On Wednesday I had the pleasure of attending a meeting on the very early stages of a new project that seeks to build a natural hazard Risk model for the United States via a broad public-private partnership. My advisor sent me in his place, and when I arrived I realized that the meeting was full of quite prominent members of various federal agencies (NOAA, FEMA, DHS, DOT, DOE, etc.), presidents of two major catastrophe modeling companies, NGO leaders, and several scientists and engineers from academia.
The project is still up in the air, and it was fascinating to witness the process of debating and discussing the key proposed ideas, their merits, and the outlook for their implementation. Following a morning session in which the project was largely introduced and (weakly) motivated, we broke out into smaller groups to address directly three questions regarding the details of the model, its organizational structure, and its governance. Instead, though, the discussion retreated to the more fundamental questions of the merits of the project as a whole, in particular positing concerns regarding the enormous scope of the project and the lack of a clear defense of the need for this model in the first place.
Indeed, these concerns then emerged more prominently in the afternoon group session, at which point we were supposed to be determining the plan for concrete next steps moving forward. Instead, several members of the community -- particularly private sector representatives, who demonstrated a much greater capacity to focus the discussion to the most salient points, a trait that I valued greatly -- stood up and asked quite bluntly, "I can't tell you whether I support 'this' until I understand what 'this' is!". Clearly, more work addressing the "business" case for the project is needed.
Overall, the experience gave me significantly greater respect for the private sector. Earlier in the day, a fellow scientist who does hurricane risk work noted to me a key difference between science and private sector work: "In the private sector, they want an answer, regardless of how scientifically justified it is; meanwhile, in science, it's okay if your answer is 'I don't know'". In my case, I realized that this mentality may be one reason why I struggle to love science and find myself often pulled strongly towards the private sector world: my own approach is very much one of problem-solving, in that my goal is to get an answer to a stated problem. I don't like trying something out without knowing that it will give me a definitive answer in the end, and furthermore it always haunts the back of my mind that any answer that I do get will ultimately be proven wrong by additional science. Even if I know that this is "how science works" -- that this isn't my fault! -- I still hate the thought.
Interesting the ways in which you learn about yourself.
The project is still up in the air, and it was fascinating to witness the process of debating and discussing the key proposed ideas, their merits, and the outlook for their implementation. Following a morning session in which the project was largely introduced and (weakly) motivated, we broke out into smaller groups to address directly three questions regarding the details of the model, its organizational structure, and its governance. Instead, though, the discussion retreated to the more fundamental questions of the merits of the project as a whole, in particular positing concerns regarding the enormous scope of the project and the lack of a clear defense of the need for this model in the first place.
Indeed, these concerns then emerged more prominently in the afternoon group session, at which point we were supposed to be determining the plan for concrete next steps moving forward. Instead, several members of the community -- particularly private sector representatives, who demonstrated a much greater capacity to focus the discussion to the most salient points, a trait that I valued greatly -- stood up and asked quite bluntly, "I can't tell you whether I support 'this' until I understand what 'this' is!". Clearly, more work addressing the "business" case for the project is needed.
Overall, the experience gave me significantly greater respect for the private sector. Earlier in the day, a fellow scientist who does hurricane risk work noted to me a key difference between science and private sector work: "In the private sector, they want an answer, regardless of how scientifically justified it is; meanwhile, in science, it's okay if your answer is 'I don't know'". In my case, I realized that this mentality may be one reason why I struggle to love science and find myself often pulled strongly towards the private sector world: my own approach is very much one of problem-solving, in that my goal is to get an answer to a stated problem. I don't like trying something out without knowing that it will give me a definitive answer in the end, and furthermore it always haunts the back of my mind that any answer that I do get will ultimately be proven wrong by additional science. Even if I know that this is "how science works" -- that this isn't my fault! -- I still hate the thought.
Interesting the ways in which you learn about yourself.
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