Doing in vivo electrophysiology has got me thinking about the direction of my field, neuroscience. In recent years, because of funding and other societal factors, more emphasis has been placed on the speed and efficiency at which data is generated into publishable results. Much of this has been discussed in other blogs-touching on subjects like “being scooped” or “competition between labs.” Much of this external pressure is healthy and promotes progress.

However, can there be a time where the speed and efficiency begin to behave like a linear asymptote when it comes to the training and effectiveness of our next generation of scientists? In other words, can training our future post-docs to place high regard on speed and efficiency actually undercut scientific innovation?

Much of our current post-doctoral training in the US is focused on developing technical skill sets and the ubiquitously-used word “independence.” However, implicit in the “independence” is the learning of tacit knowledge, knowledge that can only be obtained by close interpersonal interaction, observation and hands-on training. Others have used the example of a bread maker. One can not build a machine to make bread until one has put hands in dough and understood the subtleties of kneading. This skill and only be taught by visiting with a baker.

This process of obtaining tacit knowledge is often slow and tedious, with many pitfalls. In my own case, it has taken me quite a while to learn, screw-up, and re-learn in vivo recording. However, with an emphasis on the speed of publishing results, if the experiments did not work right away, I may have been shuttled off to another project. But doing so would not have increased my depth of understanding, only the breath of techniques I will have tried.

We need to be more realistic about how we are teaching future scientists. We should spend less time emphasizing number and speed of publications, and more on quality and depth of work, including the ability of our future scientists to spread tacit knowledge. This raises an interesting final question: is it incumbent upon the research scientist to be a good teacher/communicator? If the researcher is the future tacit knowledge trainer, then I would argue that we need to place more emphasis on making sure research scientists can communicate the skills they have acquired to the next generation.

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And a final quote from my discussion last week about scientific collectivism:

“No committee of scientists, however distinguished, could forecast the further progress of science except for the routine extension of the existing system. No important scientific advance could ever be foretold by such a committee. The problems allocated by it would, therefore, be of no real scientific value. (…) The pursuit of science can be organized, therefore, in no other manner than by granting complete independence to all mature scientists. They will then distribute themselves over the whole field of possible discoveries, each applying his own special ability to the task that appears most profitable to him.” -Michael Polanyi