Overcoming isolation

​When I did my PhD, I remember how excited I felt when I found a book called ‘How to get a PhD’. I have long since lost my copy and forgotten almost everything in it. Apart from one thing: the section on isolation.
 
I’d never thought of it this way before, but this section resonated with me immediately. Family and friends didn’t seem to understand my research or the lifestyle around it. Meanwhile, talking to colleagues about my doubts or fears seemed off limits.  Everyone else appeared to have it all ‘under control’ and no-one discussed such things. As the failed experiments piled up, and my thoughts of what I could achieve got scaled down, this felt increasingly uncomfortable. Finally, here was a book that talked my language!

​A lot of time has passed. Today, we have social media, other excellent books and courses, graduate programmes, and mentoring initiatives. But isolation remains an issue.
 
I’ve often felt isolated as a PI too. This seems paradoxical because a PI’s job involves far more people interaction than working at the bench does. But feeling understood can be further away than ever.
 
Staring at a grant rejection email, knowing I have to break the bad news to my group, is a very lonely place to be.  Figuring out how to handle a challenging workplace conversation, when confidentiality prevents me discussing it with colleagues feels like there is nowhere to turn.
 
In the context of a world with a crisis of isolation outside science too, how can we handle this better? And what can we do to support others?

​Not all science is isolating
Another memory from my PhD, however, is my first conference, the ‘European Cytoskeletal Club’ in Lyon. Our lab had two PhD students at the time - Janice Robertson and myself, both of us now PIs. I distinctly remember how excited we both were to pluck up the courage to ask questions after presentations. I have no memory of what we asked or whether any of my questions made any sense at all, but people actually answered! The feeling that ‘we can be part of this’ was amazing!
 
Throughout my time as a postdoc and still today, I’ve always found conferences tremendously motivating. Weeks of pipetting between Eppendorfs and cell culture dishes find their true meaning when someone excitedly asks questions about the data on your poster. And the perfect antidote to all those grant rejections (apart from the lack of money!) is seeing people highly focussed on your presentation and hurriedly scribbling down notes. Suddenly, all those lonely hours at the bench or on the laptop are worth it!

​Helping others to help ourselves
The research world places a rather misleading emphasis on individual achievement. We remember first authors and Nobel Prize winners but forget the dozens of others who contribute in so many ways, from co-authors to cleaners.  Perhaps because of this, we often get obsessed with what we achieve ourselves and overlook the importance of, and what we also gain from supporting others.
 
This harms us. There is compelling research showing we often find it more rewarding to help others than to indulge ourselves. If we focus only on our next first author paper we are missing a trick. Our careers are judged primarily on papers and grants, which make us feel briefly better on the good days when they go our way. But for lasting satisfaction, it can be as therapeutic as any mindfulness course to see a teenager’s face light up when we present our work in a school, to support a mentee to overcome issues we previously struggled with ourself, or to train a graduate student to become proficient in a technique and put it to good use. It is for similar reasons that I write these blog posts – I’m actually helping myself!
 
Relating this to the previous section, there is nothing more lonely than a crowded conference room where everyone but us seems to know one another. As PIs, or other experienced colleagues, we can help not only our students but also ourselves by making introductions and by participating in mentoring sessions.

​Success and despair
Another occasion when we can gain particular satisfaction from connecting is in celebrating our successes together, or supporting our friends and colleagues when things don't go so well – a rejection, a failed experiment or being scooped. Sharing positive emotional experiences intensifies these feelings and supporting others not only makes us feel better about our own actions but also makes reciprocation more likely when we are the one needing support.

​Our need to connect can be a source of creativity
Our primal need to belong can be a powerful, unconscious driver of creativity when we are suddenly surrounded by relative strangers. When we move to a new lab or department, when we visit a collaborator and talk over dinner, and when we chat with an acquaintance over coffee at a meeting, a part of us is naturally searching for connections. Finding common ground in our scientific knowledge and ideas is an obvious source. Moving the discussion out of our comfort zone into areas we know less about suddenly becomes more appealing, with a sense of opportunity to balance the vulnerability. When both parties do the same, there can be some particularly fertile centre ground where new ideas lie. 

​New technologies
Social media offers a lot of new ways to connect, helping us to disseminate our findings and to share experiences both positive and negative. This is especially effective if we also work to deepen these connections in person at conferences. The current migration of large number of scientists on social media from Twitter to BlueSky has created a mixing up of these networks. It will be interesting to see what creativity stems from this.
 
Other new technologies, from email and instant messaging to webinars and Zoom/Teams meetings, further extend opportunities for connection between scientists anywhere in the world. Like social media, these cannot substitute for in-person meetings but are better viewed as an addition to them. Our opportunities for connection today are more than ever before but we now need to avoid having so many that they become superficial. Networks matter, but deep connections are where the real support lies when we need it. 

​Science is a communal effort
The popular image of a scientist is that of a lone thinker, tinkering away in the lab until they hit a eureka moment and rush out to tell the world. This image could not be more misleading. No idea comes from a single person. It always builds on thoughts communicated by others, whether in the same research group or beyond. Without this, we would still be inventing the wheel. This is why similar findings are so often published simultaneously by several groups. Different experts in a research field each think of the obvious (to them at least) next step that builds on what others have just reported.
 
And even if we do rush out shouting ‘eureka’, real science does not work this way either. Critical assessment by others, whose careers and self-esteem are not inextricably linked to the work, and who can therefore be more objective, is essential to keep our collective endeavour on track – peer review, in other words.
 
We like to believe in the myth of the scientist who knows it all and does it all. They don’t exist! But the real danger comes if we try to be that person. Cutting ourselves off in the hope of being that legendary ‘lone genius’ will not only hold back our science: it will harm us in the process.