In the context of explaining my transition into ecological research, I am regularly facing questions / comments from both scientists and non-scientists, as to whether engaging in scientific research aiming at understanding the ecological or climate crises we are facing is (still) an effective and timely thing to do to address these crises. This post attempts to […]
As I am getting more committed to, and delving deeper into hands on ecology research, my internal feelings for keeping doing astro have actually never been so ambivalent. Would you like to know what is going on in the mind of a scientist having to face his, and his own research community contradictions to revisit his own vocation ? Then read on.
It has been a few weeks since my last post. Busy times ! Spring is here, in a variety of senses, not least that I am finding some of my work mojo back after trying to reorganize my schedule to accomodate two jobs at once. It seems to work !
And then, good news…With a colleague at the SETE, we just had one of our interdisciplinary research proposals, […]
After a few unfortunately rather negative-spirited posts reflecting some of my recent seasonal struggles, here is an early spring entry offering a bit of fresh hope and excitement, and a possible lead as to how to better organize one’s life and time if, like me, you are of the creative, enthusiastic hyperactive, yet scattered and procrastinating type […]
“How do you eat an elephant ? One bit at a time”. I only first heard this well-known motivational joke in an upright bass master class ten years ago, and was surprised back then to have never been exposed to it before in my professional life, as a student and young researcher. Although possibly a bit cliché, it has since served me well to learn an […]
Scientific fields evolve in time depending on their own progress, and contemporary historical, political and technological contexts. In this post, I would like to build on the inception post of this blog and try to put in words my increasingly uneasy personal feelings about the evolution of astrophysics over the last decades, which are among the reasons (although by […]
Life, and its diversity on Earth, can be envisioned as an integral part of the story told by astrophysics and cosmology. Conversely, we may want to frame the structure and evolution of the Universe, and its various physical bits, with respect to the complexity of life and ecosystems. Let me explain this (very scientific) idea !
5-year scientific prospective reports of CNRS national institutes were published today, and I quickly read through that of my current national institute, INSU (Institut National des Sciences de l’Univers). I thought I would share some quick thoughts on the section on the reduction of the “environmental impact” of research – because for once, it […]
It was to be expected but as the end of year holidays unfold, I’m finding myself processing a lot of thoughts about my professional life the decisions I made in 2023. Some of them make me uneasy, and I think I know why: they have to do with letting go of a professional experience and knowledge carefully crafted over 25 years, and of the ego and recognition that […]
It has been 9 months since I initiated a transition from astrophysics to ecology research, and since it is the end of the year, time for a first assessment in the form of a twisty Xmas tale that ends, well…I’ll let you readers be the judge.
Nine months is a short period of time to start a research project from scratch in a new field, especially when you […]
Let’s talk today about how I have been approaching finding a first research subject in ecology after my initial conversations. When it comes to entering a research field, it works a bit differently when you start as an already experienced researcher, compared to a new undergrad or PhD student. Your new colleagues just are not going to serve you a subject on a […]
Today I would like to talk a bit about the importance of conversations and new encounters. A key ingredient to successfully getting into something very new, at least for me, is to talk to competent people, to get solid advice from both reliable friends and experts, to find mentors, to carefully listen with humility to what these people have to say, and to use their […]
Changing research topics and, even more, completely changing fields, is no easy feat, even for a seasoned butterfly researcher, and it takes time to overcome one’s own doubts and limitations. I see ecology first and foremost as a life science, and I haven’t done any biology since high-school – that is, I haven’t done any biology at all. As an […]
Scientists usually specialize in a field, and on a particular subject, quite early in their career (usually, during their PhD). Due to the ever increasing complexity, technicity, and accumulation of knowledge and publications in our fields, we also often develop a very narrow and highly technical expertise as our career progresses. This is true in astronomy & […]
A few years ago, while I was already thinking about a career change in the direction of environmentally-oriented jobs, I regularly asked myself the following question: should I leave research too? After all, there are many ways in life to a) feel more part of nature b) be useful in an ecological or environmental context. Fundamental research is not necessarily the most […]
Those following my personal account on Mastodon (if not, you can do so by clicking the elephant icon at the top left of your screen) have already been teased earlier this week that I have found a new, exciting workplace to get into ecological research: the Station d’Ecology Theorique et Experimentale (SETE) in Moulis, Ariège. It’s a beautiful rural place, […]
(Astro)Physics has been a core part of my personal identity since my childhood and illuminates my views of the natural and human worlds. In particular, doing research on dynamical complexity on astronomical scales has contributed to the development of my increasingly alarmed scientist perspective on a variety of very earthly issues, chief among which our climate & ecological crises.
However, paradoxically (or perhaps as a logical conclusion ? ), what I have learned in part thanks to my astrophysicist viewpoint has also increasingly led me in recent years to wonder if I should not use my scientific skills and training to help mitigate these crises instead of doing astrophysics. After much weighing of what was the best move from my comfy position in the astrophysics ivory tower, I have finally “looked up” from my speculative theoretical calculations, and have recently decided to gradually shift my research priorities to ecological sciences with a focus on biodiversity conservation, in an attempt to make the most of my research training, experience and vocation to modestly help, to the best of my scientific abilities, understand and mitigate the ecological crisis we are facing here, on Earth.
Why ? Well, first of all, with increasing professional experience, my personal views of astrophysics & astronomy have evolved to become quite a mixed bag. On the one hand, it is a field full of very smart people and intellectually challenging and exciting. But it is also now sufficiently mature that we essentially know all we need to know to grasp our position, both insignificant and precarious, on Earth and in the larger Universe. In some sense, mission accomplished: the field has done its job (well) to scientifically enlighten human bipedes. On the other hand, there remains a myriad of unanswered questions, of lesser importance I think, and more or less interesting to solve, that in my opinion me and most of my colleagues could spend their lives working on without making any significant difference to human progress, knowledge, and well-being in relation to our environment. Most of the research questions we work on have become in my opinion misguided intellectual raisons-d’être in an era of bloated, overhyped academic research and industrial-scale scientific publication. Working on such questions make us feel busy and smart, but in reality my own impression, informed by accumulated experience, is that we are nowhere near to have the adequate tools, theoretical, numerical, observational, or experimental, to make any significant progress on most of these. Why then waste our energy and time on these questions, most of them quite insignificant – when exceptional times invite us to focus our intellect on more pressing issues ? Fact is, astrophysics is and will remain a very speculative field, with very limited falsifiability, in the foreseeable future. I may expand on this in future posts. What matters here is that having spent most of my professional efforts myself on not even being wrong, all of this while the world burns, has become a major existential issue for me.
Then, there is the problem of the pollution footprint of astrophysics. Let’s write this plainly: we are the most polluting scientific field on the planet: mega-observatories, steel and concrete cathedrals of science built in remote desertic locations, mega-space observatories packed with electronics dumped into space by huge rockets (some of them built by corporations that are actively contributing to the destruction of our environment), billions of CPU hours spent in high-performance computing numerical models of doubtful informational value sucking lots of not-so-low-carbon electricity (3t/MCPUh in the lowest-emitting countries), lots of electronic purchases to develop high-tech astronomical instruments, and buzzing international travel all over the world to conferences and international collaborations all contribute to our huge footprint. In my current research institute, each individual, researcher or other, emits on average 28t CO2 eq/ year in his/her professional activities ! My own individual professional footprint, including HPC (but excluding my occasional use of observational data from space observatories) was of the order of 10t CO2 eq/year until recently. None of this is sustainable and justifiable for a field that is nowhere near essential to document and help solve our environmental crises. However, despite a rising awareness among the base, our community has barely started taking significant steps to change that at the science policy power levels that really matter. This would require questioning the actual need for our most polluting, core research activities, and to downscale significantly instrumentally and in term of human resources, especially on the engineering side. I am having a very hard time being part of the problem in the environmental catastrophe movie unfolding in front of our eyes. Here too, I will probably talk more in future posts about the detailed arguments underlying the case I’m making, as I do not want to give the impression that I am saying this lightly.
Mix all these considerations together, and shake with a pinch of mid-career scientist professional existential crisis and boredom, having the feeling of having done everything I could and not being able to give more to the field, and you have the recipe for a major introspection and reconsideration of future career directions. I have honestly grown tired of astrophysical sciences, its research practices, and of my own perceived personal inadequacy to do anything significant there. I feel both useless and wasted. So I have concluded it is high time to use my energy and experience to serve more important research causes before I get too old and intellectually rotten, modestly and with whatever limited intellectual capacities I have left at my advanced age of 44. What better cause to serve than ecology and biodiversity conservation research for someone with a deep sensitivity for nature, mountains, and complex patterns of the natural world ?
This place will be here to describe my experience, thoughts and struggles as a scientist in the process of such a (scientifically difficult, and certainly not obvious) transition. I thought it would be a good idea to share my experience as it unfolds, both for egoistic reasons, to encourage myself and to conserve momentum when things get difficult (as they inevitably will do), but also to make other younger or older people with similar questionings, and maybe eager to take similar steps, relate and share. And also maybe as a bit of an activivist too, to contribute to instill through some logical arguments some sense of emergency and questioning among some of my colleagues less sensitive to these issues.
How, when, where all of this is going to happen, what is going to be posted in this place, that will be a story for upcoming posts. I hope you enjoy the ride. Please feel free to weigh in in the comments now and then to tell me/us about your own experience and thoughts on the matters I will post about, especially if you are a scientist yourself. I would also like this place to be a forum for debate or experience-sharing. What is important for me though is that this is always done constructively, in a civil and informed way, and in good faith. My view of these exchanges is that they should in the end lift us up all to help us better understand our place and role as humans and sometimes scientists, both as part of, and powerful actors (for the best or the worst) of our earthly natural world. This kind of conversation, in my view, is more than ever needed (actually, well-beyond scientific circles) in times of massive media dis- or mis-information and through-the-roof political irresponsibility on the biggest issues of our times, preserving the physical wonder that is nature and life on the pale blue dot.