Feeling the elephant, or how scientists collaborate
The comments posted after a few of my recent entries have revealed a Grand Canyon-esque divide between two opposing factions of researchers. There are those who believe that in order to be successful in the field, one must live in the lab - carrying out experiments well into the night and the next morning and only pausing to briefly bivouac in a warm spot next to the autoclave, nestled atop a pile of lab coats.
On the other side, we have those who insist that the best researchers are the ones that make time for other activities, be they long walks on the beach, a good finger-painting session, or sculpting great scenes from the history of science in butter.
I, of course, fall squarely into the latter camp, as do my labmates. While our butter-sculpting skills might not be up to par with others' (I still have trouble getting the feet right), my co-workers and I are not just scientists - we are mothers and fathers, wives and husbands, athletes, photographers, ballroom dance champions, entrepreneurs, coaches, volunteers, and culinary genii, just to name a few.
I don't want to devote this column to a debate on which of these camps is better, lest it disintegrate into spiteful bickering. Someone will call out one camp for sacrificing baths in the name of research; someone else will kick over someone's butter sculpture. Instead, I'd like to reveal one of the secrets behind how those of us in Camp Good Times manage to balance outstanding science with having a life.
Collaboration.
A scientific collaboration occurs when two or more independent researchers - sometimes across campus from each other, sometimes across the globe - decide to join forces to tackle some heady research problem. It may be that one research group has a novel method they've developed but no dataset to try it on, while another group has a dataset that needs to be analyzed but hasn't got the method (or, in many cases, doesn't even know of the method's existence). The comp sci department on campus is a particularly fruitful place to go searching for these types of collaborations - they have algorithms and techniques to tackle all sorts of problems from every discipline on campus, and are verily salivating at the prospect of real-world data to try them out on. Walk into the CS building holding a sign that says "I have data" and you run the risk of being trampled by a herd of researchers eager to work with you. The bruises and footprints on your face, however, are entirely worth it, because the insights that come out of this cross-disciplinary tag-teaming are completely novel.
In other cases, a group of related labs studying a similar topic using slightly different methods decide to pool their knowledge for the betterment of all. This is akin to the old story of the blind men who each felt a part of an elephant and was asked to guess what it was.
Somebody feels the trunk and guesses it's a snake, someone else feels the leg and insists it's a tree, while another man, who clearly needs to brush up on his biology, mistakes the elephant's side for a wall. In most versions of this tale, the conflict is never resolved and everybody is too buy bickering to realize that there is an elephant standing inches away from them, an elephant which is probably quite mad after all that poking, prodding and being called a wall. A few versions, however, go a little further and see the conflict degrade into a full-on bar brawl, which may or may not include the angry elephant.
As the wise man in the tale explains, it is only when knowledge is shared that the complete picture emerges. This holds true for elephants, and it holds true for science. Our lab, for instance, studies a new class of therapeutics for the treatment of infectious diseases. There is simply no way we could test it on all of the major bugs in the world, and even if we could, would you really want to work in a lab that housed everything from Anthrax to Yellow Fever?* Instead, we focus on a couple of models that we're experts at, and have our collaborators test the compounds in the other models that they specialize in. Everybody wins, especially those of us who get to visit our far-off collaborators every so often to compare notes in person.
Ask any respected researcher their secret, and I can guarantee that many - almost all, perhaps - will answer that it's to surround themselves with good people, both in terms of who they bring into the lab, and who they choose to collaborate with. Those researchers who fail to foster at least a few collaborations are sentencing themselves to massive workloads, depriving themselves of important insights, and making it very difficult to get a complete picture of their subject. That, and they're probably making a lot of elephants really mad. So unless you want a rampaging elephant trampling your lab members and stamping on your glassware, get out there and find a few willing folk to partner up with.
*There don't seem to be any infectious diseases that start with Z. I'm hoping to discover one someday, so that I can eventually go back and improve this sentence.
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JENNIFER GARDY 
Comments
Boo... a serious column. I link to your blog and this is what I get as a reward. Get back to the sassy spirited posts or else the terr.. I mean, the uptight benchbots without a life or a sense of humor will have won.
z for zoster...
@The economist (great magazine by the way with infinite intriguing covers) she mentioned she had a husband in a post a while back & he's an artsie too...
Let's get back to the fun posts.
Jeez, I must really be an iconoclast. I thought this blog was honestly funny, at least as good as the first one the kid wrote. Maybe these other folk just don't have a subtle sense of humor, and need fart jokes and clown slapstick to make them smile.
She could feel my elephant anytime.
I like this blog entry...yes it is about a serious topic but yet fun to read.
Alas, it is hard sometimes to collaborate--it really depends on what field it is. And some labs/PIs have hidden agenda...I have heard numerous stories that people got scooped by the collaborators!
Hey nerd girl, would you agree that a more measured response to your divided readership is that there are different paths to success for each individual? I mean to say, the life-balance teeter-totter can be shifted and ultimately 'balance' is pretty subjective.
I guess I just never thought the bench bots were looking down their goggles at me and vice versa.
I haven't read all the comments you're getting but it seems to me we can all attend camp good times, and, in order to feel productive some people are just going to get up earlier.
meh.
The purpose of the elephant story is a little different than what is described in your article. It is a story meant to explain the doctrine of postulation. In Jainism it is believed that any object has infinite variables of existence and cannot be completely perceived due to human limitations. The point of the story is to teach tolerance of differing view points, as they are all fragments of truth that add up to absolute truth. The "brawl" tacked on to the end of the story can augment the story from its original purpose, but I think it was just added for dramatic effect.
Then again, you are still correct in your interpretation of the story according to the doctrine of postulation.
Z for Zygomycete, the disease being zygomycosis.
Collaborating scientists sound a lot like a "tribe" as Seth Godin describes in his latest book (aptly named "Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us"
I think the real divide lies between "desktop" and "benchtop" scientists. While the latter don't necessarily want to live in the lab, the nature of the work dictates that in spite of all the "collaborating" or "outsourcing" you can get away with, there is always inevitably someone who will have to pull those evening and weekend shifts to get the job done. That someone is usually an overworked, underpaid grad student, but can sometimes be overly conscientious technicians because primary cell cultures and mice don't stop growing over the weekend, and sometimes experimental design demands timepoints that fall between 8 and 24 hours. Going with the animal metaphor, this is the person who has the unenviable job of de-constipating the elephant while the others are busy feeling it up.
The latter scientist is more appealing. When living life outside the lab you encounter many scenarios, develope a great sense of communication and listen to other points of view. Some could possibly turn out to be an experiment or help one ~ purely conceived by us non-scientists that may be of assistance!
Any infectious disease that can be transmitted from animals to humans also fits into the category of zoonoses.
I enjoy your column. Keep up the good work.
You could always go with the adjectival "zoonotic plague" to improve the scope of your sentence.
I'm a grad student doing a History MA, and I firmly believe those who are best successful in the discipline lead unbalanced lives. It sounds cynical (and not very fun), but I believe the best way to excel in academic pursuits is to lead a monastic life.
Of course, one needs to find time to interact. But in reality, those who hunker down and try to publish never perish.
But this could be very different in the sciences...
I meant to say "most successful" not "best successful." Clearly I need to get away from the comp!
Sorry I found this, it was a little unexpected. "everybody is too buy bickering to realize"
I guess you were also too buy to catch it.
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