"Losing all scientific credibility" – a lesson in success
| 17 May, 2011 | Morgan Giddings |
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“You are losing any semblance of scientific credibility.”
That quote is from an email I received this morning, in response to a message I sent out to some folks on my email list. What was in my message that provoked such a strong response? Speculations about alien landings in Nebraska? Discussions of Big Foot sightings? The Loch Ness monster? Faith healing?
No. My offense was this: I had emailed a link to a video by …. gasp … a businessperson talking about how to adopt a “success mindset.” I had found the video useful, and so I had shared it.
The person who wrote back – clearly upset, because he not only emailed, but went over to my blog to post a comment calling me a “huckster”* – seems to think that this kind of stuff is “unscientific.” He called the person who made the video a scammer, and as proof, he posted a link to a screed by one of the fellow’s competitors.
Underneath the scathing email were several core messages:
- We scientists are a superior lot, and we have nothing to learn from those businesspeople, who are all scammers because they want to make money. (And, obviously, they’re not smart, either.)
- That learning how to improve ourselves is only for the weak and the timid. Since we are already superior, there is no need for improvement.
- It is “us” vs “them,” and since we are superior, we are the only ones that really matter.
Unfortunately, this is not the first time I’ve encountered this kind of attitude.
And guess what: if we want more public support for science, this attitude kills the chances of that happening. Like it or not, most of us scientists are ultimately dependent on those pesky taxpayers for our livelihoods. We depend on those “scammers” (the greedy money-making businesspeople) to support an economy that has enough excess money to invest in science.
Does this kind of us-vs-them, we-are-superior, and we-have-nothing-to-learn-from-them approach increase the likelihood that non-scientists (the vast majority of the taxpaying public) will want to invest in the work that we do?
I think you know the answer.
On this blog we’ve discussed before how challenging scientific careers have become. I see colleagues working ever longer hours. They are lost in paperwork, teaching, grant writing, and unable to spend time with their families or on outside interests — or even doing the research that they love. The system is broken, and becoming more so.
What is the solution? Does the solution lie in being insular, going it alone, and figuring it out by ourselves “because we’re all so smart”?
Or does the solution lie in looking outside, to see what works for other people, choosing the best of that, and applying it inside science and academe? Even if the ideas come from evil, greedy, business types?
The message in that video-that-provoked-the-angry-response was simple. It reverse-engineered success thusly:
- Success comes from the actions you take.
- The actions you take come from your beliefs about the world.
- The beliefs you hold about the world come from the messages you feed your brain (e.g. media, TV, friends, books, etc).
So, if you feed your brain constant doses of bad news and negative people, what beliefs result? Something like, “all people are bad, the world is going to Hell, and we should be fearful of everything and everyone.”
What actions do these beliefs lead to?
- It becomes impossible to trust anyone, so you keep your work fanatically secret, seeing everyone as your competitor and not sharing anything with anyone.
- Being fearful, you relate to people negatively, assuming the worst of them. When they do even the slightest negative thing to you, it provokes an angry response.
- Because you trust no one, you learn from no one.
- Being sure that the world is going to hell, what’s the point in doing great work? Why not just read more of the gloom-and-doom news to reconfirm how bad it all is instead of investing in the work?
I know this firsthand. That was me, several years back. I was feeding my brain all sorts of negative messages, and the resulting actions and behaviors were significantly counterproductive. It ruined several collaborative relationships, it caused reduced productivity in my lab, it reduced morale, and more.
What got me out of that cycle was learning from certain business people the core message: you cannot be a success in business unless you are careful about what you feed your mind. It dawned on me that the core message was the same in science. Feed your mind good stuff, you’ll have good beliefs, and you will take actions that produce more and better results.
So it is rather ironic that this person emailed me such a bitter, untrusting email after I had tried to share a positive message. But it made me think: how would I have reacted to this message back in my gloom-and-doom phase?
I probably would have said to myself: those people are stupid and annoying, they are evil scammers, and I know that the world is going down the tubes, so don’t bother me. But now I think, do those beliefs lead to happiness, joy, peace, or success for their bearer?
Isn’t it weird how we often cling to beliefs that lead to anything other than those states of mind.? Why would we choose anger, fear, and resentment over happiness, joy, and peace?
Nothing more or less than the force of habit: the most powerful force in human existence.
If you’d like some more positive messages about how to succeed, to start creating better habits (rather than gloom-n-doom), you can get them over here https://scifoundry.com/.
Morgan
* In case you go searching for that comment: he posted the “huckster” comment at an obscure “Thank you” page on my blog, so I never approved it to appear. I would have approved it (and responded appropriately) if he had posted it in a regular location where it made sense.
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very good blog! I’ll admit that there is for me as a natural scientist a constant temptation to look at economics and business people with a bit of distrust or amusement at best, with their in my view sometimes naive and narrow view of life. However, I agree completely with your perception of being goal oriented, and working constructively towards targets. Do you think maybe natural scientists sometimes lack goals (if not # of publication or economic funding) or the greater visions? Where the search becomes the goal in itself, and that people who claim success are ignorant, because they’ve reached at what they see as a/the finishing line, but the finishing line can never really be reached in natural sciences?
Hey Sjurdur,
It is easy to loose sight of the “big goals” and replace them with the “little” or “not so important goals.” For example, I held out “getting tenure” as a goal. But once I had it …. so what (then I gave it up). The big goals should be ones that really matter to you … like revolutionizing your field, making great discoveries, innovating, or whatever. It is just too easy to loose sight of that and instead have the goals become: get grants. get papers. go to meetings. repeat. And lead a life of quiet desperation in the process.
I’m a natural scientist and I don’t think I’ve ever held “getting tenure” as a goal. That’s just something that happens.
Nor did I make “revolutionize your field, make great discoveries, innovate” as a goal, either? What the heck does something like that look like in your brain?
I agree “we” be it Scientists, Engineers etc., are not superior to Businessmen or women for that matter. We are equal as human beings, we are interdependent. I grew up as the youngest of 12 with 7 brothers in businesses. I disliked business because of the constant talk of making money and eventually ran away joined the Army ( REME) and eventually became and engineer , then Chief Engineer, technical Director, entrepreneur and all the way to MM/CEO and even Chairman within 40 years.
After retirement I was elected C.Sci., because of my contribution to engineering and science in inventing products for health care. Fortunately, with hindsight I was a school drop out in 10th grade because of family financial problems.
I found it useful to learn about business by working for Corporation on both sides of the pond, reading, attending MBA courses but most from University of Hardknocks.
However I literally lost 2 business I started, because I thought I knew all about business by being an Engineering Manager and manging multi million budgets, that teaches oe aspects of business but does not make an Engineer ir scientist business man or women. I know many, many scientists some with double PHD’s and Post Docs, majority of them know how good they are as scientists and their limitations as businessmen, just as I learnt the hard way.
Finally at the ripe old age of 45 I understood enough to run a small profitable business and then learnt how to capitalise on my ideas into inventions to eventually get a share of a market segment to make the company valuable enough to sell for few Millions. But Without guidance, working with and understanding how businesses tick and work, I would not have been successful financially.
True many businessmen are not as ethical or holy as many scientists and engineers, I have however also encountered unethical scientists and engineers on both sides of the bond .
But the biggest experience I pass on to my kids and grandchildren is that to be successful one needs to have humility and courage to accept one’s limitations first before your strengths, then others, be they business people or scientists or journalists will respect you and engage with you constructively for mutual benefit.
Those in business do also get lost in their own world of “Make More Money”, to the detriment of their own business. Being in the medical device industry for 22 years, I have seen the capitalistic drive lead to its current, overall decline. Using amazing profits to acquire more and more companies just to increase the number of divisions and income has never made them better. Indeed, it has made them worse. To save money from their bloated, purchasing costs, acquisitions invariably lead to increased unemployment both in the original and incorporated companies, severely hurting the overall productivity for new products. Later, when profits at some competitor increases when they “trim operational costs”, i.e. laying off another one or two thousand employees, they and all of the other competitors follow suit. This terrible positive feedback acquire-and-fire loop, in the end, produces companies that are extremely profitable but devoid of any innovation and social or altruistic “soul”. It’s not something I personally would like to emulate.
I try to engage in creative cognitive dissonance to generate insights. One way of looking at the message about success is that you have to market to yourself before you can market to anyone else. (And here we are, where ‘market’ has primarily become a verb…)
Another way of putting it is as Miles Vorkosigan once phrased it, “First you see it, then you be it.”
Expectations can shape outcome.
Thing is, many scientists end up in industry. (I think I recently read only 10% of graduating PhDs end up in academia) If you do not want to perish in what is referred to as the “real world” you better learn to at least listen to the perspective of the people on the business side of your company. Industry is not academia. The goal of your work, in most cases is to get a product to market., not to publish, or get tenure.
Having moved from science to running my own business in 2004, there were three crucial things that I learnt. 1. the vast majority of the population does not think like scientists. 2. That does not stop them being highly successful and 3. The best way to get on is to try and understand other people and communicate in ways that they understand best.
As a scientist or former scientist you can have a tremendous impact, by being able to find facts, present alternative arguments and, if you are a really good communicator, present snippets of science at relevant times in an accessible way.
Conversely, when communicating external methods and views to scientists, you have to do some translation to ensure that there is a rational explanation – if possible, because sometimes there isn’t one! But sthen again, that would be a field of new social research… 🙂
An good article – well, it made me comment!
Well played giddings