Thirteen tips for engaging with physicists, as told by a biologist
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03960-z
INTRO (Ken Kosik): As a physician–scientist, many of my colleagues were surprised when I moved my laboratory from the Boston Longwood campus at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where there is neither a medical school nor a university-affiliated hospital. More than a few e-mails arrived — some expressed puzzlement, some surprise, some had a wink, but all were punctuated with an exclamation mark.
When I made the move ten years ago, I had wanted to shift my biomedical work closer to the interests of physical-science researchers, to discover broadly applicable principles within the framework of biology, and to grasp the multilayered complexity hidden in nearly every question posed by biologists.
The physical sciences are not lacking in Boston. In fact, they are world class. But my lab was on the ‘medical’ side of the Charles River, practically an ocean away from the physical-science labs at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the other side. So, engaging scientists in physics and chemistry, or in computer science and engineering, was challenging — especially for a medical doctor trained rather narrowly in molecular and cellular biology.
My goal was simply to open a conversation and possibly a collaboration with physicists, not to become one. As a relatively small institution with a distinguished faculty in both the physical sciences and engineering, UCSB was, I felt, an ideal place to wade into this territory. Over the ensuing decade, this risky move has resulted in my sharing many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows with computer-science, engineering, physics and chemistry faculty members. These collaborations have greatly broadened the science in all my publications.
I devised a few simple rules to help the biologist in me to cross the divide between the life and physical sciences. In learning to talk to physicists, I discovered that I can communicate better with everyone and clarify for myself what I do and do not understand in my own field... (MORE - the tips, epilog)
COVERED (elaborated on):
1. Understand what ‘I do not understand’ means
2. Seek common ground
3. Recognize the posture of false modesty
4. Keep in mind the maths shortfall in biology
5. Don’t be flummoxed by physicists’ maths
6. Scale matters
7. Consider precision
8. Avoid jargon
9. Skip some details
10. Manage expectations
11. Understand optimization versus the ‘good-enough’ principle
12. Consider a physicist’s perspective on reductionism
13. Physicists laugh a lot
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03960-z
INTRO (Ken Kosik): As a physician–scientist, many of my colleagues were surprised when I moved my laboratory from the Boston Longwood campus at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Massachusetts to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where there is neither a medical school nor a university-affiliated hospital. More than a few e-mails arrived — some expressed puzzlement, some surprise, some had a wink, but all were punctuated with an exclamation mark.
When I made the move ten years ago, I had wanted to shift my biomedical work closer to the interests of physical-science researchers, to discover broadly applicable principles within the framework of biology, and to grasp the multilayered complexity hidden in nearly every question posed by biologists.
The physical sciences are not lacking in Boston. In fact, they are world class. But my lab was on the ‘medical’ side of the Charles River, practically an ocean away from the physical-science labs at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the other side. So, engaging scientists in physics and chemistry, or in computer science and engineering, was challenging — especially for a medical doctor trained rather narrowly in molecular and cellular biology.
My goal was simply to open a conversation and possibly a collaboration with physicists, not to become one. As a relatively small institution with a distinguished faculty in both the physical sciences and engineering, UCSB was, I felt, an ideal place to wade into this territory. Over the ensuing decade, this risky move has resulted in my sharing many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows with computer-science, engineering, physics and chemistry faculty members. These collaborations have greatly broadened the science in all my publications.
I devised a few simple rules to help the biologist in me to cross the divide between the life and physical sciences. In learning to talk to physicists, I discovered that I can communicate better with everyone and clarify for myself what I do and do not understand in my own field... (MORE - the tips, epilog)
COVERED (elaborated on):
1. Understand what ‘I do not understand’ means
2. Seek common ground
3. Recognize the posture of false modesty
4. Keep in mind the maths shortfall in biology
5. Don’t be flummoxed by physicists’ maths
6. Scale matters
7. Consider precision
8. Avoid jargon
9. Skip some details
10. Manage expectations
11. Understand optimization versus the ‘good-enough’ principle
12. Consider a physicist’s perspective on reductionism
13. Physicists laugh a lot