It was so cool. We were at a meeting in South Africa, and some of us took a trip in the rain to an elephant rescue reserve. Elephants live a long time, and once raised in captivity have to remain in captivity. These beautiful beasts were gentle as we interacted with them. They were huge, very muddy, and, well, strange, and I loved them in part because they were not the least interested in eating me. Professor Possum (or Opossum?) was positively dancing as she led four of them in a magnificent line. We all were. Dancing, that is. Rapture.
For those of you who are just joining us, we were talking about one of the most exciting, terrifying, and difficult events we face in our careers in biomedical research — the move to an independent position: the building of our first laboratory and our first research program. I suggested that success at this all-important junction requires something arcane and seemingly impossible — to produce research that will attract the attention of the scientific community. In short, the terribly important and utterly unfair need to be astonishing. We never talked about elephants. We will, but not yet.
I need to clarify what I mean by this. Of course, we all know that the first goal of a new investigator is to get something to work, and by far the most expedient way to accomplish this is to continue doing what you know best — the research you had been doing in your previous incarnations as a Mole-let. Presumably, this is why you were hired into your shiny new position. So, by all means, start on those things you know, and publish whatever you can. Getting some papers out is a first priority, and if you can develop some nice collaborations with your new colleagues, this is not only a bonus but an excellent way to forge ahead. It will help you build your lab, troubleshoot your systems, and show your independent research skills. And you will publish, which is essential.
But if you stay on this path, you will probably disappear. Unless your work has opened up fundamentally new areas of research that are already drawing attention (and excitement) to your program, carrying on in this vein is a recipe for slow death by neglect. Think about it — you got into this work because other folks were already doing it and you thought it was cool. But other folks are doing it. So you tucked in and eked out a little corner of the field for yourself, and managed to publish some nice work. But unless you can open up that corner into much more, you will be trapped in it, and each new little thing you find will probably garner less and less attention.
So what can you do? Here's the thing. While you are dealing with designing experiments and fixing problems, advising students and directing your technician, juggling budgets, teaching classes, sitting on committees and trying to find time to write some papers, you have to do something else (in all your free time — what, you wanted to sleep?). You have to think. You have to come up with something different and cool. And then you have to sneak in experiments here and there (or only experimental groups) into your research plans.
Different and cool? Oh come on, Mole, what in the world is that supposed to mean? But if you step back, you already know. Every time you look at the Table of Contents of a journal, especially the ones with soft pages or really shiny ones, you see things that are cool. These are the ones you read, especially if they are a bit outside your field. Now we just have to figure out how to get you on track so that you get research going that will produce cool things.
This, finally, is where the elephants come in. Great hulking, gentle beasts that are just waiting for your touch. And they are all around us, if we can just see them. Most of us don't, though. We are just too busy with everything else we have to do, and it is so much easier to keep our heads down.
The elephants are the big questions, those things that we all know are important. And many of the elephants are already surrounded by the blind, wise scholars who are feeling the trunk and legs and ears and sides of each one, hoping that they are all touching the same elephant. But you don't want to squeeze into this throng of groping intellectuals. What you want is an elephant who, while not standing alone, has only a few folks touching the tail.
Yes, you have to spend some time thinking about the elephants, the big questions, but how will you find the one that is right for you? Here are some of the features of your own personal elephant, the one that can take you well into your successful independent career.
First, it has to really be an elephant. Try this. Find someone who is not a biomedical scientist, and ask them. Really (or you can just imagine asking such a person if you don't know any). If you can't explain to them why the question isn't important, then it isn't an elephant. Hint: ‘Does protein X participate in microtubule assembly?’ is not an elephant. ‘How do cells control their shape?’ might just be.
Next, you have to check out who is groping the elephant, and how. Many elephants are already very tame (these probably include those you have worked on all this time) — easy to put your hand on, but very difficult to lead because so many folks are pulling on it in different directions. But others are only being tapped, using outdated techniques and hand-waving conceptions. These are often the ones that your senior colleagues will warn you off — important fields that are so poorly researched that we see them as dangerous, wild beasts that are best avoided. But maybe you have a new approach, and with a steady hand you can tame it. That might be an elephant worth getting to know.
Then there are the elephant graveyards, where the elephants that have been around forever and are so well studied that we suspect they are dying. But there are surprises here. If the elephant has not been looked at for years, maybe the application of some new approaches can revive it, and brilliantly. Elephants live a long time, and have very long memories.
You have a special way that you look at biology. You have a deep interest in not only your own area, but in all things scientific-y, or you wouldn't be doing this (right?). You know what the elephants are, but maybe you've been looking down so long (or at only one) that it has been a while since you thought about them. Do you need some examples? How nutrients turn into energy and living matter. Why we sleep. How different living things compete and survive and change in the process. How information flows from the environment and through an organism. How molecules, cells, tissues and organs assemble to make new organisms that usually work, and why they sometimes don't. Now think of more.
You are, or will be, an independent scientist. Go find an elephant, tame it, and show it to the rest of us. We'll notice. It isn't easy, and you will probably go through a lot of elephants before you find one that you can make friends with. And then we'll want to be your friend.
Peanut, anyone?
