Bill Gladstone

Deputy Chancellor, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Associate Dean, members of Council, staff and colleagues, distinguished guests, graduates and families and friends of our graduates.

Firstly, I’d like to acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. I would also like to pay respects to the elders, both past and present, and acknowledge them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for this place.

Secondly, I would like to congratulate all graduates on your wonderful achievement in reaching this milestone in your life. However, I don’t think I’m as excited as the brother who called out to his sister, which was – I thank you for doing that, because it just reminds us how important this day is, not only for the graduates but also for their families. Thank you for that. I acknowledge that today, you are graduating as scientists, mathematicians, engineers and information technologists, and I hope that you will bear with me in my speech as I use the term science and scientific in an inclusive way to encompass all of you. I’m really excited for you to be starting your own journey on the scientific life.

As the Deputy Vice Chancellor said, mine began when I graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Marine Biology and Zoology from the University of NSW. This was followed by a PhD from Macquarie University, for which I researched the causes of variation in the social behaviour and reproduction of fish. Having gone straight through from high school to graduating with a PhD, I then realised I needed time away from educational institutions, and even though I loved science, I was unsure what type of work that might involve. So I started exploring and following my curiosity and my interests. I worked with the ABC Natural History film unit, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in Townsville, and then overseas, where I worked as a scientific advisor on marine conservation projects in the Red Sea for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the United Nations. I returned to Australia to start the academic phase of my scientific life, first at the University of Newcastle, and then here at UTS in 2010.

My varied scientific life has included discovering new things about the behaviour of fish and sharks, and the location that the Deputy Vice Chancellor referred to was Hawks Nest Beach off Port Stephens, where there’s an annual gathering of juvenile of great white sharks – but there’s been no attacks there, so don’t worry. It has also involved working around the world on fascinating and meaningful projects; making a positive difference to the lives of people and to the environment, working with inspiring people, many of whom are on the stage today; being immersed in nature; and having some of the best experiences of my life. There are, I believe, few other careers where it’s possible to have this range of experiences and impacts. This is a critical time in human history, I believe, to be a scientist. We need scientists more than ever, and even if you don’t end up working as a professional scientist, human society and the environment need you to leverage the education you received here at UTS to live as a scientist.

So what do I mean when I say ‘to live as a scientist’? Firstly, it means using the scientific method in your search for understanding, continually learning and developing your skills in whatever you do, being creative in your problem solving, and using and expecting evidence for decisions. I’ve learned also that through the different ways I’ve worked as a scientist that it also means other things, and I’d like to share with you those today. And coincidentally, these also resonate with some of the comments that the Deputy Chancellor made.

Living as a scientist means being emotionally intelligent. The best work, as well as the best science, happens when we collaborate with others. The productivity of a team is greater than the sum of each individual’s separate productivity, and in my experience, when the team works well, each person is more satisfied and happier – a constant feature of effective collaboration is honest communication. Our ideas develop through critique, reflection and re-evaluation, and this requires us to develop emotional resilience to this criticism. It also requires us to have empathy for people about the possible effects of our criticism on their ideas and their work. Sadly, I’ve seen talented people give up on science because of criticism they have received that goes beyond the best intentions of scientific development to being too harsh and too personal.

Being emotionally intelligent means being able to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, recognising your own emotional reactions and thinking about them before you act, seeing difficult situations as a challenge to work through and personally develop, and listening attentively, and managing your anger, fear and envy. Work on your emotional intelligence by being humble about your strengths and brave about developing yourself. Leading a personally satisfying scientific life that enriches the lives of the people around you requires emotional intelligence as well as the scientific skills and knowledge.

Living as a scientist also means putting safety first. A lot of scientific work has risks. The scientific work I do is very risky. For my PhD research, I spent 2500 hours underwater, and 95 per cent of that time I was on my own. I would leave the research station each morning in my boat with several scuba tanks and my lunch, and travel to my study sites and return at the end of the day, often without seeing one other person. I thought I was in heaven. But in addition to numerous cuts, encounters with strong currents and sudden storms that filled my boat with water, I was threatened by sharks three times to the point where I had to physically fend them off by punching or kicking them, and fortunately I wasn’t injured.

While doing an underwater survey in the Torres Strait, which is that body of water that separates Australia for Papua New Guinea, my dive buddy and I became separated in strong currents from the boat that was meant to be following us on the surface, and we spent several hours drifting in the open ocean with just our heads above the water, watching the boats search for us on the horizon until eventually we were found. I’m humble enough to say that I’m alive today and I still have all my body parts, not just because of my skills and experience in working in these difficult circumstances, but largely because of chance. And being the receiver of chance is not the best situation to be in in difficult situations. I now supervise research students and staff, and I’m responsible for insuring they know about the safety risks in their work, and that the best safeguards are in place, and because I pay a lot of attention to their safety.

But you don’t need to have been attacked by sharks or lost at sea to appreciate the need for safety. Living as a scientist means putting safety first, and for me this is more than a legal obligation. It’s another way that we look out for each other. Living as a scientist means, at times, defending science. Some time ago, I did some research that showed there were more fish in a marine national park compared with surrounding areas outside the park, and the findings indicated that fishing was the cause. My project was written up in the Sydney Morning Herald, and included a photo of me in my diving gear getting ready to enter the water. I was really pleased the research was getting noticed, and so you can imagine my surprise a few days later when I opened the Sunday papers and read savage attacks on it and me in the fishing pages, and these were followed by letters to me from enraged fishing groups. It was my introduction to science and public debate in the media, and I hadn’t been prepared for it – I hadn’t been prepared for the anger within it. And so I stopped, for some years, talking about that part of my research, and I wish now that I hadn’t.

Several years ago, I was president of the NSW branch of the Australian Marine Sciences Association at a time when the science underlying government policy about marine conservation was being challenged by interest groups who did not believe their use of the ocean was having an impact. I and some of my marine scientist colleagues publicly defended the science that we thought justified the government’s use of marine national parks. We and our scientific credibility were again attacked in the media and at meetings by these interest groups, and I’ve also watched it happen to friends who speak publicly as scientific experts about the evidence for climate change. Living as a scientist means at times we have to defend science. This doesn’t mean that we treat it as a religion and fail to see the imperfections. It means defending the scientific methods and conclusions that arise from accumulated evidence, and it can occur not just in the media but within your circle of influence – your friends and your family.

So in conclusion, science is the best approach that we humans have developed for understanding the universe, our world and the rules that govern it. Scientific explanations are testable – they help us to predict the future, and they can be leveraged for innovation and development. It’s a great pleasure to work as a scientist. It’s even more of a privilege to study human or animal diseases or environmental issues and to play a part in reducing suffering, restoring quality of life or ensuring the earth is in a good state for future generations and for the living organisms who share it with us. In these days, when leaders are not looking to the future but relying on old thinking, attitudes and ideologies and valuing strong opinion above evidence, it is a critical time in human history to be a scientist and to life as a scientist. I wish you great satisfaction, meaning and success in your coming life as scientists. Thank you.