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The process

2012; The Company of Biologists; Volume: 125; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1242/jcs.105585

1477-9137

Mole,

As faithful readers know, I have a great respect for small green philosophers, such as the one who said, "Always in motion, the future is." Today, though, I'm thinking about another one, who said, "It's not that easy being green." I'm talking, of course, about Kermit the Frog, who has much to say on the topic. And while he's speaking literally here, I'm experiencing uncomfortable green-ness of another kind, as in, green with envy.Yes, I admit it. I'm envious. I'm envious of my peers who have recently made absolutely stunning new observations, who blaze with incandescent ideas, who seem effortlessly to fund their efforts. Who actually manage to get something published. It's exhausting, all this envy. I doubt you feel this way, but if you do, even a little, maybe we can talk about it. Yes? Thanks, I'm sure it will help me out.Strange thing, envy. It doesn't seem to make any sense, evolutionarily speaking. When someone takes something that's mine, or should have been mine, that isn't envy, that's jealousy, and jealousy makes sense. If I have a delicious insect carcass (or say, a pile of juicy berries for you vegans, but you know I'm an insectivore, right?) and you feel jealous, you may take it from me, and then my jealousy will stimulate me to get it back (or, at least, hide it better next time). Good old competitive behavior. If I have some delicious data, but you scoop me to publication, I'll work harder to get mine out, and will do so next time as well. That's jealousy (and science red in tooth and claw). But if you are really, really good, and I'm just envious, what does that do? Other than make me envious, of course (and stressed out)? We don't even talk about it – envy is a bit, um, incorrect, socially, so why do we even have it?Fortunately, though, it is actually being studied, and the results are interesting (and will eventually get me to my point, I promise). It seems that when we are envious of someone, we actually pay more attention to that person. We notice more, and remember more about them and what they do (this is actually supported by data). Apparently (and this seems right) this can be benign envy, where we seek to emulate that paragon, or malicious envy, where we look for weaknesses with which to topple their lofty paragon-ness. If you think about it, we do both of these all the time (think of the last paper you discussed in your journal club – you have one right? If not, stop reading this and go organize one! But I digress.) So maybe envy is something very basic that actually makes us more fit. Oh, I know, this is over-interpretation – the results just say something about the mental state we call envy and its relationship to attention, but you know what I mean – whatever this state is, there is a benefit associated with it. Maybe I should be really proud of my envy – let my green flag fly!But, it seems, there is a downside, and this actually brings me to my point (finally!). There are experiments that show that if we experience envy, and then are given a puzzle to solve (completely unrelated to what we are envious of) we are actually more likely to give up than someone who has not just had the greening experience. This is called 'ego fatigue'. We just don't feel up to the challenge. But hey, what a great term, ego fatigue. Should be a band. Or at least a t-shirt.Here's the what. All of us doing the science thing got into this business because, at some point, we figured we could find something out that would really matter. The problem is, this is really (really) hard, and almost always terribly frustrating. And then we see others who are doing it; we see this every time we pick up one of those glossy journals, or the ones with the nice, soft pages. And yeh, it makes me envious sometimes (I doubt you feel this way; I don't want you to think I'm accusing you of anything, um, incorrect). I can even get so envious, once in a while, I don't even want to read the papers. My bad, of course.But now I know that this is just ego fatigue. I have a lot of friends who are really great scientists, who publish these amazing papers, and I know that they struggle with frustration just as much as I do (okay, maybe nearly as much). And sometimes, when I manage to somehow (!) get something I think is pretty cool through the gauntlet and into press, once in a while they are actually envious of me (I mean, my very close friends might tell me so).This is because science doesn't happen as a consequence of a few brilliant scientists making all the important discoveries over and over again (in spite of what the award machine would have us believe – hey, think about it, the people who give these awards do so, in part, to absolve their envy, and in turn, try to bring it back to them – we should talk about awards some time, but this isn't the time). It happens because lots of us are working on problems we think may be important, and sometimes we get answers that actually turn out to be (important, that is). Our envy keeps us alert to the hints and pieces found by others, and maintains our focus – if, that is, we don't yield to the dreaded fatigue (hey, put it on your t-shirt instead – really, it'll be funny!). That's the process.Thanks, I feel better. I realize that the problems that I'm apparently beating my head on are ones I've chosen because I think they're important – and I'll solve some of them, I hope. And when I'm a little green with envy because someone else managed to solve something cool, I'll pay attention to what they did, and learn from it if I can. But I won't let it undermine my own work – now that I know that's just an unfortunate side effect that can dampen my self-confidence, I can navigate the paths of my envy. Kermit was right, of course – it's not that easy being green. And, thankfully, that other green sage was also correct: "Always in motion, the future is."