{"id":6145,"date":"2021-02-13T11:38:41","date_gmt":"2021-02-13T10:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/?p=6145"},"modified":"2021-02-13T11:38:41","modified_gmt":"2021-02-13T10:38:41","slug":"the-politics-of-white-lab-coats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/2021\/02\/13\/the-politics-of-white-lab-coats\/","title":{"rendered":"The Politics of White Lab Coats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone knows what a scientist looks like. The species is easily identifiable because they wear a white lab coat wherever they go. It is almost as if, if you don\u2019t wear a white coat you can\u2019t be a serious scientist, in the eyes of the media. It was noticeable, on this week\u2019s International Day for Girls and Women in Science, how few women (and girls) posted selfies of themselves so attired to prove their credentials as the bonafide<\/em> scientists they were. Bobble hats a-plenty, but most eschewed the purported \u2018uniform\u2019. I don\u2019t blame them.<\/p>\n

Google \u2018scientist image\u2019 and you have to go through 19 images before you come to one that doesn\u2019t involve a lab coat. And that is of an elderly Einstein, who probably (as a theorist) never in his life went near such an item of clothing \u2013 but of course the other frequently cited attribute of a scientist, that of sticking-up hair, is naturally present. That image is then followed by several more tens of images involving lab coats, plus a couple of historical images. It is true that there are far more women to be spotted in these images than a web search of a few years ago would have thrown up, but it is depressing that this is what is meant to convey \u2018scientist\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"lab<\/a><\/p>\n

When, more than ten years ago now, I won the 2009 L\u2019Oreal\/UNESCO Laureate for Europe<\/a> award and publicity required a series of photographs to be taken by an eminent French photographer (Micheline Pelletier<\/a>), it was a lab coat that was required (and purple disposable gloves too, another common part of the scientist\u2019s uniform), as you can see. This was the photo that adorned the back page of Le Monde<\/em> and the L\u2019Or\u00e9al building in Hammersmith. Or rather, a suitably cropped version of it. Interestingly, the foreground containing the carrot and the potato were cut out. As a side issue you might wonder why they were ever introduced. The answer is simple: I have indeed carried out research on both. As the lay citation said, I was awarded the prize \u201c<\/em>For her work in unraveling the mysteries of the physics of messy materials ranging from cement to ice cream<\/em>.\u201d \u00a0\u2013 but it might as well have said from potatoes to carrots.<\/p>\n

The reality is, of course, I hadn\u2019t worn a lab coat for years. At the start of my career, yes I did wear one, and it was just as well I did. In those days, when I worked on metals not polymers, I had occasion to use a lot of orthophosphoric acid. This, it turned out, is very efficient at making holes in textiles (as I said in a recent post<\/a>, I was a ham-fisted researcher, and too much acid fell on my person rather than doing the job it was meant to be doing of etching small copper discs). My lab coat ended up quite perforated. I was just glad it was that \u2013 supplied by the department \u2013 and not my own clothes, given the tight budget I was living on.<\/p>\n

Why do I raise any of this now? It is noticeable that in recent days, our very own Prime Minister has adopted this uniform (e.g. here<\/a>) to prove just how close he is to science and the scientists \u2013 almost one of them, you might say \u2013 and to prove his association with the production of vaccination. The PM carrying crates of vaccine, watching a vaccination or walking around a hospital \u2013 always wearing a white lab coat. In the early days of the pandemic we heard a lot from him and his ministers about being \u201cguided by the science\u201d, sometimes even \u201cled by the science\u201d or \u201cfollowing the science\u201d, but he wanted the voters to believe science and scientific advice sat at the heart of his actions, whether or not that was actually the case. Increasingly it became clear that it often was not, with politics and\/or the economy being even closer to his heart.<\/p>\n

Having discovered last summer that those were phrases that were getting just too indigestible and so backing away from anything about science, the success of the vaccination roll-out seems to mean he feels it\u2019s safe to get close to science again. And hence, provoking a plethora of photo opportunities for him dressed up to resemble a \u2018scientist\u2019, whether or not it\u2019s an accurate portrayal. After all, he has pledged<\/a> \u2013 on various occasions \u2013 to make the UK a \u2018scientific superpower\u2019 now that we have left the EU. To that extent we, the scientific (in the widest sense) community, should be grateful that he has agreed that the UK can sign up to Association with the EU for Horizon Europe<\/a>. \u00a0This has the potential to make a big difference to the community, or at least not remove something that we have enjoyed, in all senses of the word, for many years.<\/p>\n

We, the community, need to make sure this wished-for association status does not come at the expense of the previously promised uplift in spending on science; that when the Treasury finally produces its five year Comprehensive Spending Review, the money attributed to Horizon Europe (which, in previous Framework Programmes would have been simply absorbed in the overall contribution to the EU Budget) does not suddenly appear in the science budget, removing at least some of the \u2018new\u2019 money which all the headlines have implied will be forthcoming. That money needs to be additional not substitutional.<\/p>\n

I am very glad the Prime Minister does recognize the importance of science. Daily, the whole country has reason to be grateful to scientists and clinicians in all kinds of ways. However, how many of our politicians really understand words like evidence, hypothesis-testing or modelling? I fear not as many as we need, whether or not they are dressed up in white lab coats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone knows what a scientist looks like. The species is easily identifiable because they wear a white lab coat wherever they go. It is almost as if, if you don\u2019t wear a white coat you can\u2019t be a serious scientist, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,19],"tags":[283,1449,1307,1450],"class_list":["post-6145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-culture","category-science-funding","tag-funding","tag-horizon-europe","tag-prime-minister","tag-vaccination"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/athenedonald\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}