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Politics- why it now sucks and why it has to change

Do you remember when politics used to be boring, when only the nerds like me wanted to watch Question time and enjoyed thinking about the nuances in policy between different parties? Those were the days. I used to watch Question time, and I used to enjoy it. I remember the first couple of times I watched it was when the MPs expenses scandal was kicking off and then when Nick Griffin was on and generally made a fool of himself. However I now struggle to watch question time. There a few reasons for this. Firstly, it is a bit boring, as most of the talk seems is about Brexit (more on that later on), which I know is important, but it would be nice to hear about something else for a change that people who are interested in politics in general  would like to hear. Secondly, politics in this country is now a joke, with the Conservatives essentially free to do what they want as ‘her majesty’s opposition’ is now lead by the four horseman of the apocalypse that are the combined forces of Corbyn, McDonnell, Abbott and Thornberry ( for the record, I quite like Jeremy Corbyn as a person, he appears to mean what he says and appears to care, but the fact that under his leadership the Labour party resembles a ship rapidly running out of rats, and I believe that him and this three pals will destroy that party). The only other party that seems to have any impact is the SNP who want to begin to rip the UK apart, but seem to ignore the fact that they haven’t exactly done a great job of looking after the bits of Scotland they have been in charge of. Thirdly and finally is the main point I want to talk about, politics is now extremely, completed and utterly toxic.

 Last year seemed to be the point at which people in the UK collectively finally sunk to the level of the incendiary toxic bile spat out by Nigel Farage and his cronies, and everyone knows it happened in the US as well. However, I refused to sink down to the level of only blaming one side as that is part of the problem. In fact, I think this is the cause of the problem. Yes the UK voted to leave the EU, I didn’t want to, I voted to remain and I was disappointed that we are leaving, but that’s what happened. What has disappointed me more is the aftermath. The amount of people who I saw both on the internet and on tv blaming the fact that we had are leaving the EU purely because of deeply held xenophobic tendencies in this country. Now as a guttural, immediate reaction I guess this is ok, I felt it in the immediate aftermath. There is little doubt that the demonization of the ‘swarms’ of immigrants from continental Europe that would lead to ‘breaking point’ in this country (I’m referencing both David Cameron and Farage hear, just to be fair) played a role in the referendum, even if it just helped to nicely poison the whole campaign on both sides. However, I refuse to blame that all of the 52% of all people who voted stooped to the level of the frankly xenophobic and isolationist UKIP rhetoric. I can perfectly understand why people would vote to leave, I know people, including in my family who did. At the beginning of the campaign I was willing to be swayed either way, but in the end I simply couldn’t align myself with the negative rhetoric of the leave campaign that I just described. However, I am sure the vast majority of the people who voted to leave did so not because they are racist, but because they thought life outside the EU might be better for the country, their families and our democracy (life outside the EU could be very exciting for Britain, we shall have to see).  Obviously a lot of people disagreed with this, but to blame the result on racism and racism alone is demonization. To remainers everywhere who typed this behind the safety of their keyboards: it is not fair, it is not right, it makes you sound bitter, and most of all, it makes you sound ridiculous. Doing these warps you into the very caricature of the ‘liberal elite remoaners’ the people you  revile see you as.

 The larger point I am trying to make here is that politics now consists of everyone running to the extreme edges of the political room. When taken in a wider context this divides everyone up into sects, the socialists in one corner, the libertarians in another, the far-right in another, the eco-warriors in another etc. etc. The people in each corner only talk amongst themselves and all think they are right, because of this they bad-mouth and demonise everyone who happens to disagree with them on anything, and has the gall to speak up and say something that someone might disagree with, which makes everyone hate each other more. Sounds great doesn’t it? Well not to me. There are massive flaws with this idea. Firstly, and excuse my language here, chatting shit about everyone who disagrees with you and turning them into cartoon characters makes them feel the exact same way about you, and they will stop listening to you at all. The whole idea of personal politics is based on the fact you can change your views based on your experiences and the people you meet, and this involves debate, reflection and the evolution of ideas. This is how in general society works. Taking myself as an example, I consider myself fairly centrist, with libertarian probably being my closest ‘alignment’ if you will. I am socially liberally but err more on the side of conservatism financially, but I have nuance to my views. I think there should be more state spending on things such as sciences and arts than there currently is, and that savings can be made elsewhere. I believe that a small government is better government, but it still has a large role to play. I am not an ideologue, I am an individual. Going back to my argument very few people completely subscribe to one ideology completely, most people do not belong in the corners of the room, but pushing them into corner based on some of the views will make them stop from venturing into yours, probably because you are there and shouting and screaming.

 Not only is this seen in the UK, but America demonstrates this to tee. Before I properly say what I mean they will be a disclaimer, and here it is: I do not like Donald Trump, he is clearly paranoid and insecure, he is offensive and he is almost certainly a bigot, misogynist and xenophobe. I would NOT have voted for him (or Hilary Clinton for a matter, she is just as bad in many ways. For any of those who care I would have voted for Gary Johnson if I was American), and his recent actions exhibit quite clearly that he is not fit to be a president of the United States. However, the reason he is president is not by some hostile takeover or coup, but because he was democratically elected, with 63 million people voting for him. This is about 20% of the total population of the American people. Whilst the man they voted for is a thin-skinned, narcissistic, bigoted billionaire, I do not believe that all of these people are the same as Donald Trump. I am sure most of these people did not want to ban Muslims from entering the country or to build a wall on the Mexican border. I would be prepared to bet money that a large portion of the same people who voted for Trump also voted for Barack Obama, some of them twice (for example, Donald Trump won the state of Iowa, which Obama won in both of his elections).

 Rather than vote for the candidate himself, I am sure many of them voted for what he represents. For scrapping free trade agreements, for making companies stay in America, for reopening coal mines so people have jobs. These people feel let down by the way globalisation has affected communities, leading to many manual workers losing their jobs and the factories move overseas. There is an article that was on the website Cracked written by someone who group up in a small town, with all the jobs based around an oil refinery. He describes the hopelessness of people who are stuck in the small towns, too poor to move to the big cities to start a new career (This all sounds very similar to the steelworks shutting in Redcar in the Northeast, this could lead to a whole town being destroyed).People like this felt let down by the status quo. Then comes along Donald Trump saying that he will keep the mines and factories open, he will help you keep your job, just as Obama was talking about hope and change. They voted for Trump because they wanted things to change, and he represents a middle finger to the political establishment. These people probably don’t care about Mexican people or Muslims coming into the US, they just want a life and something different, they were fed up of being told what to think by the biased TV networks in the USA, that they just had to suck it up and take it. I have no idea what this is like, I grew up just outside one of the richest cities in the world, I went to private school, in about a year I will have two degrees from Russell group universities. All I can be is sympathetic for these people who voted for Donald Trump, just as I feel sorry for the people in the abandoned coastal towns who vote for UKIP. However I have seen people online (and in person) refer to Americans who voted for Trump as stupid, racist and misogynist. Just because you voted for someone doesn’t mean you agree with everything they say. Categorising people like this is the same as accusing people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 being against gay marriage as he was.

 To summarise what I have been trying to be say, othering people who happen to disagree with you on political points, and shouting and screaming at them does nothing. True change only comes from compromise and discussion, and this is how society evolves. This is the political centre. This requires a large coalition of people to come together and stand for something. People call from all sorts of different backgrounds and have experienced different things, and this effects how they see the world and how they want it to change. Everyone sees the world through a different lens, and this effects what they believe. I am from the south, I went to private school, I have studied science and I am atheist, all things influence what I believe. My opinion is no more valuable than anyone else, and we all need to come together and converse in order for anything to get done. Shouting and screaming and any who does not fit your description of how people should think and feel does not help you, it only makes them refuse to listen to you. Be nice to people, try and understand them, and then maybe you will know how they feel one day. You never know, you might end up agreeing with them  one day!

[thoughtsofayoungscientist-blog]

Science and ethics- Should we do something because we can?

In my last post, I tried to explain how important science why we shouldn’t forget that. But today I want to ask a question- Should we do something just because we can, or sometimes should things be left well alone? What are the ethics that need to help govern help, or should scientists just be left to their own devices?

 Science has a complicated history with ethics, when Galileo was championing the theory that the earth orbited the sun, and not the other way around, he was branded a heretic by the catholic church. It was the same when evolution was gaining momentum. When the first nuclear bomb test took place in 1945, Robert Oppenheimer, realising the sheer force of raw destruction the manhattan project had created, thought to himself and later said ‘I am become death, the destroyer of worlds’. Contemporary examples of science and ethics clashing are fertility treatment, which can be seen as interfering in the natural process of contraception, especially when third parties are involved, and GM crops, with people not wanting ‘food grown in the lab’(I can’t not mention but I’m not giving credence to people who ‘don’t want genes in their food!’).

 However what should the relationship between science and ethics be, should there really be one at all? After all isn’t the entire point of science to discover what we CAN do rather than what we SHOULD do? If we can do only what is deemed to be appropriate what is the point of innovation at all? But then who is going to deem what we can and can’t do, and surely it is always good to push ourselves forward as a society. There are probably people 150 years ago who thought that having something as simple today  as keeping food in tins and being able to speak to someone on the other side of the world would be impossible and probably reprehensible! Innovations are what keep us moving forward as a society and enable us to help ourselves and others.

However I do believe that ethics still has a role to play in science today. I personally believe that there are some scientists that will stop at nothing to try and find out what they find out and this can have repercussions. This is particularly true when people are using animals in their research. I am sure that people would quite happily kill a lot of mice in their research just because they can. It is good that there are now initiatives like the 3Rs principle (Refinement, Replacement and Reduction) tries to limit and maximise the effectiveness of animals that are used in research. People rightly look down upon people that needlessly use animals in cosmetic development, so it only makes sense that this should apply to scientific research. After all, good scientific practice involves doing the best you can with what you have got!

 I also think that ethics is needed to help in science when it comes to protecting our environment and our planet, and people must not forget that the whole idea of science is to understanding how the world around us works. It is also important to think about when it comes to advancing medicine to making our population healthier. Is it ethical for people to donate organs and tissues so other people can have them? Yes. Is it ethical to stop people with certain disabilities having children so certain bad mutations can be removed from the population? No, it is not the place of science to partake in eugenics. Scientists are there to inform, not to judge. We must not forget that there are many many scientists who currently work in developing weapons on different destructive nature. But should these weapons be used? Almost certainly not, remember what Robert Oppenheimer said, and there is a reason chemical and biological weapons are illegal. There are also similar dilemmas with technology. We are getting to the point, with driver-less cars and automated production, where machines will be able to do almost anything. Great you might think, things will be more efficient, but what about the workers who currently do these jobs, do we have to think about this before we implement these technologies?

  To answer the question I posed in the beginning, I believe that ethics does have a role to play in science. Even scientists need to be told what to do at some point and they need to be held responsible. The whole point of science is to find out how the world around us and the things that live in it works. However just because you know a lot about something doesn’t mean you should use this knowledge all the time, every time. The world is precious, and humans have massively and irreversibly change it, and now we know better, we should avoid changing it for the worse.

[thoughtsofayoungscientist-blog]

Science, why it matters

I first wanted to pursue science with the idea that science is incredibly cool (it really is!), that it is really cool to discover new things and that those things can change the world. Scientists of yesteryear are heroes, at the time, now and forever, and where among the best of their time. Think of Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin (my personal favourite) and Albert Einstein. These three changed the way we think about the world. Newton discovered why things fall; Darwin explained how organisms adapt to their environment, giving answers to everything as to why giraffes have long necks to why bacteria become resistant to drugs and Einstein told us that time and space can bend (or something like that!). It is the same with the great innovators and inventors. We know Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone (sort of), John Logie Baird the television and Tim Berners-Lee the world wide web.

 To summarise, science and technology is incredibly important. Science is needed to change the world as we know it, and help us to understand it, and maybe even save it. We are at a time when we need science more than ever. We have many problems that need solving: Antibiotic resistance,  renewable energies, treating an ageing population, saving plants and animals from extinction and how on earth we can feed a rapidly growing population. Without new innovations medicine, our planet and how we live our lives could all be fundamentally changed, and certainly not for the better! Similar innovations may even help us beyond our own world. There was less technology in Apollo 11, which landed on the moon than is in the smartphone that you may be reading this on. NASA sent people out of the planet before  Mark Zuckerberg was even born. Imagine if technology like this kept being innovated on! Not only may we know much more about the wider universe, which in turn can tell us a lot about our own planet, but the technology will feedback to us, the general populous.

 So Science is awesome, but what is the problem? Well to summarise, it appears to me that science is not determined as important anymore, after all isn’t everything discovered already? Well I think that the problems mentioned above prove that it is not! However it seems that most people do not think that we have these problems. So why is this? Well I have always believed that appreciating something comes from knowing. And knowing comes from learning. Not enough people are being inspired to do science as a career, which means people are not doing it at university, which means not enough scientists, not enough science teachers, not enough policy makers, so then it happens again. It’s a vicious circle isn’t it? Its just like antibiotic resistance, few drugs to use, these drugs are over used, more antibiotic resistant bacteria, even less drugs. Another big point is that once you start doing science as a career it is not like you would think. There are a lot of hurdles to actually being a scientist, but I’m not getting into that now!

 I am not normal (in a lot of ways!) the first books I can remember reading were encyclopedias,I was truly and utterly obsessed with dinosaurs for some reason, and I loved going to the science and natural history museums. It was stuff like this that made me want to be a scientist. But obviously this is not the same for everyone. People, especially children need to be shown how important science is. Unfortunately, the government will need to have a role in this, in making more funds for scientific research available, feeding down incentives for science educators and increasing promotion of scientific advances. Doing all this will help to explain how much science can change our everyday lives, such as the examples I have given above. However, not a lot of politicians are scientist, meaning they themselves do not value it. Maybe scientists themselves need to get involved, as too many shut themselves away in the their labs and their only form of communication is the papers they publish, which often only address very specific questions and mean nothing to the general public.

 In short I am not sure I have a solution. But the point is that science always has, and still does matter, and we need to do all we can to keep it that way. We live in an increasingly divided and unsure world. Is it not time to be proud of something in the world? Science is primarily based in facts, finding the workings of how and why things work the way they do, which can then help to our enrich our lives in so many ways. Science matters, it always has (selective breeding of crops enabled us to grow more food) and always will (How can we continue to look after an ageing and growing population?). We must do our best not to forget this.

 I am going to finish this with a quote (sort of). There is a song by a band called the King Blues that I really like called ‘What if Punk Never Happened’ and spoken word poem to music about travelling to a world where there was no punk music. Towards the end of the song, the singer (Johnny ‘Itch’ Fox) says that ‘Punk rock has the power to change the world, it lives inside every single punk rock boy and girl’. I believe this to be true, but I am going to adapt it slightly.

 ‘Science has the power to change the world; it lives inside every boy and girl’

[thoughtsofayoungscientist-blog]

PhD perspectives

As you may have guessed by the title, I am a young scientist, well a young scientist in training/ scientist to be/ whatever! I am coming to the end of the third year of my PhD in Biological Sciences at the University of Southampton, with another year left to go. My project is basically concerned with using the host-pathogen interactions of a microscopic worm with pathogenic bacteria, and developing this as a potential diagnostic. As I am nearing the end of my PhD, I need to start thinking about what I want to do next. I might stay in research, I might go into teaching or I might do something different, I really don’t know.

 However what I do know is what I have learned from doing my PhD, and THAT might be useful. This is a list of things I would tell myself (and anyone else) that was starting a PhD.

 Number 1- embrace the situation

 Yes a PhD is technically a job ( believe me, we work too hard for not enough money for it to not be!) but for most it will probably be a first job, and you are technically still a student. But a student that doesn’t have to pay tax AND has some money. So feel free to enjoy yourself, explore the city you are in (especially if you have moved), buy some nice things, go on holiday and make sure to take advantage of the position you are in.

 Number 2- embrace the actual situation

 Oh yeah, you’re doing a PhD because you obviously love your subject, so take that to the maximum. Learn as much as you can about your field, and what others are doing, don’t turn down opportunities to do things like practical demonstrating (extra money!) outreach events and going to conferences (including abroad). You may find out something you are really interested in doing later on. Doing a PhD is also a great opportunity to make new friends, as there will certainly people who have similar interests as you who are also starting their PhDs.

 Number 3- Make yourself comfortable

 As I said before, this may well be the first time you have made any money, so make sure you use it. Let’s face it, you are unlikely to save money doing a PhD, but thanks to the tax breaks it’s enough to live comfortably. Doing a PhD does take it out of you, so make sure you live somewhere nice, even if it’s NOT in the student area. Don’t make the same mistake I did and put up with a house that you don’t really like (that includes having noisy neighbours). There is nothing wrong with paying a bit more on rent if you are happier and more comfortable; it definitely helps to improve your state of mind

 Number 4- Find distractions

 On the subject of state of mind, mental health is notoriously poor amongst PhD. Yes your work is important but you need to do something other than work. Focusing on one thing all the time can be extremely damaging, especially if things are not going well. When you are not working it is important to switch off and find other things to do that will help keep your mind off work, and it will also help you to feel more reinvigorated when it is time to go back to work. Most importantly make sure you get plenty of sleep, eat well and get lots of fresh air and natural light. Throughout doing my PhD I have reignited my love of videogames, expanded my cooking repertoire and have trained for and completed the Southampton half marathon, as well as numerous other things! Working in the lab or writing at your desk also enables you to listen to new music and discover some podcasts.

 Number 5- Enjoy and relax

 Ultimately, most people do a PhD because they want to get involved in the real nitty gritty of their particular subject. But you also get exposed to the ‘wonders’ of the academic process. By this I mean the joys of dealing with supervisors who haven’t been in the lab for a while, trying to get papers published and also how utterly depressing trying to move up the academic career ladder can be. However, you ultimately wouldn’t have got this position if people didn’t think you were up to it, and as I said before, doing a PhD is ultimately a learning process, so even if you learn that you don’t want to carry on your career in science, that is fine. Also do not worry that your work is less important than other peoples, at the end of the day, all research is research worth doing. As long as you are dedicated to your project and work hard, you will be fine. The more you enjoy what you are doing and the more enthusiastic you are, this will end up benefiting you in the long term. There is also no need to get worried about how you are doing, what to do next or getting results, especially just as you have started, you have lots of time to get results.

 So there its, 5 tips for surviving (and maybe even enjoying!) a PhD, I hope this useful, and if anyone who reads this has any other tips, feel free to share them too.