Science is a risky business

Science has always implied a non-negligible amount of risk, especially in darker ages where the occurrence of unexplained phenomena was quickly considered witchcraft and deemed worth of expurgation through torture or burning at the stake. The case of Galileo comes readily to mind, but there are countless examples of scientists whose investigation were not seen with good eyes, let alone appreciated by their contemporaries.

In other cases, the scientist just underestimates the risk associated to their invention: they get hurt or killed, but the humanity at large learns a lot from the experience and eventually get to put the invention to good use.

But today I would like to discuss two factors that apply to every scientist, even if they do not have skin in the game: the epistemological and psychological risks. The first one refers to the fact that science is about the knowledge of reality, and sometimes reality happens to differ from our expectations, turning our investigation baseless. The second has to do with the hardships associated with the job with respect to the achievements. Let's look at them in detail.

Photo: kevint3141

In 2000, the late astronaut and personal hero of mine Neil Armstrong, in a memorable speech in from of the National Press Club, cited the President of the National Academy of Engineering saying "the science is about what is, and engineering about what can be". In my professional life as an engineer there had been countless occasions where I had to deal with solutions that could not be, forcing us to find workarounds or trade-offs that would allow us to find an alternative solution that was, at the same time, useful and doable. Unfortunately, boundaries in science are much harder than that: you explain your hypothesis, establish a method to prove it and then wait for the results. And if the results are negative the only option is to admit your defeat in one of two ways: either the method was not good enough to prove the hypothesis, so you have to work harder to find another method; or the hypothesis is simply wrong and you have to formulate a new one. The result is that the life of a scientist is full of mistakes, and by that I mean literally full, FULL in big letters, because 99% of the attempts just fail. This leads into the second problem.

The endless flow of failure also brings an emotional burden, because it is somehow unnatural. From an evolutionary point of view, only flies keep at their pointless attempts to go through the glass window, but that is only because they do not have the intellectual resources to find alternatives. Even hungry chimpanzees would give up trying to catch a hand of bananas once they are convinced that they are out of reach and try to find alternative sources of food. So why this stubbornness in the scientists?

Part of the answer lies in realizing that a negative result is already a contribution to success. When assembling a jigsaw puzzle, it is easier to start with the pieces that have prominent features, either in their shape (e.g. pieces at the edge) or in their content (e.g. distinguishable patterns, borders among colors, etc.). But sometimes you end with a small pile of pieces with no discernible characteristic, such as a field of hay, a blue sky, a blurry crowd of people, and in those cases the only solution is trying the pieces one by one. Most pieces (indeed, all but one) will not fit, but with every error the stack of pieces to be tested diminishes until you find the one that matches and start again at another location.

Unfortunately, in science there is no guarantee that the number of pieces is finite or even that there is a piece that fits, so the repeated failed attempts can sometimes feel like a sisyphic job, and many scientists end up giving up their academic career in search of greener pastures.

I brought this up today because I had a meeting with the student I am taking care of, and the results that he presented did not meet my expectations. After a moment of hesitation and a minute of embarrassment we left the defeat behind and started to think about possible paths ahead that can lead us to successful conclusions. It is scary, but also fun, just trying to extricate the information out of the data to try to make useful predictions or finding a defining law that explains a certain behavior. Let us just hope that the new line turns up better. Have a nice evening.