Darwin Didn’t Always get it Right

Posted on January 9, 2011 by Athene Donald

My Christmas reading included two very different books, one by Tim Birkhead and one edited by Bill Bryson, both gloriously illustrated with historical paintings. Reading these in quick succession over a short period of time caused me to reflect on the different historical time-spans of physical and biological sciences qua sciences and the different ways they developed.

Having been a youthful twitcher, I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Wisdom of Birds by Sheffield Zoology professor and FRS Tim Birkhead . When at the height of my ornithological enthusiasm I was still developing a sense of my own interest in science, but I was nevertheless totally committed to physics rather than biology. At the time I don’t think I had any appreciation of what a recent science ornithology was, something The Wisdom of Birds made very clear. As a child/teenager I was familiar with many of the amazing new nature programmes then on TV (even if in my case only in black and white), showcasing amongst other things the sterling work Peter Scott did at Slimbridge. One example of that would have been the work with nenes (Hawaian Goose) which he, fairly single-handedly, brought back from the verge of extinction to a current wild population of around 1000 birds. But whether that work was based on fundamental scientific knowledge or simply experience, I am not entirely sure.

Reading Birkhead’s book demonstrated just how little birds were understood, scientifically, really until well into the 20th century. For instance there is the well known myth which survived at least until the18th century that swallows hibernated in the mud at the bottom of ponds. This was believed  by, amongst others, the great Linnaeus, he of the Linnean system of nomenclature.  Many other aspects of behaviour seem to have been appreciated by bird-fanciers, farmers and breeders, who were necessarily observant because their livilihood depended on it,  but not by ‘scientists’ (though of course that term did not  exist yet) who went off up blind alleys as a result. An example of this discussed in detail by Birkhead concerns infidelity in birds.

As far back as Aristotle it had been noted that females might copulate with more than one male; the Moors in the Middle Ages used ‘thief pigeons’ to lure other pigeons back to their dovecotes, so that a truly attractive male could induce a female to leave her nest and her partner and accompany him wherever he would. Nevertheless Darwin himself posited quite explicitly male promiscuity as the norm, not female, and this idea formed a key part of the development of his ideas of sexual selection.  He did this despite the existing evidence, despite his cousin the Reverend William Fox (a typical amateur naturalist) spelling out to him in a letter the idea of female promiscuity (in this case in domestic geese).  Birkhead suggests that despite all the indications, one explanation for why Darwin did not ‘see’ female infidelity was because it was not something Victorian gentleman discussed, and by ignoring it, it saved embarrassment at home. I don’t find this entirely convincing because Darwin’s worries about how God fitted into evolution undoubtedly caused embarrassment with his wife Emma at home, but it didn’t stop him pursuing his theories in that direction.

Buffon in France somewhat earlier (1770) likewise espoused female fidelity, explicitly in the pigeon which, as I mention above, was well known to be a bird with dubious female morals.

A flame always constant, and ardour continually durable;….no caprice, no disgust, no quarrel to disturb the domestic harmony, their whole time devoted to love and progeny; the laborious duties mutually shared; the male assisting his mate in hatching and guarding the you: – If man would copy, what models for imitation.

(I like this quote, for fairly obvious reasons concerning the desirability of humans imitating the male pigeons’ exemplary domestic behaviour.) These ideas were so prevalent, and Darwin himself had such influence, that no one challenged the idea of female fidelity until the 1950’s when David Lack started questioning the orthodoxy. Slowly it became apparent that natural selection at the level of the species, which is what female fidelity implies by maintaining ‘harmony’, was wrong. What mattered was natural selection at the level of the individual – which indeed was part of Darwin’s original vision which had somehow got lost in a cosier view of male-female relationships contributing to the good of the whole population. If a female shares her favours it means the best sperm wins, so that there is a sperm competition and optimisation of which genes pass into the next generation.  This insight transformed the field. But, if the observations of lay people had been recognized earlier, it could have happened at least 100 years before. (In parenthesis it should also be noted that, as Darwin mulled over his ideas which became On the Origin of the Species, he corresponded with many breeders  -of pigeons and many other kinds of animals – and experimented himself in this direction.  He knew that these people had much to offer, but failed in this particular instance to avail himself of their knowledge.)

There are many other examples in Birkhead’s eminently readable book of how non-professionals acquired much detailed knowledge  about, for instance, birdsong, territory, plumage and the existence of hermaphrodites, while the professionals struggled. This state of affairs is very different from that described in Seeing Further, the collection of essays edited by Bill Bryson and produced as part of the Royal Society’s 350th Anniversary in 2010. The chapters regarding the early years of what was then known as the ‘College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning’, deal almost entirely with the physical sciences because that was the original focus, as implied by the early society’s title. The first Fellows – chaps like Newton, Boyle, Pepys and Hooke to list a few of their illustrious names – were concerned with celestial motion and mechanics more generally, optics and ‘airs’, all topics from the physical sciences. Only occasionally at this time did living matter enter into their studies, although interestingly in the 1660’s Birkhead points out that the Royal Society commissioned one of its members, the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius to establish ‘What truth there is…concerning swallows being found in winter under waters congealed and reviving, if they be fished [out] and held to the fire.’  Intriguing that an astronomer was chosen for this task, but presumably reflecting the preponderance of such amongst the early fellowship.

The middle of the 17th century, when the Royal Society was being set up, was the time science moved from observation and abstract thought to direct experimental observation and hypothesis testing.  Experiments were devised explicitly to check ideas out, ideally with mathematical equations in there: no longer was it adequate simply to ‘observe’ in a phenomenological way.  Not everyone accepted this shift yet, and the arguments between Boyle, with his air-pump, and Hobbes worked through in Shapin and Schaffer’s classic book Leviathan and the Air Pump, illustrate this. Crudely speaking, Hobbes would not concede that experimentation was better than argument, and the debate, heated at times, went on between the pair over an extended time.

This move to experimentation was reflected in the Royal Society’s motto Nullius in Verba, usually translated as ‘take nobody’s word for it’.  But it didn’t of course stop people denying the ‘truth’ of experiments. One of the interesting aspects of these early days is the value accorded to ‘witnesses’, the more the merrier. Thomas Sprat, in his History of the Royal Society (1667) says

Whether, seeing  all Countreys, that are govern’d by Laws, they expect no more, than the consent of two, or three witnesses, in matters of life, and estate; they will not think, they are fairly dealt with withal, in what concerns their Knowledg, if they have the concurring Testimonies of threescore or an hundred. 

However, these witnesses had to be the ‘right sort of people’. In the chapter in Bryson’s book by Schaffer he points out, for instance, that gentleman were to be trusted more than their servants. In attempting to gather evidence about a lightning strike on a Norwich workhouse, Fellows were sent out to try to find out what really happened – they cared because they were bothered about how effective lightning conductors were. Spectacular fireballs were reported, including by ‘one of the cripples in the House of Industry, a middle-aged woman’ but they weren’t sure ‘if any credit could be given to the testimony of such a person in a matter like this’. (Was it her status as a woman, a cripple or middle-aged that damned her, or simply because she was an inmate in the workhouse?).

So in the physical sciences, around the middle of the 17th century, it is clear that gentleman and aristocrats were carrying out science in a way that would still be recognizable today, albeit with very different degrees of sophistication of apparatus. But at that point, biology did not exist as we would recognize it. Livestock breeders, bird-fanciers etc might know a lot of lore, and have experience of many aspects that now underpin genetics and behavioural science, for instance, and which subsequently were found to be very useful. But there was no framework in which to work on what now would be termed biology, and wouldn’t be for a long time to come.

Rutherford said something along the lines of

All science is either physics or stamp collecting (different sources quote this in slightly different words)

and I think that reflects this difference between biology – before it emerged properly from  fairly phenemonological natural history study which might be equated crudely with stamp collecting – and the physical sciences, which were kick-started by observing the heavens coupled with the need to develop optical instruments to do this better.

Posted in History of Science, Science Culture | Tagged , , , , | 7 Comments

Academic Life and Children: Fitting it All In

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Athene Donald

I have finally got around to finishing a book I started months ago called Opting Out – Why women really quit careers and head home. Written by Pamela Stone in 2007 it analyses the response of her interviews with 50+ high flying women who opted out of their careers in order to stay at home with the kids. Or, as she concluded, women who were in essence shut out because of the inflexibility of their working environment and (in some cases) the blindness of their partners as to what was going on. It is not a book about academic women but about women in business, law and management.  It is a book that probably should be read in tandem with Sylvia Ann Hewlett’s Off Ramps and On Ramps: Keeping talented women on the road to success, which similarly discusses the women who end up staying at home, but also in this case the subsequent challenges they face when eventually they try to find their way back into the workforce.  Both books, written about the US job-market, highlight the hurdles people (almost invariably women, but in principle it need not be) face if they want to keep a high-flying career going with small kids at home, or kick-start it again after an absence.  They both make well-argued cases which make for sombre reading.

These books tie in with remarks made by Sylvia McLain (Girl, Interrupting) in response to a previous posting of mine, referring to the way the media report on female scientists and the ‘impossibility’ of combining a successful science career with a family. Sylvia said of her mother

But what I saw was her being a ‘super-woman’ meaning she worked, did most of the child care, housework and cooking ON TOP OF working more than full time – she has a lot of energy and now she is 76 she would say she wouldn’t have it any other way.

I think a lot of people don’t want to necessarily work like this, I am not saying this is how it has to be (as in many cases it definitely is not!) but I think there is maybe a general impression that you have to do about 10 times as much work in order to achieve family and a good career. and equally I think there is still an impression that women like you ‘aren’t normal’

I said at the time she made these comments I would come back to them, and linking them with these books seems a good moment to do this. Whatever the business world is like, however much the evidence suggests you would be hard-pressed to be a hot-shot financial wizard with small children in the US, I actually think academic science – indeed academia more generally – offers a reasonably friendly environment for combining career and family.  Why do I say this? Because academic life offers some scope for informal flexibility, whatever the working norms may be thought to be. We don’t have to clock in or out; we don’t have to travel week in, week out, to see clients or to do the court circuit, and we can usually write papers and lectures from home and access email at times of our choosing (which may be 11pm if that is what one wants, so as to be able to get to the school play in the afternoon).  I think that gives us an enormous advantage over our colleagues in other professional spheres.

This, you will note, implies I am not really talking about bench scientists. Here, for the postdoc or PhD student who is still primarily carrying out their own experiments full time, the challenges will be greater. Reactions don’t stop because you need to pick up the children from school, and the timing of some critical analysis can’t necessarily be fitted around child minder’s hours, but for those who have made it to the point that paperwork/ overseeing students/lecturing (and writing lectures) are the main tasks, there is more flexibility.  This flexibility should be embraced to facilitate whatever working pattern works for the family, consistent with the need to be present at certain key times e.g when actually delivering a lecture, running a practical class or attending a departmental meeting. But for the rest, it seems to me that people (probably this means women, but I want to be as inclusive as possible) can be creative in what works, as long as the necessary gets done. The main problem is working out what is, in practice, ‘necessary’ because the devil of academic life is it never needs to stop: it isn’t finite but as all-consuming, certainly as time-consuming, as one allows it to be.

Within my own university I know of two women – there may be others I don’t know about – who have been promoted to professor whilst still formally working part-time (I believe 4 days a week). Declaring that you work part-time most certainly should not be a bar to promotion. But I am also talking about the situation where someone is working full time but at times of their choosing rather than a regular pattern of 9-5 (or indeed 8-6 or whatever). For lecturers it should be perfectly possible to find a schedule that works but that may not be conventional. People have done this for a generation or two informally, without drawing attention to it, and we should use it to our advantage.

This doesn’t solve all of Sylvia’s concerns about needing to be a ‘super-woman’ and do, as she puts it, all the childcare, housework and cooking on top of a full time job, but it does offer something of a solution. What I am describing should apply equally well to the academic husband as well as wife, so it offers the couple a chance to fit in what is important to them at home around the demands of their jobs. It does mean that fathers, as well as mothers, can choose to take the children to school some mornings and arrive a bit late, as long as it’s not the day they have a 9am lecture to give to 300 first years.  It should mean that either partner can stay at home one day to deal with the plumber (and simultaneously they should be able to clear that backlog of email so it is hardly wasted time).  The problem is likely to be much more acute when one partner is not an academic, who does have to work a 9-5 job, or is frequently required to be in the US without the luxury of saying ‘I’ll give that conference a miss this year’.

So this is the message I think we should be putting out to young women thinking about an academic career in science. Don’t simply read the depressing books I mention above and assume that the challenges are as bad in academic life as in the law or business. If/when you can get your foot on the permanent-staff ladder, the flexibility that academia offers to work the hours you want, not the hours some faceless boss requires of you, is actually a benefit. You can work at home much of the time and still accomplish a great deal; the weekend is just as amenable to lecture writing as Monday-Friday, so use it to free up time during the week if that is to your advantage. Don’t think you have to be ‘not normal’ so much as imaginative – and as scientists you’re bound to be that.

(I appreciate this message may be cold comfort to those who are languishing in that frustrating land of post-doc insecurity where what I am describing may be seen as an impossible luxury.)

Posted in Women in Science, Women's Issues | Tagged , , , , | 23 Comments

New Year’s Day, New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on January 1, 2011 by Athene Donald

I’m no fan of New Year’s resolutions; they’re bound to fail.  I probably discovered this at the tender age of about 7 when I set myself to lose my lisp. It took a lot longer than I had expected  – though anyone who knows me now will know I did eventually manage it.  Nevertheless, reading the comments from ‘Pete’ on a blogpost elsewhere about a paper on the LHC which had been accepted on the very day of submission made me wonder about some resolutions we could probably all usefully attend to.

In contrast to the blogger’s experience, Pete said

‘I’ll bet reviewers like to leave documents on their desks to “cure” for a while before they actually get down to it. I suppose good things do take time to complete.’

And that got me thinking about the process of refereeing. I don’t think I’ve ever thought I left papers to ‘cure’ but there is a great art in procrastination which probably has rather the same effect. ‘Just in time’ refereeing can all too easily become ‘just-not-in-time’ refereeing, and by the time the nominal deadline has been missed it’s tempting to let it slip further, and further, and….You get the picture.  As an editor of course I deplore such behaviour but, I doubt there is a referee in the land who hasn’t been guilty of it at least occasionally – or perhaps a little oftener.  This takes me to

Resolution Number 1

I will ensure I return all referee reports on papers by the due date in 2011.

There are a couple of caveats to this which I might indulge in (equally frustrating for the editor):

a)      Not accepting the invitation to do the refereeing until near the due date given and then asking for a further 3 weeks;

b)      refusing all refereeing tasks completely;

Linking in to that first resolution is the email mountain, and how to deal with it. If you don’t ever open those emails requesting you referee a paper, then you can’t be held responsible for not doing the refereeing.  However, since I have never got as far as deleting the requests without reading them, that doesn’t help to reduce the mountain.  I’m not even going to attempt to make a resolution of dealing with all emails in a timely manner.  There are the easy ones, which one can gain a reputation for being efficient about, you know the ones to which the answer is ‘yes’, or even better ‘no’ and then the original message can be filed/deleted.  And I always feel rather good about deleting a significant number that turn up in the in-tray each morning which begin ‘Dearly beloved’, or ‘Your bank account….’ Or even offering me a cheap degree, inviting me to submit a paper to a conference in a completely irrelevant field or join some unheard of journal editorial board. So, rather than set a timescale for replies, maybe a safer resolution around emails would be

Resolution Number 2

I will delete unread at least 50% of all emails that arrive overnight (when the worst of my spam seems to appear)  and 25% of those that come during working hours.

That should help reduce the mountain (apologies if it’s one of yours that gets trashed in error….).

Finally I need to attend to the paper mountain, by which I mean those papers I have put aside in order to read ‘when I have a moment’, but which may have been languishing for some time (for which read years in some cases, so they are no longer topical or even relevant to what my current research interests are) in a dusty pile.   There are various problems with my filing system and I doubt I am unique in my weaknesses in this direction. Firstly, I am of the generation that still prefers to read paper copies, so I tend to print out a bunch of papers in a fit of enthusiasm on a Friday afternoon, and then run out of time to read them. I may bring them home to read over the weekend, and put them in a neat pile on the attic floor and then forget them. So my second problem is that the next time I think about the paper I have to print it out again because I can’t find the first copy (I hope that isn’t breaking any copyright rules).  Having read it, I put it in a neat pile while I think what I should file it under, and proceed to lose it again. In which case, at some later date maybe I need to make another copy….and so it goes on.

Many years ago I learnt the hard way there is a difference between having a copy of a paper in one’s possession and knowing what’s in it. Sounds obvious, but I was caught out when writing a review for Current Opinion in Colloid and Interface Science, for which the nice editorial office offered to xerox/obtain copies of the articles I wanted to cite. Great, I thought, and sent them a list. In due course the papers appeared and, naturally, I neatly filed them. Some time later (needless to say rather close to the due date) I sat down to write the review  – and realised to my horror that I hadn’t actually read any of them.  That crucial step had somehow got omitted in my preparation.  This takes me to

Resolution Number 3

a) I won’t accept any more invitations to write reviews;

b) I won’t print out a paper without having a clear slot of time immediately thereafter to read it.

So, that should make 2011 go with a swing. I wonder how many days till I break all 3 resolutions on the same day….

Happy New Year to everyone! May your resolutions fare better than I expect mine to.  It’s been an interesting experience dipping my toe into the blogosphere these past few months, – thanks to all who’ve commented, or just read this stuff.

OK, the festive season is now over, I’ll soon be back in the office and my future blogs will return to their pre-holiday level of seriousness.  No more frivolity (maybe).

Posted in Science Culture, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 12 Comments

Lies, Damned Lies – and Rank-ordered Lists

Posted on December 28, 2010 by Athene Donald

The end of the year is traditionally the time for lists remembering the year just gone: lists of those who died (and, for so-called stars, their marriages and divorces too), events that happened, films that bombed or triumphed, public gaffes or more celebrated quotes. There will also be lists of people’s predictions for the years ahead – whether these be serious or astrological. Lists are a way of organising our lives, our thoughts, and for many of us a way of staying on top of the chaos around us.  A quick search through the newspapers came up with these entertaining titles:

and the inevitable

Furthermore, today’s latest (web)list of the Top 13 women in Technology, features fellow Occcam’s Typewriter blogger Jenny Rohn.

I suppose I approach these lists with a rather more personal view this year. I was involved with the production of the Times’ Eureka list of the 100 Most Influential People in British Science earlier this autumn – this was a rank-ordered list.  Deeply dubious about the validity of the whole process, my thoughts on this process were written up previously here. (Fellow judge Alice Bell’s thoughts on the meaning of influence can be found here, and the actual list – away from the Times’ paywall – can be found here.)  Subsequently and even more absurdly, I found myself appearing on the Telegraph’s list of the 100 Most Powerful Women in Britain. This list (which at least had the virtue of only categorizing us and not attempting to draw up a ranking), where it dealt with scientists, had little in common with the women who appeared in the Eureka list, which in itself identifies just how absurd the process is (unless you think the lists ought to be subtly different, distinguishing influence from power).  Mary Beard and I exchanged views, as we wriggled uncomfortably about our appearance in this list in a newspaper neither of us would read under normal circumstances, trying to decide if we were more flattered or annoyed (we concluded we were both). So, from both sides of the judging divide, I think I can confirm the suspicions people are likely to have of these lists – they are frequently little more than froth designed to waste readers’ time (and extract their money for the media moguls’ pockets) when they should be doing something more useful.

Unfortunately, our world is full of lists that really do matter. Not the ones that appear in the media during the fallow season at the end of a year, but the ones that decree where funding goes, for instance. These include those lists the research councils produce to decide on grants or fellowships, and also the recent lists produced within Government to decide which quangos go, which departments get what swingeing level of cuts. In all cases this is a case of deciding the distribution of pain.  So, if the ones in the newspaper are quasi-random, with little hard evidence informing the inclusion of one person and the exclusion of another, are these painful lists any better?  Having sat on enough grant- and fellowship-giving panels, it is absolutely clear to me that people try to base decisions on evidence, but it is still hard to come away without a suspicion that it is impossible to form a truly objective view, which gives appropriate weight to appropriate information.  There are many reasons for this.

Leaving aside any personally vindictive refereeing (I would actually suspect this is quite rare), there are bound to be referees who have strong views which clash with the proposal they are sent to referee. I recall a particular case from years ago when Dr X submitted a series of grants that were always torn to shreds by Dr Y, and always for the same reason. The research council – or indeed Dr X – should have realized this was a hopeless situation much sooner than they did. I think Dr X could have requested (they must have known the identity of Dr Y) that this particular referee not be used – something research councils allow -, or the research council simply chosen not to use Dr Y. As I recall, the ultimate outcome was a suggestion from the panel that Dr X and Dr Y get together to put in a joint proposal to resolve the argument, which was indeed a fundamental and important one that would otherwise constantly be tossed around.  This was only possible because it was a research council with a standing committee (as opposed to the EPSRC’s current system of ad hoc committees, where the longevity of the argument would be missed).

A second problem is what happens to grants, or fellowship applications, which are not mainstream or which are inter- or multi-disciplinary.  In the latter case, research councils will tell you they share the names of referees, make sure that the referees cover the full spectrum of the proposal, and I don’t doubt this is what they intend to achieve. Unfortunately this leaves the grant at the mercy of referees who may say (for instance of a biological physics grant) that the physics is mundane and they can’t comment on the biology (this from the physicist approached) coupled with a biologist remarking that the biology is not cutting edge and they don’t understand the physics; neither may be capable of judging the originality of the proposal simply because it joins the two strands together to produce something novel and adventurous.  Both comments will in essence damn the proposal.  How can a panel member judge this grant fairly despite everyone’s best intentions? Even, in a less extreme example, if one proposal sits squarely at the centre of a field – so that each panel member feels they have some idea of what it’s about and why it matters – and another, with equally good referee reports, is in a less familiar corner of the discipline, how can the panel not collectively feel more comfortable with the former and rank it higher? With the best of intentions, I have seen panels agonise over this and still vote for the familiar versus the strange. They may be right so to do, but it is nevertheless a decision based not solely on merit.

The third problem I would identify is timing of incoming referees’ reports. Anyone who has ever submitted a grant must be familiar with the experience of receiving 2 or 3 favourable reviews, and feeling justifiably smug, only to receive a late and damning response.  The problem is that if it is the last report which is negative, there is the danger that the panel will only receive the response to it after the bulk of individual preparation for the panel has been done, or worse as a tabled paper. Even if the referee is out of their depth and talking nonsense (yes, sometimes referees do talk nonsense – which is of course a separate problem, usually because they have refereed at speed and carelessly), the chances are the panel won’t have time to do their homework, read the response thoroughly or check a reference from the rebuttal. They will, however, be left with a lingering feeling of doubt and nervousness.  The grant is now damned by timing as much as by ineptitude or lack of originality in the original submission.

At the end of the day, even if peer review is the least bad option, I fear the rank ordering of lists that panels are required to do end up with rough justice due to all these factors. Typically it is clear which applications should sit right at the top, or right at the bottom. But for the rest many factors come into play. Panels try their hardest. I have never seen a grant-giving panel take their responsibilities with anything less than seriousness, never as chair had to take a group to task for not concentrating hard on the business in hand, but that doesn’t mean we get things right. Panels end up being conservative. Despite admonitions that risk is to be encouraged, this can only be up some notional and invisible point and feasibility studies are always encouraged. Members may be unconsciously swayed by factors they should be ignoring (‘I met that referee once and (s)he’s a Good Guy –  or a Heavyweight – so (s)he must be right in their views’, despite the fact their view contradicts other referees; ‘I don’t think much of that department’ so they mark down a new investigator there; graphene is the up-and-coming material, so that grant must be better than one studying gallium arsenide…. one could draw up a list in itself of unconscious bias in refereeing!  Unconscious bias can turn up in many guises.).  There is always the danger, when the chips are down and difficult decisions have to be made, that a throwaway and not-well-thought-through remark from one panel member can seem like a lifeline to others to absolve them from facing up to a difficult choice.

So, just as I said about the Eureka list, there is no single right answer. The difference is that people’s futures hang on the outcomes of grant panels in a way no media list I am likely to encounter can do. As the funding gets tighter, and yet tighter again, the element of lottery in these lists becomes more damaging. The stated intentions of some research councils to ‘concentrate’ their grant money means that earlier decisions will be reinforced in the future, so that having lost out once researchers may be at more risk of losing out again. I don’t know what the answer is, but I fear these lists are going to be hanging over us for a long time to come.

Posted in Biological Physics, Interdisciplinary Science, Science Culture, Science Funding | Tagged , , | 8 Comments

The Art of Festive Conversation

Posted on December 22, 2010 by Athene Donald

A frivolous post appropriate to the time of year.

Type ‘conversation’ into Amazon, and you’ll get a whole list of self-help books, such as:

  • The Art of Conversation, Or, What to Say, and When;
  • How to Talk to Anyone: 92 Little Tricks for Big Success in Relationships;
  • Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success in Work and in Life, One Conversation at a Time and
  • (this is probably rather more serious, judging by the author Theodore Zeldin, although the title is much of a muchness with the others) Conversation: How Talk Can Change our Lives.

I haven’t read any of these, nor do I intend to, but (ignoring the surfeit of capital letters Amazon sprinkles over the titles) I want to raise the tricky question of how to admit one is a physicist. Even worse, how to admit one is a female physicist, in a social situation.

Let us leave aside the standard joke – how do you distinguish a physicist from a mathematician? He (yes I’ve always heard that pronoun in this place in the sentence) looks at your shoes rather than his own. And let us not agonize why there are 92 little tricks that work, since I suspect the answer must be the author couldn’t reach the round number of 100.  The problem arises when asked something along the lines of ‘what do you do?’. The neighbour’s Christmas party is exactly the kind of fraught situation where this question arises, after a glass or two of bad punch has been tucked away to lower the inhibitions.

I first came across this loaded question when, at 18, I was about to go to Cambridge to start my degree. I was at a party at (I’m embarrassed to admit) Harrow School, where a family friend was a housemaster and he wanted some females to redress the balance of the wholly male 6th formers he taught.  The young men were clearly glad to meet some members of the opposite sex and sidled up to me and asked that simple question ‘what do you do?’. And that was when I first discovered that being a (still-aspiring) physicist, was akin to suffering from leprosy. These same young men suddenly discovered a pressing reason to be on the other side of the room once I had uttered the fateful words ‘I’m going to Cambridge to read Physics’.  As soon as they had muttered some platitude such as ‘how interesting’ they bolted. At that point I realized just how peculiar it was to want to be a female physicist, something I had failed to grasp when at an all girls’ school where no one attempted to dissuade me.

So what is the right answer, consistent with truth? It doesn’t get any easier as one progresses through the system, though possibly saying ‘I work in the university’ is an adequately truthful if misleading response; it’s certainly one I’ve used in the past. Let them make – stereotypically – the assumption that I work in admin or the library and then they can tell me what a wonderful job they have and honour will be satisfied.  It is worse than admitting you are a doctor; in that case the questioner can tell you with glee about their horrendous symptoms and complaints. As a physicist you are either merely a conversation stopper or faced with that monotonous response ‘I could never do physics/maths at school’. I wonder if any of those 92 little tricks help deal with this incipient social disaster.  Suggestions please!

Posted in Communicating Science, Science Culture | Tagged , , | 31 Comments