In our Study of the Day feature series, we highlight a research publication related to a John Templeton Foundation-supported project, connecting the fascinating and unique research we fund to important conversations happening around the world.
The English chemist Dorothy Hodgkin was only the third woman ever to win the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, in 1964, for her use of x-ray crystallography to determine the structure of complex organic models, including penicillin and vitamin B12. Her 5,000-word Nobel lecture displays the breadth of scientific and technical mastery in mathematics, biochemistry, physics, and instrumental techniques that led to her discoveries, but it is also a masterclass in the soft scientific skills that undergirded her achievements. Hodgkin is generous with credit and compliments for other scientists. Going far beyond citations of colleagues’ work, she names, compliments, and thanks dozens of collaborators, mentors, and scientists in her field, highlighting the work of colleagues who pioneered analytical methods, helped with calculations, and generously shared high-quality material samples. At the close, Hodgkin offers this:
It will be clear from all that I have said so far that my research owes a debt I cannot adequately pay to the work of others, my colleagues who have provided many of the ideas I have used and many interesting examples of similar analyses, my collaborators, without whose brains and hands and eyes very little would have been done.
Hodgkin’s example is cited in “The Making of Virtuous Chemists,” a recent editorial in the journal Nature Chemistry, that makes the case for integrating discussion of scientific virtues into scientific training.
In the article, environmental biologist Dominic T. Chaloner, theoretical chemist Michelle Francl, and philosopher T. Ryan Byerly argue that while qualities like attentiveness, autonomy, carefulness, courage, curiosity, honesty, humility, open-mindedness, tenacity, and thoroughness are generally seen as important to successful scientific pursuits, they are rarely explicitly taught to students in the scientific classroom or lab. Instead, science educators have often left the discussion of virtues to professional philosophers or hoped that they might simply be absorbed by osmosis as students are mastering the technically rigorous elements of a given scientific domain.
The authors argue that this is a twofold mistake: in leaving the study of virtues to the philosophers, scientists miss an opportunity to understand—as only an insider can—the specific ways different virtues apply to scientific work. And by failing to talk intentionally about virtues with their students, scientific educators and mentors are leaving them on their own “to connect the dots between what they learn about intellectual virtues elsewhere and their scientific practice.”
Using intellectual humility as an example, the authors suggest ways that science educators can clearly and explicitly highlight how a virtue looks in the concept of scientific training, using consistent terminology, opportunities for reflection and discussion, sharing of best practices, and call-outs to ways that different scientists have exemplified them—from Nobel laureates like Hodgkin, to researchers working alongside students in campus labs.
Learning and practicing the scientific virtues may help make the students better classmates and colleagues, but it can also make them better scientists.
“Acknowledging and sustaining an environment where everyone admits what they do not know,” the authors write, “helps students see the gaps in knowledge and thus makes visible new avenues to explore.”
Still Curious?
- Read “The Making of Virtuous Chemists”
- Learn more about coauthors Dominic Chaloner, Michelle Francl, and T. Ryan Byerly.
Nate Barksdale writes about the intersection of science, history, philosophy, faith, and popular culture. He was editor of the magazine re:generation quarterly and is a frequent contributor to History.com.
