dr hab. Urszula Zajączkowska
It has become more popular among scientists to focus only on research that helps achieve personal goals, and to avoid studies based on scientific curiosity, says Dr Zajączkowska, Faculty of Forestry, SGGW.
Dr. hab. Urszula Zajączkowska, prof. SGGW works at the Independent Department of Forest Botany, SGGW. She concentrates on the growth, anatomy, aerodynamics, and biomechanics of plants. Together with a group of artists, she created the Cambium Killers art project, an expression of opposition to the scoring system in science. A poet and a writer. She was awarded the Golden Rose and the Gdynia Literary Award for Patyki, Badyle (2019), and the Kościelski Foundation Award for the Minimum (2017). Her film, Metamorphosis of Plants, inspired by the work of J.W. Goethe was awarded at the Cinema Festival in Melbourne and the Light Festival in Miami.
Do you ever envy plants?
I envy them that they don’t have to kill to live, so I envy them being autotrophs. What is also amazing is that they are unfamiliar with taking revenge and that they can let go easily.
They are so different from humans.
The plant, when it turns out to be weaker, simply goes away, or to put it simply – it dies or it waits for its time and the light of the world.
Do plants fight to keep their position at all costs?
They fight, but when dominated, they let it go until there is another chance.
So in terms of competing with others, we beat plants?
In some sense, yes. This is also clearly visible in the modern system of science, the foundation of which is based on high competitiveness at every level, from a single scientist to universities. That is why more and more scientists focus only on achievements. These are not the conditions for homo sapiens, who should think and create the matter for reflection on reality. In this pursuit of publishing, we lose the ability to reflect on the world of nature, because all the language used to talk about it is often a cliché of outdated facts or naive repetitions.
So, what does practicing science mean today? Is it about cultivating new ideas, going beyond the routine, exploring new paths, or, as you wrote in your manifesto on the website www.cambiumkillers.pl, is it about replacing real enthusiasts with researchers forced to do piecework?
The permanent underfunding of Polish science means that people do not create what they can and what would be better. Difficult conditions make professionally burnt-out individuals leave or work at the level of the necessary minimum, without the strength to awaken their original passion based on surprise. Does anyone think about these people, or will we still just concentrate on the “successful” ones?
Unfortunately, all the most important things that should go hand in hand, i.e. human sensitivity and humanism combined with asking universal questions, have been destroyed by the fact that a e lot of scientists follow the pattern; what to publish, not what can done for a whole life, without obtaining the final answer, and what is really worth it, because it is still undiscovered. The natural sciences today have so much evidence of the beauty of the world’s complexity, and the people who discover it all are rich in important thoughts. Nevertheless, they shut themselves up in their divisions. The only regret is that instead of building bridges between people, we focus on solving tasks and collecting points.
Nobody wants change?
When I created the cambiumkillers.pl project and it was quite a long time ago, while preparing my doctoral dissertation, many scientists and artists expressed their solidarity with me. Of course, there were also those who refused to support and those who were afraid to appear in public, so they appeared on the list of supporters only in the form of initials. It’s been a while since then, and…well, nothing has changed.
Lack of energy or courage?
In our reality where only success counts, there is no room to appreciate the value of the process of following the truth, so people work under enormous pressure. This reminds me of the old, classic model of exploitative work, which is particularly bad for science, and should be based on freedom.
Would more women at universities change anything?
Yes, I think so. But there is some data indicating the increasing presence of women, moreover, that their role is appreciated. I am somewhat critical of various rankings of women in science because they reward those who have managed to be present in a men’s world and succeed in it. Sometimes it is even added that these ladies have the balls. However, no one talks about male scientists who have ovaries (laughs).
Is there any chance someone will finally stop this race before more people drop out?
That’s a good question.
So far, we are dealing with a situation where many people with the ability to do important things are leaving science. It is clear that the social status of a scientist is decreasing and that science is politicized. On the other hand, there are more and more people claiming that, for example, vaccines are an invention of evil, that the Earth is flat, and that climate change simply does not exist. That is why sensitive and educated people are so needed. They are not only able to notice a different spectrum of human activity but are able to talk about it.
Do you mean the popularization?
I mean building networks of interpersonal connections based on knowledge. Today, research papers are written in such a language as if the authors created them only for themselves. Who can understand it? Let’s add to this “effort” to ensure that the articles have open access status. This is hypocrisy. Access to science should be possible for anyone interested in it. After all, scientists work for taxes, and knowledge should belong to the people who pay the taxes.
Maybe scientists just don’t like such openness?
In the case of evaluating the value of the work of a scientist or their field, popularization is the least important. Evaluation systems clearly show how poorly it is valued. And yet, translating the world from the perspective of the latest discoveries is a very important task for man. Especially now, when I have the impression that there is a huge interest in life and nature when a climate catastrophe is so real.
So what’s left?
Hard work and constant efforts to get real funding and more openness. We can sit at universities all our lives completely detached from the sensitivity of the world, which unfortunately many researchers are already doing, choosing shortcuts. This can be clearly seen in the example from my backyard, where Arabidopsis was a sensation.
What stands behind its success?
Well, it allows us to get results faster, and get a lot of p points and publications. Arabidopsis is a kind of mental shortcut of botany, the queen of experiments, the mother – the source of knowledge about the plant kingdom. It is an undemanding plant that closes its life cycle in six weeks, which is why almost everyone is researching it.
However, you have chosen a path that is definitely different from the dominant trend.
I work slowly, falling into different directions of thinking. Unfortunately. I am on the side of the “stamp collectors”, the magnifying glass, and Newton, those silent observers, who move away in amazement that we can share. I consciously chose a rather solitary path. I can’t race, I prefer to explore and build space for thinking. That is why I also write columns, essays, and poems. That’s why I studied at the film school. I conduct a lot of experiments, especially those based on plant movements and analysis of their kinetics.
So, you are researching mint, nettle, horsetail, echinacea… What is so unique and intriguing about them?
They are all extremely interesting and raise many questions. The first two have a four-sided stem, and it should be noted that a right angle is rare in the natural world. In addition, mint grows very intensively so it is easy to analyze, It also contains a lot of essential oils, so there is no practical problem with any pathogens that can be a nightmare in the laboratory. We have proved that its nutation movements are correlated with changes in lunisolar gravity. In turn, the nettle reacts very badly to any mechanical stimuli, e.g. touching.
We also don’t like getting in touch with it too much.
Yes, and we’re not the only ones. Its stinging hair is equally unpleasant and repulsive to any organism.
And yet you managed to touch it without the risk of experiencing unpleasantness.
To make it possible, we constructed a machine equipped with an arm. With its help, the tops of the stems were touched rhythmically with a piece of paper every one and a half minutes. I have to say that the results of this study are very interesting. We’ve learned a great deal about how plants perceive signals. We are just finishing a paper describing the effects of mechanical stimulus on gene expression, leaf shape, and symmetry, and on plant anatomy and movement.
Plant movements are fascinating.
Indeed. We already know that mechanical stimuli block the nutation movements of shoots. When young mint leaves are touched, the plant stops moving for two or three hours. To avoid such situations, we have created a laboratory at the Faculty of Forestry, where we carry out research using the non-contact method.
Maybe the plants are untouchable, but they dance so nicely. It is impossible not to admire them when watching the film Metamorphosis of Plants, recorded in the SGGW greenhouses. It was inspired by the work of Goethe.
Oh yes. Thanks to the fact that we used the time-lapse film method in the project, we were able to observe the phenomenon that would not be noticed. For me, it is still a prelude to building a story about life in general. I find a source of artistic inspiration in this kind of experiments.
by Aneta Zawadzka
photo. HZ