Home Community Polly Madsinger Staring at the separate pixels...

Staring at the separate pixels...
Tuesday, 25 May 2010 00:00
posted by Polly Madsinger

In the year 2000, there was a great millennium exposition in the city of Utrecht. There were all kinds of creative art projects all around town. I was wandering through town to see some of them and at one point I found myself at the foot of the famous Dom tower, 112 metre high (368 feet) and the tallest church tower in The Netherlands. I was confused about what I was seeing.

 

There seemed to be squares of different colours covering the entire wall and as high up as I could see. I figured it was nice and colourful and probably ‘modern art’. I continued my walk.

Later that same day I climbed up the Dom tower (all 465 steps!) to have a look at the art projects you could only see from up there. And then I saw it! It was a massive and absolutely beautiful picture of a Masai warrior, complete with red clothing, necklaces, spear and shield. It was stunning!

So very often, science reminds me of this experience. We are all so very busy looking at the separate pixels; we fail to see the bigger picture. Each of us staring at our own little square of colour. But what I think is even more fascinating, is that whenever we’re having trouble understanding our little experiments and the strange results it brought us, we tend to dive into details even more: dividing the already small squares up into even smaller explanations for our findings, thinking about experiments we could do to verify our explanations. The trouble with that, at least for me, is that I stop seeing the beauty of it all.

I want to, and need to, be able to take that step back and see the beautiful Masai warrior we were studying in the first place.

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Comments 

 
#1 Chiat Cheong 2010-05-26 09:59
Hey Polly,
I recognize what you describe. I used to work on viral gene therapy. Constructing viruses that specifically kill cancer cells and leave healthy cells unharmed. I had been working on cancer gene therapy for years and this concept was not new to me. There were so many things to fine-tune, so many questions to solve. My colleagues were doing similar things, so what's new or exciting?

I only realised what cool and important stuff I was doing in the lab when I spoke with non-scientist about my work when I communicated my work at a fundraising event. I met people who have been affected by cancer and realised the fact that cancer research is done gives people hope. Of course, it is unlikely that my particular project was going to help them, but together we all make a contribution right? This gave me energy for weeks!

So my suggestion to those who's big picture is blurred: get out of the lab and talk to non-scientists!
And tell us what you get in return.
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