House of Cards

One of my buddies asked me tonight what I want to do with my degree. I said all I wanted was to get paid by someone to do something that mattered.

"Oh, is that all?" he laughed.

"Well, it just needs to matter a little..."

Many people you talk to in academia (especially those most invested in the system) will answer this question with a detailed description of their theoretical interests. I was reassured tonight to hear a couple of my friends echo my disillusionment with the professional pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake.

Plant pathology is one of those rare academic disciplines that continually justifies its existence with the promise of solving real-world problems. Plant pathologists often pride themselves on keeping "one foot in the furrow," of not pursuing theoretical knowledge purely out of curiosity. My buddy talked about how all studies in plant pathology seemed to be advocated as "if only we knew more about [some phenomenon], then we could reduce plant disease."

Although I could probably write a tediously long post on the practical benefits of plant pathology, on many days it seems that 90% of growers dealing with disease boils down to buying resistant cultivars and spraying with pesticides when things get out of control...

He told me about how he had signed up for a class in my department. About half way through the professor's lecture one day, it occurred to him: "I don't care!!" "Why does any of this matter?!" Every protein and gene was chased down and characterized with the hope of one day preventing plant disease, but none of the examples ever seemed to lead to any new ways to control diseases. He questioned "how many decades are we going to have to study these things before we actually get anything practical?"

The best part of the story is that he went to the professor's office afterwards to get his perspective. Interestingly, the professor kinda agreed. He said that as he approached retirement, he was reflecting more and more on his legacy. When he started his education, he had big dreams of really making a difference but was increasingly coming to believe that, in a way, it was all for nothing. He described much of plant pathology as a house of cards and wondered how much longer it could continue before people caught on.

Most disciplines don't worry about justifying every little experiment with the promise of concrete results. As my friend pointed out, theoretical physicists don't appear compelled to make promises about practical results of their work. Discovering the Higgs boson probably won't make my car go faster.

It's a shame that some of the people in my field feel ineffective if they fail to transfer technology to society. I think it must take a unique personality to make basic science your vocation, and many people without this inclination are attracted to disciplines like plant pathology. Although all applied science is limited by the foundation of basic science that underpins it, I know that I love science when it allows people (hopefully me!) to create new products and paradigms that make the world a quantitatively better place.

I just don't want to wave my hands anymore to justify what I'm doing to the taxpayers.