Team Work Makes the Dream Work

I love being a part of the scientific community. Now, don't get me wrong, we are an awesome group for a multitude of reasons. However, I find our best asset is our need for collaboration. Scientific research requires collaboration. The scientific community is a safe haven to discuss hypotheses, scientific methods, theories, and advice. While one scientist can make a major a breakthrough, he still received help from others. These, "others," can take form in past text books, conversations with scientists, and with data already found. What I am getting at is that we are a team. Without our colleagues, science would be much more stagnant and we would not have nearly as many breakthroughs. We compose research articles, proposals, and Environmental Impact Reports. In each of these genres, the acknowledgements and references take up at least one page alone. This further proves that science relies on team work. We MUST remix each other's work in order to find new discoveries and relationships. We do it every time we look towards others for inspiration, read pre-existing data, and test pre-existing theories. It is our moral duty to improve the world with our findings. Selfishness has no place here.

Collaboration of thoughts and ideas can get tricky, legally. Thanks to Fair Use laws, it makes it easier and more accepted to incorporate data and observations from scientists around the world because their work is educational and can better the world. One is not allowed to hold these findings from the public, it goes against the many reasons we become scientists in the first place. That being said, there is a reason our reference sections are so long. Since science requires team work, it also requires recognition. Always give credit where it is due! We thrive off of collaboration because we include each collaborator. So, in other words, work with each other. Draw inspiration from each other. Design experiments together. Togetherness is key for our community to make the world a better place. In other words, team work makes the dream work.

Linked below is a page within the United States National Park Service. It lists all rangers who collaborated on the,Yellowstone Resources and Issues Handbook. I wanted to provide an example for how many people work together to create one product, in this case a handbook.