Posted on by mamothena

Reckoning with the “Ph” in the PhD.

Lately, I have been captured by the idea of putting the philosophy back into the PhD. Not a bad kind of capture 😉 (South Africans will understand). I was doing data exploration for my work and just hit a wall. I could not move forward for the life of me. I couldn’t ask interesting questions. And I thought I was having another dip in inspiration.

Needless to say, I was frustrated. Because with a funded PhD things are time-bound. You want to do as much as you can before your funding runs out. And three years is not a long time to get a whole lot done. I’m in my third year! So you can understand that I am in a slow brewing panic mode. I won’t force myself to rush and finish everything this year… but I want to at least glimpse the peak of the PhD mountain by December. I must keep moving upwards. BUT.

stuck_ccblog.png
Source: Caffeinated Confidence

I decided to work on something else, to come back to the analysis later. Dololo.

I started dabbling in some light reading to distract myself from my woes. By “light reading” I mean stuff related to my field, but not tied immediately to my research. And as I read I started thinking more and more about what I was really doing. And the more I thought, the more inspired I became for my analysis work. Yes, one can brainstorm with supervisors and peers but most of the time these people deal with output you’ve already produced, with thoughts you’ve already had. And where do these thoughts come from if you don’t find inspiration on your own? The quiet, BROAD reading is what inspires creativity and reignites that curiosity.

I realize now that since my proposal/protocol was accepted, my reading has been tied to a goal – a methodology to fulfil a specific objective, and the literature (mainly research articles) associated with that. In structured programs it might be easier to achieve a mix of practice and philosophy.  But, with a PhD-by-research only it is easy to get away with this sort of thing: Doing only the focused, practical readings needed to get the research done. And we convince ourselves we don’t have the time to spend on “frivolous” thoughts and reading. But I am glad I got stuck, because I was forced to go back and relearn some basics, and do some inspirational, foundational reading. The time I am spending just reading may not have a concrete output tied to it, but it is well spent. The output will be much better analysis I hope; and more interesting and useful interpretation of data.  I am doing the reading and the data exploration concurrently, but this time not charging at full speed towards analysis and writing. I spare a little time each day for some reading that has nothing to do with what I am doing but is philosophical enough to make me think deeper about the meaning of my work. It is a constant reminder that I am part of a bigger picture and that there is more than one way of looking at things.

So, if you are a PhD student like me and analysis/any stage is a drag, I recommend it. It really helps you become unstuck. I will take longer in this phase but at least I no longer wake up dreading the work ahead. I have regained my sense of what I am doing. It is like opening a window to let the fresh air in. Up until then, I didn’t realize how stale the room was.

The pure intellectual pursuit of things is an important part of being a scientist. The other half is the daily grind of applying experimentation and making observations. Besides the experimentation and observations, we must learn how to think about those things. But it is not easy to put a timeline on the thinking part. How do you decide how long to think about something before you can create meaning out of it? It is much easier to slot in time for seminars, workshops, paper writing and submission, data collection and analysis etc. Once you do this you realize the 3 years of a PhD goes quickly. And that’s how long most of us have anyway, given that scholarships don’t go on forever. There a few blogs/articles out there about what putting philosophy back in PhD means, including this blog.

If we keep asking the questions, we will forever stay connected to the core of being a scientist. Running experiments is the doing part. We need both.

 

Let me end this with this stolen quote: “The key part of science isn’t in finding good answers, but in asking good questions”.

 

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.