Scientific heroism and birdwatching

There is a view, commonly encountered in universities, that publishing a lot is a good thing.  Certain individuals are regularly pointed to as scientific heroes because they have exceeded a certain threshold of publications.  Little is said about the quality of those publications, nor about the number of individual ideas represented within the entire corpus.  It is just the case that more is good.

This view is almost a social norm and it is certainly the case that one will be judged by it at some point, and also that one may begin to judge oneself. It is not uncommon for colleagues to speak with me in private about such matters, opening the interaction with "I only have x papers on my curriculum vitae."  From this they begin to worry about their career prospects and what can be done to increase the count.  Rarely do they open with their ideas but, of course, upon prompting they have lots of very interesting thoughts and hypotheses and they are clearly engaged by their discipline. Yet, they do not see this as a success in itself.

Science is not about the raw accumulation of papers, instead science is about determining the parameters of our knowledge (or ignorance, as Stuart Firestein  rather nicely puts it in his new book). This is done through the development of theories and through experiment to test them.  These activities do lead to papers, but there are numerous false starts, dead ends, epiphanies and then recalculations, experimental failures and rejections by the press.  Moreover, science is also done by teaching - this helps to clarify thoughts, but also to enthuse other brains and encourage them to join the quest.  Dissemination at conferences, seminars and during energetic conversations in the common room are also part of the process.  If you are a scientist you live and breath it.  And, as with breathing, inhalation and exhalation are equal partners.  Time spent pondering and absorbing the work of others is just as important as time spent writing and talking.  A publication is really only a punctuation mark in this ongoing and changing conversation - a moment to pause, reflect and move on.

Science then is a sum of all these parts and more.  As a cooperative endeavour many papers, talks, books and other outputs will emerge - and this is the sign of successful, established science.  In this case, the proportion of the total output represented by a scientific hero will be very small indeed. Scientific heroes are clearly active people, and the real value of their contribution may well rest in the stimulation they have provided to others.  Yet, this is not necessarily a consequence of the extent of their published corpus and an engaged lecturer with a handful of papers and brain full of ideas could easily have more impact on the discipline.  Thinking and encouraging thinking is the essence of the scientific life.

When my brain stops working, and I feel stuck, I go on a walk in the forest with various bits of optical equipment and observe birds.  Soon I am absorbed by their behaviour and I begin asking questions about it.  The questions are often naive, and many addressed in fulsome detail in the textbooks but still I consider this activity science.  It is both a warm-up exercise and an opportunity to think from scratch that sharpens the tools I was bequeathed and reinvigorates my projects.  It also gives me ideas for my lectures and talks.  So this is my advice - if ever one is tempted to compare oneself with a putative scientific hero put down your pen and go bird watching. As it is, you will have to battle through brambles, and copses, wade streams and sit in awkward positions for hours to get sight of your quarry - and that, to my mind, is heroic enough.