THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SCIENCE PERSONALITIES

by Steve Bunk

For young journalists, interviewing a scientific expert can be a queasy experience. This feeling doesn’t arise directly from relative ignorance, to which the interviewer may be modestly resigned. It stems from uncertainty about how that ignorance might be perceived and tolerated. The patience of some scientists can be short, although many are receptive and responsive to the media. Those differences not only show the danger in generalizing about personalities, but also point out the real source of the interviewer’s apprehension: the unknown.

The best approach to this problem is scientific. What’s needed is a taxonomy of personalities in science, the better to objectify and categorize the reactions of interviewees, thus fixing the unknown wriggling on a pin above a name tag. Sleeves rolled, the first step must be description, as a basis for classification.

A widely used instrument for personality typing that derives principally from the work of Carl Jung and Isabel Briggs Myers places each respondent in one of 16 categories. People can be typed as guardians, artists, idealists, executives, even scientists. The latter category combines “introverted intuition” with “extroverted thinking.” Essentially, that describes unusually insightful and intuitive people who have a strong need for organization and application of concepts. They might have difficulty expressing their ideas, because they don’t think linearly, and their life of the mind could lead others to regard them as aloof.

All this is interesting, but does not go far enough toward girding the interviewer for the specific personality at the other end of the question. Given that the ultimate goal is to develop accurate predictions and appropriate responses, the most thorough way to achieve that goal would be to construct a natural history of, say, biologists. By examining their ways and habits-such as upbringing and current family life, territoriality, communicative interactions, feeding, mating rituals, and so on-perhaps their range of psychological makeups could be identified. This, in turn, would yield a probabilistically weighted prediction of how a particular biologist will react to an ignorant interviewer, which might then suggest what to do about it. But all that’s a tad ambitious; anecdotal evidence gathered over years of interviewing scientists may have to suffice for a database.

A confounding factor is the paucity of fieldwork, confined primarily to office or lab visits and observations at conferences or other public venues. An even more serious drawback is one’s utter incompetence in taxonomy. For many trailblazers, these obstacles might be regarded as insurmountable but there is a way out of the maze: Adapt an existing vehicle to our purposes. After a search, the most useful taxonomy has been located, one that requires only nominal tweaking. It was discovered next to the binoculars on a bookshelf, in the bird-watching section.

Surprisingly, it turns out that displays of scientists are highly analogous to those of various avian species, suggesting an unanticipated conservation of traits across these divergent phyla.

Employing the novel technique of shotgun sampling, in which random descriptions of birds are blasted apart and reassembled as encounters with biologists, virtually the entire range of known scientific personalities can be categorized. However, that would take years. The following, highly preliminary classifications include italicized recommendations for the interviewer’s response to specific behaviors:

Biotech Luncheon Speaker/California Thrasher--Striking and conspicuous, although plainly colored. Habit of singing almost year-round, loudly delivering rich and colorful phrases. Feeds by digging vigorously and noisily in leaf litter and peering intently into its excavations. Best quotes usually after the salad.

Reclusive Bench Technician/Gyrfalcon--Not particularly aggressive when humans intrude on nest site, often slipping away and circling silently. Leave note threatening to hang around all day if necessary.

Irritated Microbiologist/Red-winged Blackbird--Bill-up or bill-tilt is a common display of territorial male. Neck is stretched upward to varying degrees, bill pointed 45 to 90 degrees above horizontal. Quickly confide that you likewise scorn the competing theory.

Seminar Debaters/Meadowlarks--During spirited boundary disputes, males spring upward to height of one meter and fly to a point several meters away. Both males may continue posturing at new locality. Approach seminar table in crouched position, reach up, and gently relocate tape recorder.

Postdocs/Virginia Rails--More often heard than seen, agile on their feet, usually escape danger by running. Precocious young may leave the nest immediately after hatching, if they can find a half-decent spot in the marsh. Can be amazing source when listed as fourth or fifth author on a paper after doing all the work.

Department Heads at Funding Meeting/Green Jays--While establishing territories, males face one another and give loud and continuous “aggressive rattle calls” while moving head and body side to side. No information on appeasement displays. Mimic body movements while slowly backing away.

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“Wriggling on a Pin,” The Scientist, February 24, 2003.Steve Bunk is a freelance science writer based in San Francisco.