The Phyllosopher

If you follow Maeve Bassett's guided tour of the W. J. Beal Botanical Garden's medicinal collections at Michigan State University, you'll learn facts about the lifesaving qualities of a G&T, the Doctrine of Signatures, and how psychedelic mushrooms advanced human cognition. To a group of phytochemists, these stories are the basis of our work and may well be the inspiration for some of us.

While our work is driven by empiricism--trial and error at the bench or collecting specimens outdoors--Bassett brought up a phrase during our tour that I often think about: "armchair anthropology". This refers to bearded 18th century thinkers who speculated about the world's cultures atop velvet cushions while reading tales from travelers as they poured milk in their tea.

I too found myself atop a cushioned chair this past week, sadly, without armrests, at the Phytochemistry Conference in Lansing Michigan. As I listened to traveler tales about developing better tasting chickpeas and the discovery of enzymes that make medicinal plant molecules, I took on my own brand of "armchair anthropology [sans arm]." I did my best to be a good scientist and take notes on the presentations and lectures, but at the same time I found myself taking notes at all the times in-between; paying attention to who was moderating the panel discussion effectively, who was asking questions and what kinds of questions were being asked. I thought such undertakings were worthy of a "conference chair anthropologist".

The focus of my particular ethnography concerns the happenings of the Indigenous Connections session at the conference. Our session keynote speaker was an Indigenous (First Nations) scientist from Canada. She shared her science with us, but she also shared her story--the struggles and joys of science and life and the essentiality of strong mentorship. This talk, and the talks that followed it inspired two observations--two charges to my readers if you will. The first, is to get a better sense of scientific storytelling. And the second, is to get better at responding to our storytellers.

As scientists we are often told to present our research as a 'story', but I think we struggle to get it right. Our keynote speaker got it right. Science is all around people. We do science, but we also are science. Including ourselves within the fabric of a scientific narrative should be a given. If you do not do this, if you feel like science is not the space to share about who you are and why it matters to your research, then attend a session like this one. Look for other scientific storytellers that inspire you and recognise how important this truly is.

To my second point, I ask that we interrogate how we ask questions, and of whom, and for what purpose. There were three speakers for this session: the Indigenous keynote, a white male professor and a young white female graduate student. I share the demographics of this session because I feel that it may have unconsciously informed the kinds of questions that were asked. To our Indigenous speaker, while it is true that she was very vocal about her Indigeneity and what it takes to collaborate with Indigenous groups, the question she was asked was, "what can I do [personally] to connect with Indigenous groups". The following speaker shared his own experiences as a non-Indigenous person connecting with Indigenous communities through his research and the question he was asked was, "have you thought to test the metabolic profile of these berries across time?" 

Both scientists, both talking about very similar topics, and yet one was asked a question based on their identity and the other was asked a question based on their research. 

I recognise that there are nuances to both of these speakers and their talks. I acknowledge the temptation to defer to an Indigenous scientist on the grounds of forming meaningful connections with Indigenous communities, but I do not think it is a good question. All the other questions asked throughout this conference were incredibly specific: "have you considered other indicators of stress apart from plant volatiles?", "how stable is your substrate intermediate?" ... etc. In comparison, this Indigenous connections question feels incredibly vague and unforthcoming. It failed to contextualize the specificities of the speaker's personal connections to Indigeneity and the particular communities she served. It failed to uncover the depth of knowledge that the speaker had regarding her own niche branch of science. I know that this question was well-intentioned, but I draw this to your attention because I know we can do better. We can ask better questions. If you want to honour someone's identity because you believe it is important to how they do science, then ask a question that addresses both of these things. When we have Indigenous speakers and scientists of colour, giving them the floor is not enough. Craft your questions with care and sincerity. Let's keep having sessions like this, but let's give them range. Amplify the platform, question the sanctity of Western science, and if you can't do that then for heaven's sake, just ask them what's going on with the metabolic profiles of their plants.