Learning from the firefighters
Written by Ioanna Karamichali
As scientists , contributing to society is one of our main goals – or at least it probably was when we started out . We all , at some point , longed for the trust and appreciation granted to scientists , thinking : I want to offer something important , I want to help people , I want to save lives . Soon enough , though , we realized that not everyone appreciates our efforts , that many times our research fails , or the impact is not as significant as we had hoped . And somewhere between this realization and our insane working hours , our struggle to keep our solid academic aims and personal life in balance , we , the scientific community , may have lost touch with reality and the immediate problems that our society faces , endangering the trust invested in us . This impaired trust has become obvious in the past years , during which the public opinion , misled by dangerous misconceptions , has disregarded concrete scientific evidence about serious matters , like global warming and child vaccination , putting our future in great danger .
Firefighters , however , have always been warmly embraced by the public . There is a sort of effortless awe associated with them since our childhoods ; a kind of a deep admiration and trust that these people simply inspire . How can one not admire the people who , when everyone else runs away , go against every fundamental survival instinct and enter the fire in order to protect other people ? Is there , I wonder , any greater offering to the common good than risking your own life on a daily basis for people you do not even know ?
So , maybe firefighters could teach the scientific community how to reconnect with society . Two wonderful people , featured here , will help us to con- nect and learn from firefighters since they are not only members of the scientific community , but also volunteer firefighters in the fire department of Tübingen .
Meet Johannes Rheinlaender and Tobias Brändle , two postdocs in our little city . Johannes is a physicist at the Tübingen Applied Physics Institute , developing novel microscopy techniques that have direct medical and biological applications . His work is closely related to various avenues of cancer research and it could be vital for a cure in the future . Tobias is an economist at the Institute for Applied Economic Research where he researches ways to best utilize government resources , aiming to provide guidance during the formation of new laws . In particular , he has focused on one of the most important causes of low quality of life and poverty in developed countries : unemployment .
Even though the scientific fields of Johannes and Tobias are completely different , their lives and ideas are quite similar . Both entered the Youth Fire Department , an organization similar to the boy or girl scouts , at an early age . Even after they left , both kept their connection to firefighting alive through volunteering during their studies and their academic careers , in spite of their ever-increasing workloads .
Volunteering in the fire department is physically as well as psychologi-
18 | NEUROMAG | November 2017