Not all scientists should be curing cancer
Basic research should be valued for its own sake
‘So, what do you work on?’
I was asked this question as a graduate student researcher at a science communication conference, making small talk with one of the panelists as we waited in line for lunch. Eager to demonstrate what I’d learned at the conference about defining jargon, I replied, ‘I work on developing a tool to evaluate treatments for glioblastoma multiforme, which is a really deadly type of brain cancer…’
‘I know what it is,’ she interrupted. ‘My niece died from it. It’s evil incarnate.’
In that moment, I was struck over the head with the reminder that I was working on something that affects real people. I knew about the severity of glioblastoma multiforme, that there are approximately 250,000 new cases each year and that the average lifespan upon diagnosis is 14.6 months. But I had used these facts to motivate my research in a presentation at my funding agency’s site review and in a manuscript I was writing. In the pursuit of my scientific goals, I had lost sight of the individuals behind the statistics.