Posted on by Mbuyi Shadrack

The joy of ignoring scientific fence lines

I think science should be fun. Sure, I am still young and might not know what I’m talking about, but I’m going to spend the better part of my life in natural science research. That is time I will never get back. I therefore must ensure that it is the best time of my life. I want to spend most of it being happy, not depressed. So then, how do I ensure that I am happy?

I’ve talked about balancing work with social interaction (especially with your family). But now I’ve rediscovered something: exploring! I’ve just spent a weekend as research assistant on a behavioural-ecology undergraduate field excursion. Behavioural ecology — the study of the evolutionary basis for animal behaviour due to ecological pressures — is not really my field; I’m more into environmental health research. However, as an assistant who was supposed to lead a team and help the students interpret animal behaviour, I found myself learning more than they did. The techniques and the data analysis used in this field just amazed me. How one translates a mere behavioural observation into a scientific conclusion really changed my perspective about natural science research. And as I was listening to different students presenting their findings at the end of a very long basic research day, I remembered why I wanted to do this whole science thing in the first place. Most importantly, now that I’m back in the middle of my MSc proposal, I derived a few lessons that I believe will make my life a little bit better.

Figure 1 Observed ungulates on the GGHNP Mountains
Ungulates in the Golden Gate mountains

Firstly, most of the research that we do is not informed by just a single discipline. We fool ourselves if we think that’s possible. No matter your field, there is an aspect of your research that needs the expertise and justifications of another field. This is why it didn’t come as a surprise to me to find out that my research has a lot of justification from chemistry, even though I am in biological sciences. Yes, I was frustrated wading through the chemistry literature, but now I know it’s all worth it. It’s the joy of discovering something unexpected – like a treasure buried in the sand – which you wouldn’t have found if you just stuck to walking down the path.

Secondly, one cannot be stereotyped in research. There are many things that are happening in and around what one is doing. A colleague and his group were observing the behaviour of ungulates. They measured things like wind speed and the local temperature. If someone had told me this a couple of months ago I would have asked, “Why in the world would one measure that? It’s just animal behaviour?” But these affect the behaviour of the animals too; kind of how we also change our behaviour when it is cold or too windy. There really is a lot going on. I think if we can be aware of what is going on around us, our research sites, laboratories, and even in our little spaces, we can eliminate some part of the stress and have fun. Also, hearing about somebody else’s problems always makes your own seem smaller 😉

Figure 2 Science disciplines, like atoms of a molecule, are interlinked somehow

Lastly, things aren’t always as they seem. Everything is interconnected, in sometimes unexpected ways. This is true by the mere definition of behavioural ecology. But looking at other fields in science also, we really need to tap into why things are happening. It is true, we need to invent and modify to better our world but we also need to find out why things are happening and work on research that is intended at eliminating the factors that are influencing the problems we have in the world today. And we can’t do this without looking at outside factors, other fields that we’re maybe not trained in. Physiology can change because of physics and chemistry – and all of this is linked to ecology and economics!

I still have no idea what “science” should look like, but I am busy reading a friend’s research in chemistry. I enjoy forensic pathology documentaries and every chance I get, I take ten minutes to read up on psychology research. It is not because I have too much time on my hands. I think all the disciplines may be interlinked somehow, and as we embark on these postgraduate studies, we have to be open-minded and inquisitive. Like children, playing. Coming up with new research ideas and justifying what we do will be easy this way. That is the beauty of science. That is how we get to excel in science.

Posted on by mamothena · 2 Comments

Smoothie tips for the academic blender

I am a blender. And no I don’t normally take my fruit and vegetables in liquid form. But an academic blender.  Combining into one research project at least a couple of different disciplines, trying to find better solutions to problems in maternal health in my case.  And I have been thinking about what it really means to be an interdisciplinary researcher, lately.  Doing interdisciplinary research as one person, as opposed to a team, puts you on a mental roller coaster of sorts. Trying to make the shifts and bends needed to think in two different ways, and blend two different schools of thought to make one coherent thesis.

interdisciplinary-learning
Interdisciplinary thinking: Blending the compartments. (source: socialsciences.cornell.edu)

 

I built my epidemiology and biostatistics graduate education on an anthropology and natural sciences foundation. For my PhD project, I maintained some elements of epidemiology while for the first time I decided to delve into health systems and policy research.  I adopted an interdisciplinary framework of life-course health development to help me investigate the extent to which the health system and the “social” environment would really impact maternal health. I don’t mind interdisciplinary thinking because it is more satisfactory for me. But it means I had to basically gain new expertise. This is great and will make me a stronger candidate, but it also means that much more work when I am doing these paradigm shifts from deductive to inductive reasoning.

I am hoping that at the end of my PhD I will be a different person, able to reduce things to numbers and testable hypothesis but capable of meaningful interpretation at the same time. I will probably be hard pressed to articulate what my “specialization” is but hopefully interdisciplinary scientist or some other such thing will suffice. Hopefully I will develop some dexterity between my chosen specializations, and develop my own which serve my goal best: to do actionable research highly relevant to the society I am in.

 

Interdisciplinary quote
I sure hope not! (Source: quotefancy)

 

But that is in the future. In the meantime, I have to constantly strategize on how best to go about my research. At the moment, after spending a lot of time on qualitative work, I have to shift gears and think about the quantitative aspects of my work. That means I set aside my thinking about all of the nuances of context, processes, complex interrelations of things with one another within the health systems paradigm. Now I have to isolate “factors” from this complex milieu, transform them to valid, measurable entities and investigate hypothesis of what influences what. I already have to anticipate how these “independent factors” will actually translate back into my relativism-heavy earlier work and make a coherent story.  It feels like a lot of work waiting for me.  And in the end, the product of my interdisciplinary work has to be a nice-tasting smoothie that both positivist and relativist[1] thinkers can somewhat enjoy. So, how to do that?

interdisciplinary smoothie
source: MThai

 

I quickly summarize what I have been thinking and reading so far:

  1. Choose your fruits and vegetables wisely.

A basic awareness of the epistemological orientation of each of your disciplines, with all their “pros” and “cons” is necessary. This helps with the validity of your work within each paradigm, but also helps you figure out what it is you are really contributing at the higher, theoretical level.

  1. ¾ fruits, ¼ vegetables. Or vice versa?

Then there is the question: How “much” of each discipline are you injecting into your research project? In the beginning I thought my work would have a heavy quantitative lean, because that’s what I was invested in. But the qualitative stuff have taken a significant space now that I realized how much deeper I had to delve, in order to have a truly mixed, interdisciplinary output. I don’t think it will ever be 50/50 and this depends on the background and interests of the interdisciplinary researcher. But it seems inevitable that with interdisciplinary research, one side will always “suffer”.

  1. What taste and texture?

It is needless to say that not all research projects need be interdisciplinary.  The goal of research is to answer questions and come up with solutions.  So the goal very much dictates the approach.  The taste and texture you want from your smoothie dictates the fruits and vegetables you choose, and how much of each. In the final analysis, I still have to be cognizant of what the overall goals of my thesis were. And sometimes re-evaluate how to blend the different analytical methods and frameworks to tell a coherent story.  If I spend a lifetime as an interdisciplinary researcher, I hope to be competent enough to correctly predict how things will go together before commencing a project.

  1. What do you wanna call it?

Any good smoothie needs a nice, catchy and descriptive title. Something that captures the essence of what you are. Some people are microbiologists, others epidemiologists, mathematicians. How will I characterize my research at the end of it? Titles are important, because they are a window for other people to see what you have to offer. They affect how you see yourself and the opportunities you go after. For smoothies, a Sun Salutation, Nutty Date or Radiance may sound nice 🙂 . But upon closer look, you might wanna decide if you want cayenne pepper, hemp or “bee pollen” in your drink. So how to describe my research in a meaningful way when I’m out there in the world? I’m still figuring that one out…

[1] Natural scientists typically fall into the “positivist” category, while humanities scholars tend towards relativism. But there are in betweens, and things aren’t always straightforward. See this robust discussion on the complexity of the issue.