Creating the scientific community of the 21st century

There has been a large, and successful push lately to increase interest in science. In this episode, I argue that, in order to create the most productive scientific community for the 21st century, we need to go beyond interest. There need to be people actively communicating what it means to be a scientist, the commitment to regularly utilize critical thinking needed to be successful, and the hard work and dedication needed to thoroughly take an idea from hypothesis to conclusion, and clearly communicate those results. Additionally, there need to be people communicating what the biggest open questions in science are, in a way that clearly highlights the real technical hurdles while simultaneously communicating to a broad audience. This is the tallest order of them all, but it would be very helpful in communicating to potential scientists the types of problems they would be solving and exactly what kind of work they would be engaging in.

To summarize, in addition to creating interest in science, which has been done by many already, we need to emphasize and teach critical thinking, hard work, and dedication, and we need to clarify the open questions. These three tasks are not easily done, but if done, they would greatly enhance the scientific community in the years to come.