Scientists can have their big break any point in their career. A paper published in the journal Science in 2016 determined that from a big data analysis on scientific careers from 1893 to 2010.
The research team, led by Roberta Sinatra and Albert-László Barabási of Northeastern University, determined that a scientist can make a lasting impact with their research from the very first published paper to the very last. There is no definite trajectory for success, and every successful scientist's career is a mix of skill, persistence, and luck.
The research team figured all that out by analyzing publication information from scientists who published papers between 1893 to 2010. Those data points began with 236,884 physicist publications and expanded to 24,630 Google Scholar profiles and 514,896 publications across seven scientific disciplines “from physics to chemistry, economics to cognitive science," according to the Northeastern press release.
Credit: Kim Albrecht / Northeastern University
They crunched all of that data and came up with a productivity quotient or “Q." “The Q factor captures a combination of ability, education, and knowledge… how good is a scientist at picking an idea and turning it into a discovery," Barabási explains in the press release. “A high Q combined with continued efforts provide a forecast of what's to come. We cannot predict when a big hit will come, but by examining Q — a stable factor — we can predict that one will likely come in the future," Sinatra adds later. Here's an example of what that might look like:
The publication history of two Nobel laureates, Frank A. Wilczek (Nobel Prize in Physics, 2004) and John B. Fenn (Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 2002), illustrating that the highest-impact work can be, with the same probability, anywhere in the sequence of papers published by a scientist.
“The composition of this Q quality, whatever you call it, is likely to vary in different fields," Dr. Dean Simonton of the University of California, Davis told The New York Times about the Northeastern study. “That's why you can see people who are highly successful in one field switch careers and not do so well."
The biggest factor for success? “Productivity and the will to keep trying that corresponds with great discoveries, whether the scientist is 20, 40, or even 70," explains Northeastern. “What matters is not the timing of discoveries that could affect future generations but that they happened... understanding that good scientists, if they have the resources to stay productive, could generate future big discoveries, independent of age, is essential for us to move forward in thinking about how to boost science."
And if they can do it, you can, too.
The scientists are essentially cultivating the habit of “deliberate practice," or pushing yourself slightly beyond your skill level. By utilizing deliberate practice every time you want to get better at something — from building a business to learning a language to writing that novel for NaNoWriMo — you increase your skill levels. You will most likely fail, but you'll learn how to overcome that obstacle and push past it next time. That creates an atmosphere for success, as author David Shenk told us:
So remember: the next time you want to succeed at something, keep trying. Or, as Barabási put it for The Times, “The bottom line is: Brother, never give up. When you give up, that's when your creativity ends."
Photo by Isa Terli/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
It is perhaps fitting that just as McDonald's introduces meatless burgers, a new study, published in the journal, Annals of Internal Medicine, is overturning years' worth of dietary recommendations that we eat less red meat. Not that everyone is taking the study as the final word, however.
A panel of fourteen researchers and three community members from seven countries (reporting no conflicts of interest), directed by Dalhousie University epidemiologist, Bradley Johnson, studied 61 articles on all-cause mortality that included a total of four million participants. The team also reviewed dozens of trials linking red meat to cancer, heart disease, and mortality. The team concluded that the evidence between red meat, both unprocessed and processed, and health problems is "low to very low."
The study took three years to complete. Researchers from a range of cultures were included to ensure diversity of thought, while each professional was vetted for perceived conflicts of interest. When considering both processed and unprocessed red meat, 11 researchers voted for adults (age 18 and over) to continue eating recommended allowances and not cut down. In each study, three researchers offered a "weak recommendation" for reducing intake.
For the record, the average American adult consumes an average of 4.5 servings of red meat per week.
Organizations such as The American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society immediately came out against the study, with some groups suggesting that the journal withhold publication. They believed that not only would this information contradict years of findings, but it would "erode public trust in scientific research."
To be fair, that's the nature of science: If evidence overturns pre-existing norms, that evidence should be considered. However, we need to take a more holistic look at this picture.
Gut Bacteria and Red Meat: Highlight from Cancer and Diet
Nutrition science is tricky. Not only do self-endowed "life coaches" and fitness trainers not certified in nutrition offer unsolicited advice, actual scientific bodies find it hard to come to conclusions. One of the biggest issues: It's nearly impossible to isolate macronutrients or entire classes of food given their interactions with all the other food you consume. A burger doesn't have the same effect on your body as a burger with mayonnaise on a bun; whether you drink water or soda to accompany that meal matters too.
The main contention comes from the type of analysis the researchers used. As Harvard nutrition scientist, Frank Hu, says, the GRADE systematic approach was introduced for evaluating drug trials, not nutrition science. Alongside his colleagues, Hu published an article countering the results of the meta-analyses, coming to four conclusions:
- The new guidelines are not justified as they contradict the evidence generated from their own meta-analyses
- The publication of these studies and the meat guidelines in a major medical journal is unfortunate because following the new guidelines may potentially harm individuals' health, public health, and planetary health
- This is a prime example where one must look beyond the headlines and abstract conclusions
- These studies should not change current recommendations on healthy and balanced eating patterns for the prevention of chronic diseases
Close-up of Impossible Whopper, a meat-free item using engineered, plant-protein based burger patty from food technology company Impossible, during a limited market test at a Burger King restaurant in the San Francisco Bay Area, Danville, California, June 26, 2019.
Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images
As with many topics in American discourse, our diet has become polarized. Those that claim that humans were not designed to eat meat are ignorant of how our biology (and cultures) evolved. As primatologist Richard Wrangham writes, the greatest culinary advancement in history was fire. Cooking made nutrients available much more quickly—a burger on a grill is more nutritious than chewing on raw meat. And meat is something our ancestors definitively ate whenever they could.
What also doesn't help is a sentiment that has been batted around the holistic blogosphere: that meat is toxic. To be fair, growth hormones and factory farming have increased the potential for toxicity in our food supply. But meat itself is not inherently toxic to our digestive system. As Harvard paleoanthropologist, Daniel Lieberman, writes, given our ancestors' adaptation to diverse climates, there is no "optimal diet." We ate what we could source. That said, meat consumption offered a particularly important boon to our biology.
"By incorporating meat in the diet and relying more on food processing, early Homo was able to spend much less energy digesting its food and could thus devote more energy toward growing and paying for a larger brain."
Yet that doesn't mean we need to eat meat, at least not as much of it was we do. Beyond sating our biological impulse, industrial agriculture—specifically, beef and dairy production—is one of the biggest drivers of climate change. Beef is extremely taxing on the environment, much more so than chicken or pork agriculture.
From a climate perspective, plant-based diets are less taxing, though you often run into the problem of nutrient loss due to monocropping. Plant-based burgers might be all the rage, but that also doesn't mean they're healthy, which brings into question whether or not it makes sense to sacrifice personal health for a perceived environmental gain.
An easy answer? Not here.
One thing is clear: The current rate of beef production is unsustainable. Whether or not 4.5 servings of red meat will increase your risk of cancer or heart disease might remain a source of contention. But a more important question remains: If reducing your meat intake is better for the environment (and therefore everyone's health), isn't that a wiser decision to make?
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The military has rebranded unidentified flying objects as unidentified aerial phenomena – UAPs – in part to avoid the stigma that has been attached to claims of aliens visiting the Earth since the Roswell incident in 1947. The report presents no convincing evidence that alien spacecraft have been spotted, but some of the data defy easy interpretation.
I'm a professor of astronomy who has written extensively on the search for life in the universe. I also teach a free online class on astrobiology. I do not believe that the new government report or any other sightings of UFOs in the past are proof of aliens visiting Earth. But the report is important because it opens the door for a serious look at UFOs. Specifically, it encourages the U.S. government to collect better data on UFOs, and I think the release of the report increases the chances that scientists will try to interpret that data. Historically, UFOs have felt off limits to mainstream science, but perhaps no more.
Three videos from the U.S. military sparked a recent surge in interest in UFOs.
What's in the UFO report?
The No. 1 thing the report focuses on is the lack of high-quality data. Here are the highlights from the slender nine-page report, covering a total of 144 UAP sightings from U.S. government sources between 2004 and 2021:
- “Limited data and inconsistent reporting are key challenges to evaluating UAP."
- Some observations “could be the result of sensor errors, spoofing, or observer misperception."
- “UAP clearly pose a safety of flight issue and may pose a challenge to U.S. national security."
- Of the 144 sightings, the task force was “able to identify one reported UAP with high confidence. In that case, we identified the object as a large, deflating balloon. The others remain unexplained."
- “Some UAP many be technologies deployed by China, Russia, another nation, or non-governmental entity."
UFOs are taboo among scientists
UFO means unidentified flying object. Nothing more, nothing less. You'd think scientists would enjoy the challenge of solving this puzzle. Instead, UFOs have been taboo for academic scientists to investigate, and so unexplained reports have not received the scrutiny they deserve.
One reason is that most scientists think there is less to most reports than meets the eye, and the few who have dug deeply have mostly debunked the phenomenon. Over half of sightings can be attributed to meteors, fireballs and the planet Venus.
Another reason for the scientific hesitance is that UFOs have been co-opted by popular culture. They are part of a landscape of conspiracy theories that includes accounts of abduction by aliens and crop circles. Scientists worry about their professional reputations, and the association of UFOs with these supernatural stories causes most researchers to avoid the topic.
But some scientists have looked. In 1968, Edward U. Condon at the University of Colorado published the first major academic study of UFO sightings. The Condon Report put a damper on further research when it found that “nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge."
However, a review in 1998 by a panel led by Peter Sturrock, a professor of applied physics at Stanford University, concluded that some sightings are accompanied by physical evidence that deserves scientific study. Sturrock also surveyed professional astronomers and found that nearly half thought UFOs were worthy of scientific study, with higher interest among younger and more well-informed astronomers.
If astronomers are intrigued by UFOs – and believe some cases deserve study with academic rigor – what's holding them back? A history of mistrust between ufologists and scientists hasn't helped. And while UFO research has employed some of the tools of the scientific method, it has not had the core of skeptical, evidence-based reasoning that demarcates science from pseudoscience.
A search of 90,000 recent and current grants awarded by the National Science Foundation finds none addressing UFOs or related phenomena. I've served on review panels for 35 years, and can imagine the reaction if such a proposal came up for peer review: raised eyebrows and a quick vote not to fund.
Radio telescopes like the Allen Telescope Array seen here scan the sky looking for signs of intelligent life in the universe. (Brewbooks/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA)
A decadeslong search for aliens
While the scientific community has almost entirely avoided engaging with UFOs, a much more mainstream search for intelligent aliens and their technology has been going on for decades.
The search is motivated by the fact that astronomers have, to date, discovered over 4,400 planets orbiting other stars. Called exoplanets, some are close to the Earth's mass and at just the right distance from their stars to potentially have water on their surfaces – meaning they might be habitable.
Astronomers estimate that there are 300 million habitable worlds in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and each one is a potential opportunity for life to develop and for intelligence and technology to emerge. Indeed, most astronomers think it very unlikely that humans are the only or the first advanced civilization.
This confidence has fueled an active search for extraterrestrial intelligence, known as SETI. It has been unsuccessful so far. As a result, researchers have recast the question “Are we alone?" to “Where are the aliens?" The absence of evidence for intelligent aliens is called the Fermi paradox. First articulated by the physicist Enrico Fermi, it's a paradox because advanced civilizations should be spread throughout the galaxy, yet we see no sign of their existence.
The SETI activity has not been immune from scientists' criticism. It was starved of federal funding for decades and recently has gotten most of its support from private sources. However, in 2020, NASA resumed funding for SETI, and the new NASA administrator wants researchers to pursue the topic of UFOs.
In this context, the intelligence report is welcome. The report draws few concrete conclusions about UFOs and avoids any reference to aliens or extraterrestrial spacecraft. However, it notes the importance of destigmatizing UFOs so that more pilots report what they see. It also sets a goal of moving from anecdotal observations to standardized and scientific data collection. Time will tell if this is enough to draw scientists into the effort, but the transparency to publish the report at all reverses a long history of secrecy surrounding U.S. government reports on UFOs.
I don't see any convincing evidence of alien spacecraft, but as a curious scientist, I hope the subset of UFO sightings that are truly unexplained gets closer study. Scientists are unlikely to weigh in if their skepticism generates attacks from “true believers" or they get ostracized by their colleagues. Meanwhile, the truth is still out there.
This article has been updated to clarify that the report was produced by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Chris Impey, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
