Research is magic!
Research is magic! That’s a seemingly contradictory, statement, but hear me out. Since I was very young my favorite question has been, “why?” Why does that work that way? Why is that lake named that way? Why did that person do that to the other person? Why? Why? Why? You get the idea, and you should also have great sympathy for my parents 😜. I wanted to know about everything, and the answers to my initial questions always led to more questions. Knowing how ideas, events, and people were connected made me feel like I was in on some giant secret. A secret that I could then use to solve big and important problems.
I am also in absolute awe of knowledge. It is magical to me that 4 nitrogenous bases (adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine), when combined with a phosphate group and a 5-carbon sugar, have built every living thing we know about. It is even more amazing that over time we have leveraged this and other knowledge to develop new technologies like mRNA vaccines and CRISPR. It is magical to me how we have deepened our understanding of human behaviour, allowing us to make better decisions about how we exist together. It is magical to me that we have studied and understood more about our past so we can avoid the same mistakes in the present. It is magical to me that artists have shed light on the taken for granted and sometimes overlooked present and shaped what our future might become.
My favorite part about this magic is that unlike the sleight of hand of a traditional magic show, these scientific and creative magicians must show us how they made their magic. We get to follow their thought processes and the steps they have taken to see where and how we might have thought about the problem differently. We also get the opportunity to contribute to that knowledge ourselves, adding a little more insight with each new study or project.
On my good days I couldn’t imagine having a cooler job. But they aren’t all good days, are they? Sometimes the structure of our academic world, with its never-ending committees, taskforces, and latest emergencies, conspires to keep us well away from that goose-bumpy feeling we get when we see the magic of our research real time. I know I’ve certainly been there. Saying yes to things that won’t serve your long-term research goals, being asked to pitch-in just one more time, all the while your research and your impact are put on the backburner.
That’s why I started this blog and consultancy. From getting tenured and promoted to starting research centers and holding various leadership positions, I’ve done most things the hard way and crawled back out to rediscover the magic of my research. I want to save you the hardest parts of that journey by sharing my learnings.
Just like I believe that if we answer research questions that are important to patients and communities, they will be more likely to adopt our research findings, I believe that if we can get more researchers back to their individual research and impact magic, we will exponentially grow our knowledge and rebuild waning trust with the public. This is my purpose.
Maybe I can help you too. Click here to find out more.
(Words: 555)