The Chronicle of Higher Ed interviews E.O. Wilson on, among other things, diversity in scientific approaches:
A Legendary Scientist Sounds Off on the Trouble With STEM
E.O. Wilson on the next big thing, the gladiatorial nature of academe, and the world beyond the human senses
"There’s no question that we need all the ablest people that can be recruited to go into science and technology to keep this country strong. But STEM is an unnecessarily forbidding set of stairs.
"Consider a young person who’s thrilled by seeing a natural system, a remarkable geological formation that stirs the imagination, or a group of animals or plants. This youngster says, Boy, when I get to college, I would like to move on to a career in science, and biology especially. Now, the STEM-oriented teacher — if we are following the STEM ideology as we hear it — says: "I think that’s a good ambition. But remember that biology is based substantially upon chemistry. So, I advise you to start getting a good background in chemistry. Oh, and while you’re at it, you should keep in mind that chemistry is based upon, to a major degree, principles of physics. So consider starting to get a background in physics, too. And, oh, I almost forgot: To get into physics, and a lot of the best parts of chemistry, you’re going to need ‘M,’ mathematics. So I want you to get started on math courses right now."
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"Those universities that have large collections of organisms have not come close to providing educational tools for students at the undergraduate and graduate level. Harvard is particularly short. I came there as a graduate student in 1951, and I’m now honorary curator of insects, now that I’ve retired. Harvard has some of the best collections in the world — plants and animals — and we have a great arboretum. And yet the collections are not being used effectively to train people in biodiversity. They’re being neglected.
"We should be putting much more emphasis in both undergraduate and graduate biology courses on biodiversity. Right now we have given formal names to a little more than two million species. How many species remain unknown? The answer: an estimated eight million. We’re not talking about bacteria; we’re talking about eukaryotic animals.
"We need more courses about different groups of organisms — courses in ornithology, or invertebrate zoology, or entomology. That’s the way you get students hooked.
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"We certainly need research that involves modeling and statistical techniques, but that should be ancillary. What we need much more is a study of those 10 million species.
"I’m going to rattle off the names of some groups of organisms that desperately need experts to work on them.
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"A. Schizomids: a kind of arachnid found all over the world. Spidery-like creatures. We know almost nothing about them.
"Oribatid mites: Go out to any bit of leaf litter, start digging up decaying leaves, and start shaking out the little things. Among them you’ll find oribatid mites.
"A few years ago I studied a group of ants that were very good at collecting oribatid mites for food. So I thought I’d better figure out what species of oribatid mites I was seeing in my work. I looked around and found that the number of oribatid mite specialists who could do that in the United States was two. One of them, fortunately, was very generous.
"Q. Why isn’t there enough of this work being done?
"A. The dominance of molecular biology and biological medicine. Which is a good thing. But it’s become an overwhelming emphasis.
"That’s going to change. We’re moving into a new era. We’re entering the environmental-science era, where we want to take care of the environment around us, treat the earth the way we would a person and keep it healthy. And we need to know about these species for the purposes of synthetic biology."
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