The Art of War and Your Latest, Greatest Idea
| 17 May, 2010 | Richard P. Grant |
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Editor’s note: we’re pleased to welcome Morgan Giddings to Naturally Selected. Morgan will be guest-blogging for us on scientific careers and related topics.
by Morgan Giddings
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
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In my experience the “Old Guard” to which Morgan refers is more often the “Mid Career Guard.” Older scientists are, in my opinion, usually far more open to different paradigms than are the mid-career scientists who form the bulk of reviewers. Perhaps that is because the dogmatic, hidebound minds from the older generation have ossified, thereby selecting for the creative ones with vision.
I am thinking, sadly, of an example of exactly this strategy being pursued in which the scientist really did believe that aliens from outer space were active in horrible ways on the human race. After he got an award (well deserved) for his work he began to talk to his colleagues about what he really thought was going on. Always a shock to colleagues. Not yet having tenure, he lost his position with the university.
But, perhaps aliens really are manipulating us and conducting genetic engineering experiments in which they mix their DNA with ours to create hybrids that escaped onto the range in the Western USA and mutilate cattle. Perhaps some of them ride in UFOs on the freeway in vehicles looking like Cadillacs that have holographic projections instead of wheels, and maybe that explains why those cars glide smoothly while others bounce. Perhaps some of them come in their UFOs from other stars so they can live in freight containers (unbeknownst to us). Maybe. It could explain the teamsters union. But most of us find it rather far-fetched.
I think another question is, in cases like that, what is the right thing to do? If the faculty is unusually productive, and perhaps even a genius, but they are believed to be bonkers, what should a university do? What should colleagues do then? How can society take advantage of the abilities of a person who is believed to be quite psychotic and yet also comes up with extraordinary achievements?
I am not sure. We don’t have a category for it in our society. Not every psychotic professor is able to grapple with the idea that they are crazy. The CHE had an article by a schizophrenic law professor who described what her days are like. That is extraordinary enough. If the professor is fine in every other way, but they are thought floridly psychotic and won’t accept that they are, should that result in termination? Psychotics are no more prone to violence than anyone else is, it is a myth that they are.
It’s a real question. Such people can make valuable contributions, so where is the line? Can we create a category for “Valuable lunatic” in our faculty? What privileges should be denied to them? If their publications are good, is it valid to judge them on their lunacy?
Dude! H.G. Wells published “Star Begotten: A Biological Fantasia” in 1937 that is a story about one Joseph Davis and biological messages arriving from outer space in the form of “cosmic rays” (articulated by aliens) that direct alterations of human chromosomes. Wells dedicated the story to his friend, William Spencer Churchill.
See: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/wells/hg/w45st/index.html
Never mind that my name is Joseph Davis, now an “old hand” at sending biological messages into space. See: http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=10283 and http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=10346
Perhaps I should now post what I am planning to do next, but you are right. I should definitely couch it in more cryptic terms.
Joe Davis
That was Winston (my typo) Spencer Churchill and a euphemistic “Dude!”. Please excuse. -JD
Morgan: Do you mean to say that if you want to defeat, say cancer, you have to act like one! I agree. Beware of T cells.