What it means to be scientific

The word “scientific” is one that I have been thinking about a lot recently. It comes up in casual conversation all the time, as in “that’s not very scientific” to mean that something is uncertain, or “she has a very scientific mind” to describe someone who is organized and meticulous. I cringe internally when I hear this phrase, because, I think, science is not very scientific. The public perception of science is that it is methodical, linear, organized; that we as scientists think of a question and that science gives an answer. It is no surprise that they think this, because it’s how we present our work both in academic journals and to the public. We create a story when writing a paper or presenting our work, making it sound like we knew what was going to happen all along and that the conclusions we drew were inevitable. But we know that this is not how science works. In reality, we come up with a question and a possible way to find the answer; our idea doesn’t work, or gives us an answer we weren’t expecting, or the project is more difficult than we anticipated – science is a messy, nonlinear, unplanned process.

This disconnect between the reality of conducting science and the story we tell to the public creates two problems. First, it elevates scientists to a level in our society where we are almost mythical beings, solving the unanswered questions of the universe.  Second, it creates public distrust when we start to talk about the problems of bias and irreproducibility in science, or when we have to walk back claims we’ve made. How could such a clear process result in results that can’t be obtained twice? How could such pure people, working to explain the world to everyone else, be biased? While we as scientists have to grapple with how to make our results replicable and what irreproducibility means for our fields, I think that being more honest about how science works would help to prevent the sense of disillusionment the public feels when we are inevitably revealed to be imperfect.

For instance, scientists, doctors, and journalists should stop overstating the impact and significance of our work. As explained in this Vox article, we often describe our findings as miraculous or curative when in fact they have simply moved the field forward one small step. A quick google search revealed that we’re going to cure HIV in the next three years, when in reality human CRISPR trials are much further off. Instead of telling the public that we’ve cured HIV or any particular disease, we can be more honest and tell them that we’ve unlocked another small piece of the 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle – that doesn’t make it less exciting that we’re curing HIV in mice, it just makes it less confusing for the public when HIV isn’t cured in 2020. As graduate students, we can be honest with our friends and family about the realities of daily life as a scientist rather than painting a rosier picture of the scientific process. We can also help them to interpret findings in the media and explain when results are truly outstanding versus being an interesting novel finding.  

Finally, we can also be more honest with ourselves about the role our discoveries play in the larger scientific community. My favorite analogy for science is that “solving” any question is like pushing a boulder up a mountain. No individual is going to get the boulder to the top, but we will each push the boulder a bit further. This does not mean that our work is not important. This does not mean, for those of us who study problems relevant to human health, that our work will not help real people someday. But if we can be honest with ourselves about the relative insignificance of our individual discoveries, I think it will help to keep science closer to the pure ideal of the pursuit of unbiased knowledge.