Few intense
months of piloting and eventually, conducting a study, have taken me away from
this blog. As I am sure many of you out there know, the life of a PhD student
can be rather “antisocial”. However, I am forcing myself to use any social
network, platform, mean of communication as much as I can to get my thoughts
out there, in the real world, out of the comfortable and safe environment which
my lab represents to me. And talking about getting out there, in the real
world, today I would like to share a thought, which has been questioning my research
and work ever since I have started this PhD (now in its final year!):
How pragmatic my research is?
How is my research
contributing to advance the knowledge in my field in a way which will
eventually result in some sort of “improvements” in people’s life?
As a human physiologist
with a growing interest in neuroscience and somato-sensory disorders, this question
seems to be extremely relevant to me, even more now that I am at the beginning of my career
as a researcher.
The answer
that came up the first time this question kept me awake all night (and unfortunately
it was not just one night!) was: well, to make sure my work has some sort of
relevance, I will try to publish the data of my “lab-based theoretical research” in a
good journal, and job done. Somebody else will have to find a way to apply my
findings into the real world. However, this apparently straight forward
solution did not make the sleep any better. It seemed to me that the responsibility
to make my research pragmatic, while still keepint it fundamental, was still mine.
So I
thought and re-thought and I started to think that possibly, a different solution to this problem was possible. In fact, the solution could have been already there, in my work, in my lab-based theoretical research. It could be that it is the way I present my data, my findings,
how accessible, pragmatic and useful I made them for the needs of the real
world which could make my contribution to the “real world” more substantial.
I am sure
somebody reading this post will be thinking: so? How obvious is that! That’s
the way research works dude!
Well, it
was not obvious to me…and by the message in the following video (from TED http://www.ted.com/talks/gregoire_courtine_the_paralyzed_rat_that_walked.html), I believe that thinking about these things can be sometimes missing within the safe walls of
our labs, and we need to remind that to ourselves.
Enjoy!
Davide
Filingeri
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