The Whats of a Scientific Life

John R. Helliwell

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000731491
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medizin
• Subtopic: Medizinische Theorie, Praxis & Referenz

This book completes a scientific life trilogy of books following on from the Hows (i.e. skills) and the Whys is now the Whats of a scientific life. Starting with just what is science, then on to what is physics, what is chemistry and what is biology the book discusses career situations in terms of types of obstacles faced. There follow examples of what science has achieved as well as plans and opportunities. The contexts for science are dependencies of science on mathematics, how science cuts across disciplines, and the importance of engineering and computer software. What science is as a process is that it is distinctly successful in avoiding or dealing with failures. Most recently a radical change in what is science is the merger of the International Council of Scientific Unions and the International Social Sciences Council.

Key Features:

• Dissects what is science and its contexts
• Provides wide ranging case studies of science and discovery based directly on the author's many decades in science
• The author has outstanding experience in mentoring and career development, and also in outreach activities for the public and students of all ages
• The world of science today involves a merger of 'the sciences' and the 'social sciences'

Part I

Introduction

1

What Is the Scientific Life?

1.1 Scientific Objectivity, Truth and Certainty

The place to start is to query what is science and what does it do? This would then lead to answering the question of what a scientific life is. As a working definition, science is a word derived from the Latin word scientia, meaning ‘knowledge’. At my local library in Horbury, West Yorkshire, when I was a boy, the entrance door had above it “Knowledge is power”, a statement which always fascinated me. Power over what? I asked myself. That no mention was made specifically about science and the link to the Latin word scientia and to knowledge did not register with me then. Science finds out knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Since it is done by people, I have found it fascinating to consider whether science can be objective. I think that through measured data, and its careful preservation, it can be.

Whilst we are asking What is science? I think it interesting to consider What is art? too. I am not at all qualified to answer this question. I saw, though, that The Times on March 28^th, 2019 quoted the world-renowned artist Pablo Picasso as follows: “We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise truth”. If science is by definition knowledge, the matter raised by Picasso is, in effect, can science reach truth? My answer is that I don’t think that science can realise truth, even though it reveals knowledge and can in the way I suggest through data preservation be objective. Quantum mechanics opens a new window on truth in that it includes uncertainty, by which I mean it is not possible to know with certainty the position and momentum of a particle simultaneously. This is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle [1]. So, if one cannot know those simultaneously, science can never reach truth.

Of course, one can play with the words and say that the truth is uncertainty. What should we also say about certainty or uncertainty in the physical world? In science we make experimental measurements. We seek to do the best job possible in our experimental design both in removing extraneous effects and taking as many repeat measurements as possible. The former is an attempt to remove any systematic error sources and the latter is an attempt by averaging the measurements to minimise random errors. Thus, with one experimental method a scientist reaches as precise an estimate as possible. But is that experimental estimate from one method accurate? Physicists make a distinction between precision and accuracy. Accuracy can be investigated by using a different experimental method to check the first experimental method’s result. Ultimately, even with more than one method, there are errors at some level always remaining. Again we see that certainty is not achievable. The truth is that the physical world is uncertain. Can science be objective? The answer, I think, is that with modern day raw data archiving objectivity is possible. Also, we must ask: do scientists communicate their results objectively? I illustrate the process of communicating science in scientific articles and the role of data underpinning an article in Figure 1.1. With accompanying data, readers do not have to only accept the authors’ words describing a result, but if needs be can undertake their own calculations and offer a different interpretation of those data. Does having the raw data available provide complete objectivity? This is a long-debated question (e.g. see [2]). Even where primary data being well measured, it is argued, an investigator is required to make the apparatus well calibrated and thereby the data can still be considered to that degree subjective!

FIGURE 1.1 The role of the article in communicating science and achieving scientific objectivity through archiving the raw, i.e. primary, experimental measurement data sets underpinning it.

Let me conclude this section by highlighting what science achieves. In spite of the uncertainties that I describe above, and its subjectivities, science achieves firm facts such that one can rely on its applications. Whether one considers medicines, computers, smartphones, chemicals, food production, energy supplies, etc., science works.

1.2 Ethics in Science

Having considered what scientific objectivity is as well as what is possible regarding certainty and truth, let us now proceed to another big and important word to consider, ethics. Scientists in going about their daily work in the laboratory are, or should be, guided by ethics. Medical doctors have a formalised Hippocratic Oath [3]. Scientists do not have such a formalised oath, although establishing one and discussions of what it would contain have been considered [4]. In my two previous books on the scientific life I addressed how we do things [5] and why we do the things that we do [6]. In my Hows book I had an extensive chapter on ethics [7], which described both the ethics in undertaking our work, including our relationships with others, and, secondly, the ethical implications of some of the discoveries that science and scientists make.

The absence of a Hippocratic Oath for scientists is exceedingly strange to me. Research-based institutions, be they universities or research institutes, do have formal policies of what constitutes research malpractice; the University of Manchester’s can be found in reference [8]. I was an elected Member of the Senate of the University representing the Faculty of Science and Engineering when this policy was approved, including by me.

It is obvious that a scientist should do no harm, to harness a term from the medical doctor’s Hippocratic Oath. But what should one do to optimise the good that one does? Science as a career is in the end a calling. There can be wealth earned from one’s discoveries, and fame in a few cases, but in general the scientific life is a devotion to a calling that there is possibly a greater good. Max Perutz wrote a book entitled Is Science Necessary? [9]. He documented his answer of a very firm, Yes it is necessary, with examples drawn from the areas of Science and Food Production, Science and Health and Science and Energy. He explained the greatly extended lifespan now available to people through science, the greatly improved comfort and control over nature, and greater economic wealth.

Maybe, to ‘do no harm’ the purest course of action is, like safety, not to venture forth and do anything. Likewise for the employer, as in the BBC’s Yes Minister comedy programme episode which featured the story about the hospital with no patients but perfect metrics: no complaints, no inadvertent injuries and no fatalities. But there is one’s scientific curiosity to satisfy, research to be done and discoveries to be made applying the training one has received in the lecture halls and the teaching laboratories. As on a sunny day, to venture forth is exciting. There are in any case good guidelines for avoiding pitfalls. Local rules govern how one should operate one’s equipment and apparatus. Laboratory notebooks are to be kept up to date; the time-honoured way involves a top sheet and a duplicate underneath ‘carbon copy’ so researcher and laboratory director can retain a copy for future publication or the patent application or both in a strict time sequence, patent being before publication. In such ways the daily process of work and discovery in the laboratory, or at the computer ‘calculations engine’, or deriving your equations are what you are about.

But to say “it is obvious that a scientist should do no harm” is much easier to interpret for a medical doctor than for a scientist. Clearly if a patient gets better without side-effects following treatment, then the doctor has successfully done no harm. In science it can be much more complicated, with ‘good’ discoveries leading to unforeseen and sometimes bad consequences that damage the environment, the planet, individuals, etc. In this book, I examine the question of how science strives to avoid failures in various places and bring these together in one section in the final chapter.

1.3 Some Practicalities Day-to-Day, Week-to-Week and Month-to-Month

In the scientific researcher’s workplace, the what to do now for funded research is heavily guided by the research grant proposal that has passed the funding agency’s peer review approval and final committee procedures. The employer has accepted the research grant with which their principal investigator is eager to move forward. Modern research grant proposals have detailed timelines of objectives and milestones. It is likely that they are achievable as the funding agency schemes and their committees are usually conservative with respect to committing public money or the charitable foundation’s assets. The issues are more about hiring properly skilled staff for the work envisaged. So, all should be well. The majority of proposals are however rejected, even though there are very few poor proposals. The research grant success rates are typically 25% or as low as 10%. Proposers, in my experience, myself included, do not just give up on those areas of unfunded work; they comprise cherished ideas, a detailed articulation and maybe also actual feasibility studies. So the what to do now includes those unfunded areas too. Their scope must be reduced and the length of time needed to take them on extended, and most importantly proposers must figure out how to fit them in with their daily/weekly/monthly/yearly what to do lists.

One of the biggest preoccupations is what to do next. The staff and PhD students, and the final year undergraduate project students, will focus daily on their next step career choices. Questions often arise such as Stay in research? Move to another laboratory? Change research fields? Change country? For final year undergraduate students, the top-rank ones who could go into scientific research wonder if they should. One of my best ever tutorial groups (chemistry with studies in North America) had everyone able to consider doing a PhD as their next step. One of this group, who was female, said quite plainly: “But look around you Prof, there are so few women scientists. It makes no sense as a career step for women”. I was at that time also the department’s Gender Equality Champion and Chairman of our Athena SWAN [10] working group. I honestly replied, “We know it is poor, scandalous actually, compared with the percentage of female chemistry graduates we train (44%) but led by Athena SWAN we are working hard to change the current situation”. Evidently it was too much a case of ‘jam tomorrow’ for her. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Part I Introduction
• Part II Scientific Career Choices: What to Do When Faced With . . .
• Part III Examples of What Science Delivers or Will Deliver in the Future
• Part IV Science and Mathematics: Across the Disciplines and Side by Side with Engineering
• Part V Science Is a Process
• Part VI A Trend: The Coming Together of the Sciences and the Social Sciences
• Appendices My Reviews of Books Regarding the Whats of a Scientific Life
• Bibliography
• Index