Tumor Genetics Blog

By: Petros Papadopoulos

Suomennos

“The biggest loss, however, is the coffee-room chit-chat….”

The other day, sitting in the metro, I was going through my twitter account news. There was lots of interesting stuff and many more… not so interesting. Still, using the right filters I can make these minutes of scrolling on my small mobile screen useful for my work. I can get the highlights of new published papers in the field that I been working in over the last 10 years on myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPN), a clonal hematopoietic disease. There is so much every single day to read that undoubtedly you realize that social media can be a very useful tool to get fast and easy information about science and beyond.

Interestingly, I run into an article regarding the effects of the COVID-lockdown on academic life by Howy Jacobs in EMBO reports titled “Retrovision”.  The title got my attention immediately and I found myself reading the article with an extreme interest but at the same time virtually going back to my pre-pandemic period. At that time I was in Leuven (Belgium) at the KU Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit) for a short visit regarding a collaboration and I found myself trapped in the country for some time together with other fellow colleagues until I finally managed to get back home and stay confined for even longer as everybody else.

What Howy Jacobs describes in his article is a situation that finds everybody in agreement and I guess, at least in general terms, could be resumed as the academic/scientific community struggle to cope with the avalanche of changes that were brought upon to the function of the University/Research Institutes. Online communication tools (zoom, teams etc) developed fast to meet the needs of the pandemic safety measures and guarantee the continuation of our work but they also uncovered several problems regarding the working model of research scientists.  A very demanding job that requires to put extra time in order to be competitive and successful. And all that at the expense of personal and/or family time. So, flexible working time has always been the case and very well deserved but nowadays things have turned to change beyond this point.

It seems that now we are going through a new phase of adaptation to find the balance between the benefits of digital and in person communication for educational purposes and achieve a new equilibrium at work and personal life. As in every turning point in life, there are difficulties in order to evaluate the pros and cons and we need time to genuinely appreciate this opportunity to fix the problems of the past. However, there is definitely one thing that holds true.

We need the real life interaction at work at all levels as much as possible because it is the driving force of building team spirit and the network of support in order to deal with and learn from our failures, which are more frequent than successes in science. Changing laboratories and/or countries, as normal and as hard as it can be for the life of a researcher, can be enriching for the professional career. It facilitates a new perspective, to see different points of view about nearly everything.

So things are rapidly evolving in science, and rightly so! But what about the new generation of scientists to be? Is it only about knowledge or it is also about curiosity and motivation, support and collaboration?  That is why, I think Howy Jacobs is right when he says that the biggest loss is the coffee-room chit-chat. We are, by nature, social beings and we have to take every opportunity to use that in our favor in every aspect of life and even more in education, and science

Want to learn more about the Finnish Center of Excellence in Tumor Genetics?
Keep up to date with the latest tweets, videos and blog posts for a peek into the everyday life in cancer research; subscribe to our blog, and follow us on Instagram (@tumorgenetics), YouTube and Twitter/X (@CoEinTG)