For Scientists, is Competence Still More Important than Confidence? (Part I)

So there you are, sitting in a staff meeting.  That new project just got approved.  The one you've been waiting for - the one for which you're more qualified than anyone else on the entire staff.  It's your turn to shine, and you've put in your dues - patiently, quietly.

And you watch it get handed off to two other staffers in the blink of an eye.  What the heck?  She's never trapped a salamander.  He's never handled wildlife for work at all.  You wrote your thesis on this exact species, in the exact county in which the project is located!  How did this happen?   You go home and the wheels start spinning.  They don't appreciate me.  They don't think I'm competent to do the work.  I don't belong there.  They don't respect me.

40 years ago, successful careers in ecology (then referred to as "wildlife management" and "forestry") were largely defined by time afield, critical technical knowledge, and the number of years served working on a habitat, in a region, or focused on a single species. Ecologists worked out of tents, out of field stations, out of laboratories and out of trucks.   Few or no staff meetings, congressional briefings, client and donor site tours.  It was an awesome time to be a biologist, or so they tell me.  Ecologists (and our ilk) were expected to put their heads down and to keep working - never fear - the money will keep coming.  The career field was full of introverts, as it still is today (anywhere from 65-80%), ecologists are still expected to be as competent (or moreso) than our predecessors in prior decades, and government agencies still play a huge role in the field of ecology (especially ecological restoration: my field of choice), but somehow, nothing else is the same.  What happened?

Two big things happened.  One was increased budget accountability that initially arose out of contentious legislative debates in the 1970s - some key moments when somebody said, "We are spending how many millions of dollars to protect what type of corpse-eating bird?"  Such questions were historically not asked, at least, not in public detail, of natural resource agencies. Blame the JFK investigation or the Carter-era Farm Bill revelations.  Suddenly, an era began that included phrases like, "Get me the director of that agency.  Tell him he'll testify tomorrow morning at 6:00am."

The second thing that happened is the continued growth of the information age. Through simple web searches, forwarded emails (that may contain errors), and FOIA requests, much of today's conservation work, from emails to old data to formal publications,   is easily accessible to the public. They can (and do) have questions.  Hard questions.  And today's ecologist has to be able to answer those questions, quickly, and often in a pretty unfair environment.

Some will argue, as the writer of Women in Wetlands routinely does, that this is totally unfair to scientists, who in the vast majority of our cases, do not possess the political and conversational aptitude to handle these situations, the run-up of events prior to these awkward moments, or possess even a small fraction of the confidence to deal with the results of such a conflict and move on quickly.  

While I partially agree that it's "unfair," perhaps I've been working in the field long enough (18 years) that I just don't care anymore.   I've politically bought into the theory that "If you are spending government money, dammit, you better be able to explain how you are spending government money."  Again, many scientists bristle at this because "it didn't use to be this way."  Again, I guess that I just don't care.    If you're not confident about your work as an ecologist or environmental scientist, then you'll eventually have to move over - perhaps for someone less competent but more confident than you are.  And in this era of Tea Parties and Congressional inquiries, I could argue that a scientist who can explain their work to the public is much more valuable than a similarly competent scientist who refuses to present a powerpoint on their work to their agency sponsor.

I'll write a lot more on this topic soon.  The debate isn't going away soon, that's for sure.

Pardon the Mess

Gotta crack a few subway cars to make a reef.
Isn't that how the old saying goes?

This is a little undertaking.  The format is a mess.  The links are non-existent.  It'll get there.

Bear with me.

Come back soon :)