Technoculture #30 Brigitte Van Tiggelen (The hero myth and the rhetoric of science)
Channel: Federica Bressan
Date: 2019-05-03

We need narratives about science, but we need to be careful with their implications. How do the process of science really work, and what is the role of people? Can there be a "dark side" to telling a heroic story? Another brilliant conversation with historian of science Brigitte Van Tiggelen, author of ""Women in Their Element. Selected Women's Contributions to the Periodic System" (2019). More info at: http://podcast.federicabressan.com/brigitte-van-tiggelen2.php

Timed links by topic: 

01:54 What is an icon in science? 

02:08 UNESCO's international years, and the Year of the Period Table (IYPT). 

06:02 What do we mean by "dark side" of the heroic story? 

13:37 Brigitte and her colleague Annette Lykknes from NTNU in Trondheim, Norway, are the editors of a book that was published in August 2019, called "Women in Their Element. Selected Women's Contributions to the Periodic System:" https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/11442 

17:46 Can you give an example of the contribution that some of these women "behind" the periodic table gave? An example of the behind-the-scenes work. 

18:09 At Mendeleev's time, many women from Russia were coming to Europe to seek a university education.  

21:33 We must be careful not to replace the male heroic stories with female heroic stories, otherwise we "have not moved an inch.".

21:54 The hero myth does not reflect how science is done today: in teams.

23:21 Lavoisier is a good example of team work. 

24:10 Lavoisier's law: "Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed."

25:13 Lavoisier was very good in engaging scholars, or savants, and convert them to his ideas. Brigitte makes an interesting use of the word "convert" that comes from the religious domain, and in fact she continues: "There is something quite religious about science, and being right". 

26:32 The role of Madame Lavoisier in her husband's rise to fame.

28:11 Madame Lavoisier prepared a way for a "heroization" of ther husband. 

29:26 Researchers need to communicate their ideas to a community, to peers, to the world. If you have a great idea in the middle of the forest, and nobody knows about it, the quality of that idea is irrelevant. 

29:42 "Science is foremost a human activity. And this is why it is so sad in a way that these heroic stories, while they try to convey the human side of science, actually they miss the point."

30:00 Finding the Higgs boson cannot be pinned down to one person. 

31:22 On "retrospective conditional history."

33:02 Is it possible that we are underestimating, the human factor in all aspects of how science is done? 

34:48 Brigitte's personal example on publishing a comment piece on Nature: how the establishment can make a critical reflection about itself.  

37:20 Can we move beyond the hero myth? 

38:03 Brigitte thinks that scientists would receive a better training in history of science, and not think that "because they make it, they know it." 

39:17 Equip the scientists with some kind of ability to reflect on their own practice. 

40:05 Not only scientists are not trained to reflect about their own practice, but when they show pro-action in gaining the necessary tools and knowledge themselves, their efforts are not valued and often seen as time subtracted to their research work. 

43:15 If Lavoisier lived today, would he be on Twitter a lot? And in general, is Twitter an effective way to communicate science? When we talk about communicating science, is this type of communication what we are talking about?

43:58 "I am not sure that [Facebook and Twitter] are formats that allow for a real [science] communication."

44:33 One would think that in order to be known today you have to be on social media, but Brigitte says that the widespread use of social media on the behalf of researchers creates so much noise that it eventually creates just the opposite: invisibility."

44:46 If your strategy to be on social media is to tweet often, be present, consistent, that is to say something even when you don't have anything significant to say, how are you going to attract attention when you actually have something to say? 

45:26 "Where were you when it hit you?" Brigitte says that a problem with stories is also that they put everything in one place, one moment, one time... while there is a total lack of recognizing "this as a process".

45:46 "I am not sure how very punctual things, like Twitter and so on, can actually serve the purpose [of communicating science.]"

47:08 Brigitte suspects that social media are focused on promoting yourself and not your ideas.

47:29 Brigitte is struck by the amount of aggressivity that sharing on social media brings about. 

49:37 Would someone like Marie Curie be successful today, with the current evaluation systems of research?  

51:16 George Lemaître is the father of the Big Bang theory.

54:02 On trusting researchers. 

55:30 Is there an anti-hero in science? Brigitte says yes, and his name is Fritz Haber.