Posted on by Loosely Translated

Scientists should unlock the Mandela in them

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

Many people are familiar with this quote from Nelson Mandela and understand the power education has, whether you embrace it or fear it. Today, in the post-truth era we live in—where experts are dismissed, where there is a lack of interest in evidence and facts, where alternative facts and the opinions of popular public figures seem to matter more—education is more important than ever!mandela-education

I was fortunate enough to go and listen to former US President Barack Obama deliver the sixteenth annual Mandela lecture at the Wanderers stadium in Johannesburg. He reminded the thousands of people sitting in the stadium (and those tuned in all over the world) of the crossroads we, as global citizens, face—something very similar to what South Africans faced pre-1994.

Obama_Nelson Mandela LectureThe solutions to South Africa’s and the world’s problems, according to Obama, lie with the youth; an undivided youth who love more, who lead and build communities that fight for what Mandela, and others, were and are trying to build. I was inspired by Obama’s messages of hope and the vision he has for achieving an undivided, educated and loving global community. I want, more than anything, to be a part of that community.

A recent piece was published on the Global Citizens website, looking at seven ways Madiba’s legacy still resonates in the world today. I want to highlight four of the seven: his participation in the fight against HIV/AIDS; his dream to bring education to rural students; his fight for children and youth; and his promotion of scientific and environmental education.

Madiba dedicated his life to making a difference in these areas, and while he did more than most, there is still a lot more to do, which we could achieve, largely, through education. Education really is the most powerful weapon in our arsenal and should be used more often to continue Mandela’s fight against HIV/AIDS, to continue to empower young people in the developing world, to develop science and technology to help tackle global issues and more.

Although Obama only mentioned “science” once and “technology” four times during his nearly one and a half hour speech, I know he values both for the advancement of humanity. As a global citizen and a scientist, I thought I’d build on and add to what Obama said with quotes from the lecture.

Obama alluded to the failings of our world leaders and the dangers this has for turning the world backwards. We, as global citizens, need to stop “the promotion of anti-intellectualism and the rejection of science from leaders who find critical thinking and data somehow politically inconvenient” because, “as with the denial of rights, the denial of facts runs counter to democracy, it could be its undoing.” To stop the people and processes eroding democracy, which Mandela fought for, “we have to insist that our schools teach critical thinking to our young people, not just blind obedience.” Our problems aren’t going to be solved by the leaders of this world, who have different agendas, but by the people who think and do for themselves to reach a global agenda—a world for all.

Science-March

We, as scientists, are armed with the most powerful weapon in the world and we need to do a better job of arming everyone else. When we are educated, it makes it difficult to manipulate us, it makes it difficult to lie to us, it makes it impossible to argue that race, gender, sexual orientation, choice of faith, class, makes us less human than the man, woman or child next to us. When we are educated, we understand our problems better and that there are no quick fixes. When we are educated, we put faith in the facts and not those who would try to deny them. It is time to take responsibility of this world and the state we leave it in. We cannot continue to blame the leaders we put in power for taking us down the wrong road when we have the means to push the world in the right direction.

It begins with us.

Posted on by Loosely Translated

Celebrate the stories in science, no matter how small or great

Imagine you are back in the mid-1700s. You are walking the usual five kilometre route it takes you to get to school but instead of following the other children, you cut through a field. Running, because you got distracted by some playful tadpoles in a nearby creek and now you’re late, you trip over a rock and fall. While getting up and dusting yourself off you notice that the rock you tripped on wasn’t a rock but rather the badly weathered top of a skull. Quickly, forgetting about the scrapes on your hands and elbows, you dig around the skull. You notice that this isn’t any normal buck or cow skull, this skull is much too big. Seven year old you, along with many others, wouldn’t know that this skull belonged to the extinct mammoth, not until the mammoth was formally described in 1799, anyway.

Early guesses at what the mammoth looked like

It is 1928, a regular day. You have just come back from a holiday with the family and you return to your lab to find some old bacterial cultures you prepared before you left lying in the corner. On them, a bacteria you’ve looked at a thousand times, Staphylococcus aureus—the causal organism of staph infections, should be growing. Instead, you notice that some of the agar plates have less of the bacteria. “That’s funny,” you say. On these plates, there is something else growing, a mould.  You isolate this mould and soon identify it as Penicillium notatum. Studying its interactions with Staphylococcus and other bacterial pathogens, you quickly realize that the fungus produces some kind of “mould juice” that inhibits the bacterial pathogen’s growth. This “juice” has some sort of antimicrobial property. A few months later, you rename it to what we know it as today, “penicillin.” Twenty years later, just in time for the Second World War, colleagues of yours develop a better method of extracting penicillin from the fungus, a different fungus, and penicillin becomes a commercially used product—beginning the age of antibiotics.

Alexander Flemming
Alexander Fleming

Now, imagine you’re a scientist in 2018; the naming of the mammoth by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and the discovery of penicillin by Alexander Fleming are long in the past; as are so many other past landmark discoveries, like learning the structure of DNA, electricity and the ancestors of humans. As we have advanced our understanding of nature and the universe, these kinds of world-changing discoveries are stumbled on less and less. Of course discoveries are still being made every day but most of them go unnoticed, as do yours.

Generally, scientists seek to make some sort of difference in the world, whether it’s by providing some understanding through knowledge, developing something or discovering something else. It is easy to lose sight of that when you compare your discoveries to your role models and other well-known scientists who came before.

Why do scientists become well-known; why are people well-known?

Because there is a story about them doing something great or something incredibly wrong.

All science should be widely celebrated; scientists are making the unknown known, the difficult easy, the impossible possible—not matter how “small” the finding, it moves humanity forward. It does not matter if you think the stories about your discoveries or the discovery itself are ordinary, tell it; but tell it well and tell it to everyone. Science and unity is all that can save this world and, for the moment, science appears to be our best shot. Let’s unite in the celebration of science and continue our stories forward, proudly, and, should the opportunity present itself as a skull in the ground or contaminated plate, be prepared to trip or stumble onto greatness.

Pint of science, tell your story where you can.jpg

Pint of science, tell your story where you can
Pint of science, tell your story where you can.