Re: SSM Plebiscite
Reply #649 –
Permission to dive in! Thank you.
Wow, this is good reading. I’m actually finding much info that is educational, if not somewhat bamboozling resulting in feeling a little uninformed or even dense at times, thank the gods for Google (gods... Google... is there a little correlation there?). There are some highbrow words and expressions going down here that sound so impressive, a little alienating perhaps but none-the-less impressive. Although I wouldn’t call myself a scientist I do find myself, in the main, admiring of their work and efforts.
Mrs Baggers sometimes expresses serious frustration at one area of her job… she is the HR Chief at a major (can’t reveal the nature of the foundation as it may give it away which will result in Mrs Baggers beating me with the blunt end of the dog) research foundation which funds the work of many, many scientists. This organisation is the biggest of his kind in the Southern Hemisphere. She says that working with scientists is difficult, eye-opening and very rewarding.
The difficulty is in the perceived arrogance/stubbornness and at times down right rudeness of the scientists (and they come from all ‘round the world, so little cultural bias) BUT it takes a certain kind of individual who can research and experiment for years with little ‘material’ success, so their problematic attitude/bedside manner has to be understood, not tolerated but understood. Years of being confined to labs etc and running very disciplined, repetitive tasks/tests takes a rare personality type. It’d be easy to see these folks as dogmatic and arrogant (and hence dismiss them on behaviour alone) when they insist on another squillion bucks to continue a research which is yielding little if any tangible results to date, yet, when and if successful the impact on humanity can be significant and profound – this is why they attract huge and consistent grants.
History is littered with mongrel persistent scientists who’ve laboured with myopic passion on an idea, alienated all around them and then come up with something that alters human history – Edison, Testla, Pasteur, Einstein, Dirac, Freud, Maslow… how many times did each fail or whose progress was painfully slow before the 100th or 1000th or 10000th monkey fell in place?
Think of any discovery/invention and it is likely there was an obsessed scientist (or team of scientists and assistants) hardly sleeping seeing it through. Scientists often experience greater scrutiny than any other profession, and if they fail then their funding is withdrawn and they’re in trouble (unlike politicians who can fail daily yet keep their jobs). So any wonder scientists become defensive, annoyed and obstropolous at anything else that claims instant success or unscientific criticism of their field of endeavour or claims to have all the answers!
However, without doubt, there are some who take the arrogance too far and become worlds unto themselves where anything that dares differ or not be supportive will be rejected out-of-hand. But to judge all for the errors of a few would be unfair or even stupid.