第一眼看到李小文院士在中国科学院大学的照片，就仿佛回到1996年我刚到中关村读书的时候。那时候，中关村道路很窄，路边全是卖电脑的小店，经常堵车，没有现在大楼林立的气派。当时中关村有句关于科技工作者的说法：一块石头扔出去，会砸到几个教授（研究员）或院士。我开始不太相信，真的沿动物所门口向西，走到北大。一路仔细看路边走过的中老年人。大多数中老年人，少有正装，象村中老农，但都透着一股文气。后来时间长了，认识的专家多了，发现“石头说”还真有意思。话可能有些调侃，但是也反映出当时中关村知识分子较多、研究氛围浓郁的现实氛围。村不在大，人杰则灵。 先生们大多数都比较和蔼可亲，随时可以在科源饺子馆、路边修车摊、象棋摊攀谈起来，毫无院士、研究员、教授的派头。当然他们这样和学生打成一片，享受科研、生活的氛围，和当下把教授“叫兽”化的风气，自不可同日而语。教授除了专业方向或有一技之长外，七情六欲和普通人一般没有太大的差别。我不会喝酒，但来者是客，多数保证如假包换的8-12元的白瓶绿标二锅头。有的野外工作者喝两瓶还兴致勃勃，谈天说地，大有人在。如果去深山老林，高海拔地区，野外采集，喝酒驱寒那是必须的。小文院士被喻为金庸先生笔下的“扫地僧”，虽安居藏经阁，但出手便享誉天下。学问微妙之处，如同阁内经文，唯老僧入定方能参解。 率性之表，何必过多关注；但访谈之中，其过人之处，值得我辈后学慢慢体会。 2001年出国去匈牙利参加欧洲寄生蜂会议。按照所里的规定，用置装费买了一套便宜的西装。穿上博士答辩的时候，夫人给挑的衬衫，带了一条同学送的领带，历时24个多小时，到达匈牙利和奥地利边境的一个美丽的城市（Koszeg）开会。开幕式之前，我一身正装，准备去参加会议。正好隔壁住着我们这个行业的世界头号专家，Boucek博士和Masner博士。我就顺便去拜访一下，表达一下敬意，并咨询着装是否合适。两位老先生很耐心地给我讲解了一下。大意是，小同行开会，整齐端庄就可以了。正式宴会则需要正装出席。 2005年，我从英国回国之前，曾经受John S. Noyes博士夫妇和一个贵族自愿者夫妇邀请去泰晤士河边，议会大厦一楼的饭馆吃饭。我因为没有带正装，就和同在一个实验室访问的蒋国芳博士借了他的西装，并打领带去了大厦中。在大笨钟下，见到Noyes夫妇。John虽然是一个分类学家，但也颇有音乐天赋。少年的时候，就在音乐电台表演过。他夫人，Mary则经常参加教堂的唱诗班，并曾经得到过女王的嘉奖。他们还是第一次见到我穿正装，又是雨后的夏天，就建议我不用那么正式。在大厦里，邻桌就是一群大臣、议员在高谈阔论。大裤衩、西装，各式混搭，别具特色，个性张扬，和他们在会议室的穿着完全不同。后来，我单独受邀去合作者家、那对贵族老夫妇家，也没有再着正装，反而感觉休闲适宜，更加愉快。 前几年，国内开会，不论学者、官员还是企业家，都习惯西装笔挺。现在这些习惯也在慢慢发生变化，多样化、个性化的情况越来越普遍。 今天看Science，偶见下面的文章，觉得挺有道理。场合不同、职业不同、个性有异， 大家相互觉得 合适，有利于工作、交流就合宜。 Experimental Error Dress to Profess: What Should Scientists Wear? By Adam Ruben April 24, 2014 Fifty-year-old tenured professors wear whatever the hell they want, and 80-year-old professors emeriti wear the same clothes they wore at 50, minus pants. There's no wrong answer to the question, What's the best piece of advice you can give a science graduate student? Okay, maybe neglect your research would be a wrong answer. So would hit on your thesis adviser's spouse, and trust that a tenure-track position awaits you. But as I sat on one of those Ask a Complacent Scientist Who Already Has a Job career panels a few weeks ago at Florida International University, I thought no answer to that question could surprise me. Then one of the other panelists offered an unexpected piece of advice: Dress well, he said. In any other career, that advice would seem innocuous, even obvious. Of course you want to wear a power suit with 5-inch shoulder pads when you ask the big boss for a raise during a round of golf because (at least according to Bewitched ) that's just what businesspeople do. But for science? Dress well? Really? First of all, well is relative. For me, dressing well means wearing one of the few items of clothing I paid money for—instead of most of my wardrobe, which I received for free, partly at conference exhibit halls . More importantly, however, the advice just seems wrong for a scientist. If I came to work in a suit, everyone would ask me, What's with the suit? If I explained that I was just trying to maintain a professional appearance, I'd get looks of pity, assumptions that I'm joking, and possibly a referral to the human resources (HR) department. Look, the HR person would say, we need to have a chat about your appearance. Are you sure you're happy here in the lab? If you want to go work at a hedge fund, just say so. But for many scientists, dressing well is not just something that fails to interest us. It's something we actively shun because it might broadcast the wrong priority. Nice clothing says, I'm someone who cares about appearances, which means I can't be someone who understands Maxwell's equations. Some say that to succeed in science, we need to focus on our careers as closely as on our work. We need to brand ourselves, have a social media presence, and engage in self-promotion. Appearance doesn't just imply general hygiene and not smelling like farts. It's a form of marketing. Yet, in my experience, the more advanced the scientist—and the more focused and serious—the freer he or she feels to dress like a cartoon hobo. Twenty-year-old interns wear ties. Thirty-year-old industry postdocs wear khakis. Forty-year-old research scientists wear sweatshirts. Fifty-year-old tenured professors wear whatever the hell they want, and 80-year-old professors emeriti wear the same clothes they wore at 50, minus pants. It's as though every academic achievement grants you the opportunity to tone down your formality. Congratulations! the dean says at your graduation. Here's your Ph.D.—now take off that jacket! (Actually, I wonder: Are the 20-year-olds dressing more shabbily as their careers progress? Or are the best-dressed 20-year-olds getting weeded out by bench work, throwing down their pipettes at age 24, and saying, Screw this; I'm going to law school?) I decided to conduct a highly scientific research study on science clothing, which is to say, I did a Google image search for scientist clothing. Here are 10 items the world thinks we wear: CREDIT: Hal Mayforth Click the image to enlarge. 1. White Lab Coat This is the one piece of clothing that screams scientist. It is also worn by doctors, orderlies in sanitariums, and 1950's ice cream salesmen. 2. Goggles Goggles make sense if you're doing an experiment that might splash into your eye. But the perception of scientists as wearers of oversized plastic goggles has gone too far. I once taught a ninth-grade exam review class called Matter and Energy (alternately known as Science for Kids Constantly Distracted by Phones), and our textbook included instructions for several enlightening experiments. Each one included a photo of happy children taking measurements—but no matter how mundane the activity, the children always wore goggles. Massive goggles. Dropping a marble alongside a yardstick or writing a plant's height on a clipboard apparently requires full ocular protection. No wonder kids hate science. 3. Mortarboard Thanks, Google image search, for reminding me that scientists wear a mortarboard (flat graduation hat) to work every day. The mortarboard is the universal symbol of scholarship, and wearing one means that you are smart. In addition to scientists, it's often apparently worn by owls . 4. Wacky Science Tie As mentioned above, most scientists don't wear ties. But there's always that one guy . You know who I mean. He has a collection of dozens of science-themed neckties and bowties—constellations, periodic table, bacteria, fractals, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew —and he wears a different one every day. When he's not pirating manga or 3D printing his own circuit boards, he loves to remind the world that the conceits of fashion exist to be intelligently mocked. Let me tell you a secret about that guy: That guy is awesome. 5. Lab Timer Yes, this counts as apparel, since you clip it onto your clothing. Not only does it help remind you when experiments need your attention, it helps remind everyone in the room. BEEP-BEEP-BEEP! MY EXPERIMENT NEEDS ATTENTION! it shrieks. I'M IMPORTANT! I'M DOING LAB WORK AND NOT JUST SHARING BABY ELEPHANT PHOTOS ON PINTEREST! 6. Pocket Protector Like masking tape on eyeglasses, there was a time when this accessory was synonymous with general nerd culture, even though no nerds actually wore them. Now pocket protectors appear to have become an emblem of science, even though no scientists wear them. Come on, world: Pens aren't dripping ink like they were in the nineteenth century. We've gone to practically universal ballpoint. What's to protect? 7. Glasses with a Little Eyepiece that Lets You See Things Better I asked my wife to name something scientists wear. She said, Glasses … with a little eyepiece … that lets you see things better? I think she thinks scientists are jewelers. 8. Gloves Whether latex or nitrile, thermally insulated or polyurethane coated, gloves are a great piece of science clothing because they give you superhuman powers. You can handle hot, cold, sharp, or caustic substances without injury. In fact, if you wear latex gloves long enough in the lab, you'll start to wish you wore them all the time in real life. Look how grippy my fingers are! you'd boast. I can precisely manipulate tiny things! I feel like a basilisk lizard ! 9. A Pencil Sticking out of Your Hair Bun I've avoided discussing female-specific fashion because (a) it feels creepy for me to talk about what women wear, and (b) I don't actually understand anything about women at all. But the pencil-in-the-hair-bun is fairly straightforward. It's a pencil, and it sticks out of your hair bun. Then again, lab notebooks should be written in pen, so maybe this fashion has evolved. Women who maintain electronic lab notebooks presumably keep a flash drive in their hair. I don't actually understand anything about women. At all. 10. BSL-4 Positive Pressure Isolator Suit According to the Internet, which is never wrong, most scientists dress for work as though they're going to toss around a flask of Marburg virus while fabricating microchips inside a walk-in liquid nitrogen vapor phase freezer. The idea that we'd just stroll into the lab in street clothes is abhorrent, because it makes us seem human. *** The man who suggested scientists dress well certainly practiced what he preached; despite the Florida heat, he wore a sharp-looking suit, including cuff links and one of those dress shirts whose collar is a lighter color than the rest of the shirt. (You know the kind I mean. Like the kind the boss wore in Office Space .) Dressing well for an interview makes sense. It's a sign of respect and broad-spectrum cleanliness. But in everyday lab work, each step toward formality feels like a pretention that distances us from humanness, from preoccupation with substance, from truth. We are not gullible businesspeople whose stature can be influenced by something as frivolous as the name on a label. We are scientists, and our work is more important than our shoes. Self-promotion falls flat unless there's a hard-working scientist self to promote. They say you should dress for the job you want. Fine with me. I choose to dress for the job that doesn't care how I dress. Adam Ruben, Ph.D., is a practicing scientist and the author of Surviving Your Stupid, Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School . 10.1126/science.caredit.a1400104
标签: 衣着
