I Challenge You!
Jay Guarneri

   I came here from New Jersey. Known to many as the "Armpit of America," it is the state with the highest population density, the most superfund sites, and its capital is the leading city in the nation for car theft. Many I know seem to view it as a place where all is lost ecologically speaking, where corruption runs rampant. I, however, am in love with the state, and I have spent an inordinate amount of time arguing its merits to my friends. I strove to challenge what they "knew" about my home with the extensive bank of facts which I had collected during my years in the great Garden State. For example, the New Jersey Pine Barrens is the largest open space between Boston and Washington, and underneath it lies a large, untapped supply of clean drinking water, currently protected by the state. To the west, the state is bordered by the Delaware River, the longest undammed stretch of river east of the Mississippi, kept so by a treaty made with Pennsylvania in the early days of the nation that was designed to protect the shad runs. And did you know that there's nothing quite like a Jersey tomato, or that we have the best sweet corn anywhere?

   It's the act of challenging preconceived notions that I came here to pursue. I believe that the unchallenged mind ceases to think. Regardless whether an idea is right or not, it doesn't hurt for it to go up against someone's doubts once in a while. If the idea is incorrect, then its flaws will be exposed, and the idea discarded if the flaw is fatal; if the flaw is less severe, the idea is merely tweaked and thereby reinforced. If the idea is correct, then it stands firm and awaits the next challenge. In either scenario, the struggle is sure to spawn new questions that will lead to new and intriguing ideas. Debate is a tool with which we sharpen focus. I certainly did find challenges to my ideas and beliefs, in classes, in the dining hall, and just hanging out with friends. I even found a favorite debate partner, whom I could count on to provide a contrary view and a spirited discussion on matters of all sorts, particularly those concerning conservation biology. In classes, we often clashed with words, though we were good friends and agreed on a good many things.

   In Marine Mammal Biology I, my old adversary and I headed each team of our end-of-term debate on whether the Japanese should be allowed to hunt marine mammals. I had been asked to head the team in favor of the hunt, and agreed wholeheartedly, as I enjoy arguing the position that I do not agree with, especially if it goes against the views of the majority as well. Being the underdog provides an entertaining challenge that makes me feel I've thought out my ideas more fully. Arguing a point I do not agree with gives me a chance to really look at the other side's argument and to examine my views more fully than if I were to be arguing with the same collection of evidence I use to support them. While dismantling my own views and finding the weaknesses in them, I was also able to find the strengths in the viewpoints of opposition. With the help of a superbly skilled research and debate team that brought a myriad of skills to the table, we won the debate, but not without the other team struggling to expose weakness in our argument. My friend and foe led her debate team to dismantle our arguments as we dismantled theirs, until each side was left with but a few unshaken points and some concluding remarks. I came away with a much stronger core idea that would be harder to argue with.

   There were other channels outside of the College of the Atlantic's environs that helped further my idea challenging. This last summer, I found myself in England, working on a research project focusing on European eels. There, I found myself experiencing firsthand much of what I had been taught for many years, to be believed fully in high school and to be taken with a grain of salt in college. My experiences there showed quite clearly the value of a healthy dose of skepticism when taking in information. It is easy to forget that all of the figures produced in scientific studies are approximations at best, and watching the numbers get collected and compiled that would eventually be turned into the final figures through the wonders of statistics really drove that idea home. Also, there is the notion that scientists work cooperatively for the furthering of knowledge, ignoring the fact that they are just as human as anyone else and often answer to their own egos, agendas, or employers. All of these biases creep into the final product of the study. This was demonstrated for me by observing British government field researchers who had difficulty seeing past the trout and salmon, and hearing tales of the French eel researcher seeking to have his name appear on as many eel papers as possible.

   Ah, those pesky salmon. The British government's environmental agency (appropriately named the Environment Agency or EA for short) seems to put the most focus on species the public is interested in (i.e. salmon). This is the case for environmental agencies of many governments, and is appropriate in that government should focus on what the public wants. However, this focus does not provide the public with any alternatives or rally support for those species that are not as prestigious to catch on a dry fly. Also, their focus on the salmon becomes something much like tunnel vision, only looking at the salmon and the species and conditions that obviously impact the salmon. Ask an EA official if there are any obstructions to eel migration on a stream, and they will omit many things that salmon can get over, since they forget that eels cannot jump. Their entire biological frame of mind is based on salmon. Not only does this limit their expertise on eels and other non-salmon species, but it may prevent them from overlooking some aspects of the biology of the fishes that they are studying. I also suspect they would have quite some difficulty adjusting if the public interest turned to another group of fishes or to invasive species.

   The challenging of my ideas was not limited to debates with friends or to firsthand research experiences in other countries. Even in the course of normal lectures I would find myself questioning many of the "facts" that I had spent a good deal of time accumulating and was actually quite proud of. My impression coming in here was that I had a good stock of facts, figures, and concepts from all my previous years of school, and everything I learned in college would simply be additions to that stock, with perhaps some minor alterations to some partially faulty notions. Instead, I found the rug pulled out from under me, and many of my precious ideas began to seem shakier and shakier. John Anderson was particularly good forcing me to rethink my perceptions. Sometimes, it was hard to tell if he was just playing devil's advocate when using his ubiquitous query of "But is it really?" so as to make sure I had really thought through that which I was asserting, but most of the time it wormed out some detail that I had overlooked. I feel that the notion of myself as the Smart Guy who knew Things was the most radical idea challenge that I encountered, as it was the very idea my social identity was founded upon. Now, instead of being the smart guy, I am a smart guy, and much more willing to accept the possibility of being wrong.

   Being willing to accept that one doesn't know it all is essential to the scientist, but it also presents a major challenge to the multidisciplinary scientist, as the whole point of a multidisciplinary education is to be able to draw from more than one field of expertise. If one attempts to have a distinct focus in more than two or three disciplines, it is very easy to be left with a partial knowledge of several topics and a fairly complete knowledge of none. College of the Atlantic, however, allowed me to gain a solid, well-rounded knowedge of my primary discipline, field biology, a significant understanding of environmental chemistry that is directly applicable to the biology, and just enough of other fields to know which questions to ask and to understand explanations should I need to draw from them. I may not have taken all the classes, but I have held conversations with friends whose focuses differ greatly from mine, and who come from different backgrounds, and I have therefore been able to take some of what they have learned with me to reshape and strengthen my ideas and goals.

   The greatest strength that I shall take from my multidisciplinary education is the ability to challenge a wider range of ideas. Again, knowing the right questions to ask and having a basic understanding of topics that are not my forte prove vital. This puts me in a better position to question findings in these disciplines. Also, the very fact that these areas are not my strong points can aid in my ability to challenge and contribute to their ideas. In the same way that a child's unmolded mind can come up with a solution that an adult that has been told what to do would not have thought of, so too can a mind that is not an expert in a given field suggest a connection or incongruity to those who do specialize in that field by applying the perspective from which they have developed in their own field.

   As I continue on my path, I will remember to take what I learn with a grain of salt, and that the truth I see may not necessarily be the only truth. I shall continue to challenge the ideas of others and allow others to challenge mine. If that is lost, then the spark of life will be lost from my work, and anything I produce will be the product of numbers, nothing more. Numbers, while they tell a truth, do not tell the full truth. Numbers only tell a flat representation, a shadow of the truth. They will lack the connections of what I observe to other facets of this life, and any solution to a problem that I come to will be at best nothing more than a removal of the symptoms, but not the cause. So long as myself and others listen to each other and do not allow our ideas to become set in stone, the root of the problem may someday be teased out and dealt with.