Re: [Phys-L] the sizzle sells the steak

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 01/06/2014 12:29 PM, I wrote:

> PR and science are wildly different, but if we do things
> right, PR is not the enemy of science.

Here is a somewhat tangential follow-up.  This is tangential
to science, and tangential to education, but not entirely
disconnected, because students wonder what it's like to have
a job doing science.  Typically the only role model the kid
has is the teacher ... but the teaching job is not entirely
representative of science-related jobs in general.

Question:  What do you do with somebody who is good at 
science but not good at PR?  There are plenty of people
like that.  Science and PR require two wildly different
skill sets.  Some people are by nature too modest or too
shy to be good at PR.

Answer:  In a sufficiently-large organization, such people
do just fine.  One option is to fix them up with a collaborator
who is good at PR.  Another option is to gather up a bunch of
such people and stick them in a department where the department
head is good at PR.

==============

Here's a partly-related observation:  In any big organization, 
there is always some guy who likes to wander around and talk 
to people.  After a while he knows what everybody is doing, 
and if there is some good but underappreciated work somewhere, 
he can call attention to it.

He can also set up collaborations:  "You really need to
go talk to so-and-so, because his theory relates to your 
experiment, even though neither of you realizes it yet."

I've never seen a formal job description for this job, 
and I've never seen anybody hired specifically to fill 
this role ... but if somebody starts doing this, management
is certainly not going to object.  More likely they will
try to give the guy a promotion, whether he wants it or 
not, even though it will make the job harder, not easier.

Also note that this only works in a high-integrity place.
Stealing ideas is the easiest thing in the world, and if
people are afraid of getting ripped off they won't talk to 
anybody, whereupon the overall productivity of the place
plummets.  This is why cheating must not be tolerated.

Also, there is such a thing as "classified research".  I
know that sounds like a contradiction in terms, and it
has all sorts of problems, but it does exist.  One thing
that makes it not completely crazy is the existence of a
few guys who know everything, and can clue you in to the
existence of something that is relevant to your work.
Talking to such guys is probably technically illegal, 
in violation of the "need to know" rules, but nobody is
going to complain about it.

=====================================

To summarize:  Two contrasting points:

A) The talks-to-everybody guy has an interesting but
 wicked hard job.  It requires
  -- High integrity.
  -- People skills and PR skills.
  -- Strong technical skills.
  -- Rapid context-switching, and the ability to get
   up to speed on new topics quickly.

 If you promote the guy, then even more skills are required,
 notably political skills, including dealing with conflict.

B) Not every individual needs maximum communication skills 
 and maximum technical skills ... let alone political skills.
 Sometimes it suffices to put together a team, such that the 
 team as a whole has the needed skills.

 On the other hand, there are some jobs -- including science
 teaching as well as the talks-to-everybody industrial job --
 where you really do need to do the Venn diagram.  You really
 do need somebody with a combination of high-level PR skills 
 and high-level technical skills.