Number 34, June 2002

Correspondence

Dear WeatherZine,

In response to Thomas Pagano's editorial in the April 2002 edition of WeatherZine, "Life as an Interdisciplinary Scientist: Am I being set up?", I would like to share the following experience.

When I was two years out of college (1989) and working at an environmental consulting firm in Boston, I had the opportunity to attend an Aquatic Biology and Toxicology conference in Montreal, sponsored by two professional scientific societies in Canada having similar missions related to the conference topic. The closing plenary session's premise was to discuss how the two societies could work together more effectively to address problems of aquatic toxicology. At some point during the session, I stood up to say that while it was admirable that the two societies were discussing what they could do to work together more effectively, I wondered how and when "we" (the scientists and engineers) would broaden the discussion to include better cooperation with and among the urban planners, lawyers and others who "we" as scientists and engineers love to hate...?

As all heads immediately turned in my direction, my question was initially met by wondrous murmurs in the audience and stunned silence by the professors on the discussion panel. After proceeding on to a few other questions, the panel moderator indicated that he wanted to come back to my question. His response, essentially, was that it is my generation that is going to work out the answers. He noted that for most of his long career as a professor, almost all students applying for graduate studies in toxicology had traditional scientific backgrounds in fields such as chemistry or biology. However, it was in recent years that he was starting to see more and more applications from budding interdisciplinarians with undergraduate degrees in fields such as planning, humanities, and the like. He saw this as a positive sign for the future, but felt that working out the issues that such approaches provoke was a little beyond him - and was a task waiting for us.

Because "real" science was essentially invented by astronomers, physicists and chemists, the hard rules (such as reproducible experimental results) for what constitutes scientific endeavor were established by disciplines that had little room for shades of gray. When the next science - biology - came along, it was viciously attacked by the scientific establishment as fluff. As biology began to be accepted as a real science, ecology, the next science, came along. It, too, went through its period of non-acceptance by the more hard sciences, and is still fighting some residual battles over these issues today. Now, the next science - anthropology - has come along, and is in the midst of the same kinds of struggles, with hot debates in the present day as to whether it is science at all. As each new science becomes accepted, I think our overall concept of what constitutes "science" can and must change. And hopefully the anthropologists you have worked with have shown you that all fields of study have their culture, and that culture changes through the actions of individuals, among other means.

I am glad to see from your article that you are still enthusiastic about interdisciplinary work. I, too, am a staunch supporter and practitioner of such approaches. I hope that your enthusiasm will continue to grow rather than being thwarted by the difficulties involved, especially now that you are about to receive your Ph.D. You will be one of those to whom the toxicology professor referred when he said that it is up to my - our? - generation to create the answers to questions like the ones you've raised. It will be an exhausting struggle, but one well worth it. I even believe that our planet's physical and political future may depend on it.

I think the issues raised by Thomas Pagano's articles may also be central to some of the questions currently posted on MIT's Civil and Environmental Engineering Department on-line newsletter Web site - such as "why don't American undergrads want to major in CEE? How can the status of the profession be elevated?" On the one hand, interdisciplinary study and work is surely the vanguard of the future for environmental studies and much of academia more generally, yet it is ironically undervalued by the current establishment - thus creating a cycle of undermining its future....

Michèle Kimpel Guzmán
kimpelguzman.michele@ev.state.az.us
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Class of 1987 (S.B., Civil Engineering/Water Resources and Environmental Engineering)