Response Paper

In his article “Science: Collaboration, Competition, and Reputation,” Surowiecki (2005) outlined how groups of scientists from different nations worked together to find the cause of the deadly SARS virus. He argues that even though this collaborative effort was extremely successful in finding the source of the virus quickly, this sort of partnership in the global scientific community is rare. Surowiecki even claims that very productive researchers work with other scientists from different nations. This is an interesting notion since one would think that after the success of finding the SARS virus, scientists would be inspired to work together more often. There could be several ways to make global partnership among scientists happen more often, such as mandating that science students to research with international peers before graduation, and demanding that labs hire scientists from a variety of backgrounds.

If students are required to work with a peer from another country while still in university, they will be more prepared to do so again once they are working as full-fledged scientists. Universities could provide programs that make it easier for students to find partners who have similar interests and help them design a joint research project. Students should even be given the opportunity to travel to different countries to work to get exposure to different languages and methods of doing research.

Labs should also be required to recruit researchers from various different countries. Even though in the example of the SARS virus there was no leader, the WHO asked that labs from 11 different countries work together. If labs did this all time as part of a mandatory hiring scheme and purposefully hired a diverse staff, then they would naturally bring their own ideas and backgrounds to the table when working together.

In conclusion, research companies and scientists should try to collaborate on a global scale more often. This might be easier if they were required to do so as students while in university, and if labs were mandated to hire researchers from different countries. This could lead to more important scientific breakthroughs, as was demonstrated by the case of the SARS virus.