craft.
not only understand, but teach it as kind of the basic starting point.
then somehow you notice while inside the cloud, a new solution ‘C’
something different than we set out to do and the experiments didn’t work.
then you publish a paper A arrow C, which is a good way to write papers
as long as you distinguish it from the process of doing science