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Growth

In the same way that an organism carries out metabolism to ensure its growth, lab² researches with the goal of educating new scientists. An integral part of scientific practice is making sure it is carried on by others, enabling its growth as an institution. Education at an academic institution such as the one where lab² resides in commonly comes in two forms: mentoring of lab members and teaching in a classroom setting. The question of what to educate new scientists on is transversal to both of these pedagogic settings.

Mentoring

Research is very much a craft. This has important consequences for the training of new researchers. Today's education toolbox has a plethora of pedagogical techniques, from in-person tutoring to Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs). However, professional training as a researcher today—particularly in the experimental sciences—is in many ways similar to trade apprenticeship of centuries past. A research lab is more akin to a Renaissance painter's workshop than a modern classroom. This is not necessarily undesirable: it is a consequence of the artisanship involved in operating complex equipment, fickle technical procedures, or human methodologies, conflicting against an emphasis on reproducibility. These are all things we want and, in fact, need in science. It also means training in research is especially prone to inequalities in access according to geography (among other things) due to the physicality of training, which is why efforts must be done to tackle issues of diversity. Regardless, the fact of the matter is training as a researcher and scientist unsurprisingly requires close contact with the work of researchers and scientists. This is part of the reason for lab²’s transparent approach to self-governance, but as we just established, training goes much beyond decisionmaking. It can span from the complexities of navigating independent funding, down to the nitty-gritty of fine motor skills in tricky procedures. Mentorship in science is ubiquitous, multidirectional, and of vital importance.

Despite lab²’s overarching mission of training scientists, it is important to recognize the differing interests and expertise of different actors in the lab, as we have done before. As the members most interested in the success of the lab mission, PIs are the first responsible for ensuring successful training and professional development for all lab members. Advising relationships can include all kinds of aspects, since PIs usually have the most career experience in a lab. For this reason, PIs at lab² take steps to guarantee the availability of honest, two-way communication with trainees.

However, PIs are often not the best suited people to advise a trainee in certain aspects: perhaps they lack firsthand experience in a recently-developed technique, or are unfamiliar with career paths outside academia. Because of this, it is crucial for trainees to have access to multiple sources of mentorship, both inside and outside the lab. In fact, evidence points to senior lab member mentorship, not direct PI mentorship, as the most important factor determining future career success for trainees. Furthermore, having sources of mentorship beyond the lab on equal footing with the PI is important to maintain accountability for all, and can prove to be a platform from which to make positive suggestions to the PI.

Since mentorship can come from different lab members (and non-members) for certain skills, a successful training environment implies comfortable communication between all lab members and easy access to outside mentorship when needed. A crucial duty of PIs is actively ensuring that this is the case. This can be done by creating the forums and spaces for communication to occur, giving those spaces real weight, reinforcing constructive interactions within the lab, empowering trainees to reach out beyond the lab when needed, and clarifying the channels and procedures to do so. It can also be reinforced by encouraging other lab members' commitment to making training of other lab members part of the job. In fact, providing technical training could be an explicit item on the job description for a member of lab² acting as Lab Master, to use the Renaissance workshop analogy once more. If the PIs are not in a position to do this, it could perhaps be of interest to a non-trainee such as a staff scientist or technician, in order to avoid conflicting interests with senior trainees such as postdocs who are looking to move on from the lab.

Teaching

Academic laboratories commonly reside in universities, where different lab members hold appointments as professors, teaching assistants, and/or students. Teaching courses is a complex activity in and of itself, with a specific skillset that does not overlap completely with those of research or mentorship. As such, it deserves its own dedicated work, which this project does not pretend to be. Numerous others have given teaching the attention it warrants elsewhere.

In spite of this, teaching is mentioned here because it is an integral part of academic posts and science as an institution. As Ken Bains puts aptly, teaching and research have one thing in common, something more central to science than either one of them by themselves: learning. At lab², it is understood that members engaged in teaching duties of any kind dedicate significant effort to their practice. Collecting and providing easy access to teaching materials and training is highly important, and should be done in the same way research data and methods are collected and provided. In addition, incorporating lab research into teaching is a valuable opportunity for both organizing and reflecting on the material being produced in the lab, as well as advertising its value beyond the lab.

Material

The question that now remains is, what should lab members teach and train for? What does it mean for lab² to be training scientists? The answer of course includes a series of contents and methods used to carry out the lab’s research, but as has been emphasized repeatedly in this work, it must go far beyond this. Science is a verb, and as a verb, it encompasses not only the production of new knowledge but its effective communication, critical evaluation, and justification as a social endeavor. Specific contents and methods, as important as they are for the lab’s research, are only excuses and case examples for this broader scientific education. Scientists must be trained in critical reading, technical and non-technical writing, and communication skills with people across all kinds of different professions. Fortunately, this is increasingly recognized even at the institutional level, and many excellent resources have been developed to this end.

Ironically, for all its traditional importance, perhaps we are now falling behind in the teaching of knowledge production. The contents and methods of science are often narrated as a straight line of successful experiments and hypotheses, both in the classroom and in publications. Obviously, this is not true, and nobody in science would expect it to be. If we teach and mentor in failure, show what bad data looks like, how to check for it, what to do about it, and expose the extent to which it happens, we are better equipping scientists to identify it and setting realistic expectations for scientists and non-scientists alike. This handling of expectations is vital given the challenged perception of scientific knowledge in certain social and political environments, and science’s own problematic bias against negative results.