I seem to have rattled a couple of cages when I wrote in the Guardian that many scientists seem to have something of an inferiority complex.
Over at LabLit, everyone "agrees that some scientists do feel under-appreciated by society..." but they take exception to the idea that scientists compensate by making exaggerated claims. But they tweak my words to make this point.
I said:
As a result, some have taken to declaring that the benefits of modern living, brought to you by science, show the discipline is all-powerful, an inside track on the truth about everything in the universe.
Somehow, in translation, this turns into me saying scientists claim their profession is “all-knowing” (why the quotes? To make it look as if that’s what I said?):
...we have not encountered scientists claiming that their profession was “all-knowing”. Indeed, scientists are often the most skeptical people in the room, about their own work as well as that of their colleagues...Maybe we’ve just been going to different parties than Mr. Brooks.
I've not been going to
any parties lately. But that's not the point...plenty of scientists believe their profession holds a mystical key to the truth. Without knowing what the truth is.
Then there’s Charles Darwin’s blog at Nature Networks, which, despite its attempts to gainsay me, actually makes my point rather well.
our laboratories contain many whose years of study, reading and research have produced people most secure in their intellects and, when you enquire further with enormous personal and cultural hinterlands out[s]ide their scientific life. A scientist can venture into the literature, art and music and go way beyond the mere dille[t]ante. As science becomes ever more complex and costly, the reverse is not true.
In other words, scientists are better, broader people than non-scientists. Really?! And then:
Sc[ie]ntists are some of the cleverest people around, and they know it, but they do not claim to have the cures for all the ills of the world in ther lab coat pockets as Mr Brooks seems to suggest many think they have.
I love the claim that scientists are some of the cleverest people around. How are we measuring clever, here, exactly? It’s precisely this kind of twaddle that gets scientists a bad rep. Please, stop it.
Anyway, of course it’s a great big hand-waving generalisation to say that many scientists seem to have an inferiority complex. A cliché, if you will. But like all the best clichés, it’s grounded in truth. I stand by it. Go to any gathering of physicists, steer the conversation onto the right course, and you’ll have endless bleating about how science is looked down on/not chosen by students/never featured in TV programmes like it used to be…tick. Then they go on about how fascinating science is, bigging each other up. When in “mixed” company, on the other hand, they tend to be much quieter…tick.
When something like the Big Bang Theory (pictured) gets scientists into mainstream TV schedules, suddenly it’s a distortion or a gross misrepresentation. Few people laugh it off (Jennifer Ouellette does, but she’s (a) cool, and (b) not a scientist and thus immune to the paranoia. (Though she is married to one, and maybe thus gets paranoia-by-proxy.))
Whatever. It’s also interesting to read these reactions. It’s hard to imagine Emergency Room doctors, say, making such a big deal about ER. They might (they do) question the realism, but nobody says it’s bad for the profession. Doctors, I guess, don’t suffer from a bad public image and thus an inferiority complex.
Scientists seem unusually bothered whenever their tribe is depicted in a bad light. That’s why Michael Crichton got scientists’ backs up, he said:
Scientists often complain to me that the media misunderstands their work. But, in fact, the reality is just the opposite: It is science that misunderstands media...I sometimes think scientists really don't notice that their colleagues have flaws. But in my experience, scientists are very human people: Some are troubled, some are deceitful, petty, or vain. I know a scientist so forgetful he didn't notice he'd left his wife behind at the airport until the plane was in the air. I once was at a party with Jacques Monod when a gorgeous young woman--a Ph.D. bacteriologist--came up to him and said, "Oh, Dr. Monod, you are the most beautiful man in the room." And he preened. But why not? He was very handsome in a sort of Camus-existential-Gauloise-smoking way.
Lablit is “all about encouraging the use of realistic depictions of science and scientists in realistic fiction". But what is “realistic”, exactly? In my experience, “realistic” could be misconstrued as “cartoon-esque”.
For example, I had a close professional scientific relationship with a researcher who had a terrible inferiority complex (I’m being deliberately vague here): he was convinced everyone thought he was just not as clever as someone else who had been in the department before, but moved on. He was also convinced this other person only seemed so clever because he had stolen his best idea (and it didn’t help, I’m sure, when that other person was awarded the Nobel Prize). He threatened to stab one of his students who posed a threat to his reputation by not working hard enough...
OK, maybe that's an outlier. But I know plenty of people who’ve got out of science because they couldn’t handle the psychological problems of their colleagues and (more importantly) superiors. You should go to some of the physics conferences I go to. Honestly, they make The Big Bang Theory look like Girls of the Playboy Mansion.
So, yeah, I stand by wot I wrote.
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