BEING CRITICAL

that” or “it is not like that”, but I just can’t bring myself to do that. I need to make sure over and over again.’

This irritation due to not knowing whether something ‘is like that’ or ‘not like that’ is one I have often encountered among the juniors – but never among the seniors. This difference between the insecurity among juniors and security among seniors provides a solid basis for studying a critical attitude as an acquired ability. I have observed many of the juniors getting very frustrated in several situations similar to this one.

They often feel that they should be more self-assured about the correctness of their own results. But on the other hand, they cannot do it because they do not trust himself. Furthermore, they do not think that trusting results excessively is right. As one of the other juniors comments on another occasion:

‘I believe that we [him and his colleagues] could be a little more critical about results. I’m actually a little disappointed about the scientific world in that regard. I thought there would be more focus on being critical about [our own] results.’

He often feels that his supervisors only look at the final results and not at the notes, the numbers and the calculations that precede the results. My impression is that he considers it to be an overly-trusting attitude, which does not sit well with his idea about how critical one should be in academia. So, on the one hand, he is frustrated with his own reactions because he cannot bring himself to be less critical about his own results, and he therefore progresses slowly. On the other hand, he is disappointed in the ‘scientific world’ because it does not live up to his conception of a critical standard. Another junior tells that he feels that those among his junior colleagues who are, in his view, less critical about their own work somehow seem to do better professionally, being more at the centre of management’s attention and publishing faster. These mixed feelings are typical among the juniors. I have encountered them

in almost all my interviews. The juniors feel insecure regardless of whether they ‘do well’ and publish or have not done so yet. The difference between them is mostly in how they cope with these work conditions. Some of them become frustrated and develop a critical attitude toward the institution of science or the organisation they work in. Others somehow come to terms with the condition that the critical attitude is always contextualised in relation to other concerns and that this condition does not necessarily make the results less ‘true’.

Among the seniors, the theme is hardly discussed – at least not as a personal challenge. Most of them do emphasise that a critical attitude is an important skill to teach their juniors. But frustration at their own results or not knowing when their work is good enough never comes up. My interpretation of this junior-frustration and senior-silence is that the scientists gain more embodied and less analytical knowledge about the right dosage of scepticism during their career. This dosage is something that is hard to teach to the new generations of scientists because it is about a certain Fingerspitzengefühl, which only comes with experience. It is a tacit skill that they develop over the years by being embedded in the scientific system. They learn it by making revisions for submitted papers, by being rejected or published, by making presentations or patents and by having followed another senior’s work when starting out in the system or by supervising younger students. I suspect that the seniors have learned (though they do not say so explicitly) that the appropriate amount of criticism is also dependent on culture and they accept that this culture does not mean that what they do is wrong or not true. Linda, one of the seniors, comments in an interview:

‘To conduct experiments and be a scientist, that is to be critical, especially about your own results.’

So, in her opinion, a scientist is a person who is critical, especially about his or her own results; it is not just something you do, it is something you ‘are’. So in that way of talking about it, the critical attitude becomes an identity, something you possess if you are a real scientist. This is, in my interpretation, a little different from the juniors’

ways of talking about it. Miriam, for instance, says that she thinks ‘it is important to be careful in saying that “everything is good over here” [that their own results are good], because nature has its intricate way of sneaking around your theories.’ The difference in the two comments is that for the senior, critical is something one is if one is a scientist. For Miriam, a junior, it is something one needs to become by practising being careful in trusting oneself. It is not something she takes for granted as a trait; it is an attitude that only comes through careful practice.

Despite my impression that the seniors have a nuanced and embodied understanding of how one is critical in the right way, it is passed on in a very abstract way. Many of the seniors whom I have interviewed underline the importance of teaching their students to have a critical attitude toward their own work. One of them even has a laminated poster in his office stating ‘In God we trust; all others must bring data’, and I think it is there in honour of his students more than for himself. This way of talking about the need to put forward data as a universal obligation (for all but God) that is beyond time and space is typical of how this responsibility is passed on from seniors to juniors. But the seniors also try to teach the juniors about ‘the truth’ in much more tangible ways. As I told earlier, then good supervisors give specific advice on how to move on with experiments or they tell their juniors that something is true enough. But it is difficult for the juniors to learn. They are so used to being critical that knowing when something is good enough becomes very difficult. The difference between the juniors’ and the seniors’ attitude toward a critical attitude indicates that it is an ability, of which the finer nuances the scientists acquire over the years, but that it is an extremely difficult skill to learn.