Two scientists meeting on a bus leads to discovery in the lab | Hacker News Reader

Two scientists meeting on a bus leads to discovery in the lab

hhmi.org

73 pointsdnetesn27 comments

I think Universities need to actively promote common spaces where researchers and graduate students from different faculties could meet and talk about different ideas.

These common and fertile space would allow for collision of ideas to take place and help new innovations emerge.

Much like the english tea houses of the renaissance, Universities need these spaces to help transform ideas and research work into commercial success stories that would have a global and positive impact on humanity.

Author Steven Johnson: 'Where good ideas come from' - http://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_com...

Note: For the sake of innovation, I very much support Beer Gardens and I hope it gets funded centrally in every University ~_~

> I think Universities need to actively promote common spaces where researchers and graduate students from different faculties could meet and talk about different ideas.

I think all of human society could benefit from that. Human spaces should be common by default. Why not?

Few places in the world are as poor in terms of lack of public spaces as the US. Roadside cafes, town squares, etc. are the norm in Europe. In the US, very few cities have such features. They are increasingly common these days in the form of 'suburban town squares', but they are almost always in some shopping mall or similar commercial enterprise, rather than in truly public spaces. To further complicate matters, even in college towns, faculty and researchers prefer driving to work than riding public transport. Nowhere is this more common than in the American Midwest, with its combination of vast sprawls and severe winters.

> but they are almost always in some shopping mall or similar commercial enterprise, rather than in truly public spaces.

why would that matter at all?

Doesn't matter too much. Only problem is that it exists only so long as the mall developer is making a profit on the space. This is hardly true with say, the cultural districts of cities, where taxpayers foot the bill, and where there is intrinsic real estate value. Many cities have been successful with the latter model, Pittsburgh comes to mind- with its very town-square-ish Southside and Portland's Pearl District- both urban rejuvenation projects which did not involve converting the whole place into a massive mall.

How many strangers have you made acquaintance with in a mall?

Maybe it doesn't matter in theory, but in practice they're usually really different. Public spaces tend to emphasize nature more, and tend to be larger and quieter - an ideal environment for relaxing and letting the mind stretch out. Parks don't have an agenda. Commercial spaces typically are small, loud, and filled with kids. They're designed to be more about resting in between commercial activity.

Malls will throw you out if you clearly have no intent of buying anything.

Needs citation.

Noise and context. Mindset. The mall is a place where people go shopping - quick in, quick out, everyone is moving; lots of people in a closed space makes constant noise. It's not a place you go to to slow down and relax.

Whereas a park, and a café near it, are usually much more quiet, slow-going. People expect to be able to slow down and relax. In a café, there is no constant flow of customers, so the owner doesn't have the incentive to kick you out as soon as possible.

Sandy Pentland: "Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread" | Talks at Google similar theme. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMBl0ttu-Ow I think its in this video that he talks about the productivity gains of the seemingly random exchanges of ideas, and the possibility to increase them by scheduling and thoughtfully designed common areas.

I remember reading Richard Feynman saying (in maybe Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!?) that he felt bad for the researchers who went off to think in a cabin in the woods because real breakthroughs came from explaining your ideas to and working with people in other fields.

I bet a modern common space would be filled by people looking at their cellphones.

Perhaps it would have worked before smartphones, but I don't think it will any longer.

This is unnecessarily pessimistic. While there should be some smartphone use, people can look at their phones anywhere. People who need to use the space as intended will do so.

They already do. Interdisciplinary is probably the biggest buzzword in academia today, architecture is designed to make people cross paths at the expense of inconvenicing them, etc. any good residental undergrad program has a strong coffee shop culture, debates in dorm common rooms long into the night, and inviting common spaces where faculty and students alike spend much of their time (though usually segregated by faculty/student and sometimes division).

I'd argue that in the US, no one does common spaces like a top-tier school.

One of the many reasons the residential nature of education matters and isn't obsoleted by MOOCs.

In my experience, a good bar or coffee shop on campus or juuuuust off campus is where great gelling happens. You are not 'in lab' and if there is beer, it is a very good indicator that you are relaxing (the chance of drowning sorrows is noted). You are essentially 'open' to conversation and talking about life. Being scientists,most of life is science, and the 'other' space allows for a freedom of thought and truth not afforded in a more sterile work environment. Also, the use of stimulants or depressants helps to kick people out of their ruts in addition to the new space.

Not all gelling happens in bars or cafes, but I do think they have a great correlation to great discoveries. In fact, I wonder what the actual data says? What does HN think are good metrics to measure this? Proximity to lab benches, cost of drinks, variety of foodstuffs, size of the shop?

Also, I wonder what the introduction of legal marijuana to those states will do to their use of 'other' spaces and areas that you can run into and talk with other researchers. Perhaps an alternative to stimulants and depressants, here being a mild hallucinogen with pot, will uncover new thoughts and ideas to benefit research.

HHMI, the organization that helped fund both researchers, created their first campus, Janelia (https://www.janelia.org/about-us), with that in mind. The wide open spaces and architecture as well as the pub "Bob's" provides plenty of places to chat. Janelia also holds dozens of conferences a year where researchers can relax together after sessions and chat.

The architecture of Stanford Bio-X's Clark Center (https://biox.stanford.edu/about/clark-center) targeted spontaneous meetings and discussion. There's a coffee shop on the third floor and wide open-air stairs in case you bump into someone.

At the research facility that I worked there were so many talks and lectures from around the world and going around the world to talk I have no idea how they ever get any research done. Maybe it's just the Universities that lack this?

Through at least the 1980's, the Infinite Corridor at MIT [1] was one of the best interaction generators I've encountered. Every hour, half the student body would walk down the Infinite Corridor in one direction while the other half walked it in the other direction. It was a simply brilliant use of large scale architectural planning, as you encountered half your classmates multiple times a day. It's still a powerful cultural factor but the campus building boom of the past couple decades has led to many students spending much more of their time sequestered in departmentally focused building clusters than was originally the case.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Corridor

Not sure where i read it, but it kinda reminds me of how a math professor walked past a room where a presentation on some problem (not sure if it was biology, physics, or something else) was held.

One glance at the formula on display, and he recognized it as something that had long been solved in mathematics.

I've often thought about how difficult it is to find people with the information and insight you need in universities / cities. I'm not even talking about people who can provide profound insight, which is more complicated, merely someone with domain expertise. Generally speaking, I rarely know what most people in my lab are working on, let alone what people in other labs on the same floor have expertise in. This service may already exist, but it would be interesting if there was a utility which allowed you to enter you research interests and expertise / have your published papers be parsed and have that information extracted from them; prompt you to enter what skill sets you had questions about or problems you were looking to solve; and have you matched with someone looking for complementary skills.

This is why I enjoy going to random talks advertised by your department/other departments - you are exposed to ideas outside of your specialization, you have a chance to meet other researchers etc. Sadly most universities (in my experience) don't have a central newsletter for these, usually only for generic talks that are more designed around a "science is interesting!" theme for the public layman.

Some people at the the University of Queensland used to run the COMBIO seminars, small seminars with sponsored pizza & beers afterwards. Two scientists would present anything related to computational biology, didn't matter what exactly, or what their specialization was. These were a great starting point for networking.

If you're working at a university and would like to see something similar I strongly suggest you set it up yourself, it's a lot of unpaid work but "if you build it, they will come".

It's a feel good story but the path do a drug is anything but linear like this portrays. The vast majority of compounds, even when there is a molecule targeting it; fail in Phase I, II, or III trials; or fail to improve upon existing therapies. The truth is, there are about ~5K genes in yeast, and about ~8K yeast geneticists. A lot of stuff that works in the lab doesn't work on actual people or the drug has side effects due to lack of specificity. Selection bias will make a bunch of them look like they're ahead of the curve. A bit like star mutual fund managers.

> palbociclib

That looks an awful lot like an anagram of placibo...

I think a better title would be:

"Two scientists meeting on a bus leads to discovery in the lab of a breakthrough cancer drug"

The title is so bad. I thought one of the scientists pointed out the other one had cancer...

That is what I thought ... ahah

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