When your job is a research job, it is easy to spend plenty of hours in the lab, and to work in international environments, far from your hometown, mainly developing friendships with other people involved in a research job, leading to multicultural communities where it is possible to share ideas, hypotheses and, even more simply, the genuine passion and amazement that move every researcher to pursue his studies despite all the frustrations which come as the other side of the medal.
This looks like a beautiful scenario, but it leads to some crucial consequences that should be taken into account. For each honest researcher, every step of investigation, independently on the research field, is governed by the rule of the scientific method, and every advance, from a single experiment that works, to the rare and great discoveries that allow the big jumps in our knowledge, is welcomed with curiosity, optimism and enthusiasm, and with the pride to be, even if as a little drop in the ocean, part of the ‘team’. But what is missing?
For an ‘insider’, it is crystal clear that science tries to explain natural phenomena, and to apply the current knowledge to ameliorate technologies and life style, and that every theory is just the starting point to push forward the scientific progress. But, despite all this, especially in the high-tech and wealthy western societies, we are facing a symptomatic and anachronistic ‘war’ against the scientific discoveries, and we assist to the rise of movements which, if at the beginning could be considered just as funny or pathetic, are now having an impact on the society itself. Just to make an example, we can consider the anti-vaccination group: there is no scientific reason to follow this theories; still, we are assisting to the representations of former eradicated pathologies, and the consequences of that are there for all to see.
Making The Connection: Are We Forgetting To Communicate?
