Rock-Star Scientists in Post-Earthquake Nepal

With the recent earthquake, scientific knowledge in Nepal has been removed from the privileged individuals, institutions and social practices in which it usually operated; the “cultural sphere” where scientific knowledge circulates has shifted from high-brow to lower-mainstream. Indeed, all signs of a connection between science and privileged members of the population is being erased in order not to inspire anger and resentment among the wider public without such access to science. Politicians are playing the role of quiet, uninformed spectators, as if they had not been provided scientific rationales behind the earthquake, both regarding its cause and consequent safety measures (and in order that the “natural disaster” and its casualties is seen to have “natural” causes and not political, social or cultural causes.) Somewhere, a rock-star scientist is conducting the post-earthquake show. 

The rescue mission is in a “quick-relief” and technical-scientific mode: it is in the expensive and sophisticated jet airplanes now flying above, it is in the use of the most cutting edge infra-red cameras, it is in the hands of the more “scientific” (and hence “developed”) foreign rescuers, for whom the goal is to do the work efficiently as much as it is to be successful, and all the while even able Nepalis play the role of the uninformed and helpless. In fact, in the face of this foreign mission, it is because so many of us have to play the role of victims that we continue to stubbornly believe that we will be further victimized by more dangerous earthquakes. But this self-victimization is more so a problem of a sudden diminishing of work and productivity, rather than a traumatic and scared emotional response to the real crisis.

Scientists have organized scientific statements for the more “popular culture” public sphere and consequently scientific knowledge may soon be posted extensively out on the streets, advertised next to the images of consumer products, cementing the authority of science. Scientists have had to orient themselves towards utilization of the popular media, as opposed to the scientific journal, and for the sake of scientific knowledge scientists are to operate directly in the public sphere, exposing themselves to the interrogations of a general public, rather than operating in the gradual and methodical sphere of the seminar/conference. This kind of 'proletarianization' of science has been going on for quite some time, yet the intensity with which scientific knowledge has to be produced for the uninformed masses is especially high today. The scientist's audience is no longer an individual fellow scientist, the audience is a series of demanding but illiterate individuals.

A new bravery and "rock-star" ruggedness among scientists and scientific scholars is evident today, which is certainly to be admired, yet it will eventually lead to too intense a focus on the personalities of the scientists of Nepal and lesser focus on their innovative potential and knowledge production capabilities. In short, doing science in Nepal will be more about acting like a scientist and conforming to an image of a reasonable scientist: the scientist in this post-earthquake stage needs to 'look' the part more than anything else. Each individual scientist is to behave like an authority figure with full confidence on scientific knowledge; science becomes a matter of passion like music to a musician. And science will henceforth have a proper and permanent public face, the problem being that such a face demands a lot of attention.

With the imperative to respond to the trauma of the earthquake, authorities of science in Nepal have had to reckon with themselves with the question regarding their “unity regarding a common viewpoint,” as in, the scientists have to evaluate the complete knowledge and set of beliefs that each scientist has, in order to isolate the deviant scientists that possibly may not conform to the dominant explanation and logic of the cause of the earthquake. A new sensitivity to madness is under construction in wider society: it begins by the stigmatization of trauma in the wider public but its true purpose is to create and isolate the “mad scientist” identity, in order that the deviant scientists are quickly branded to be insane and hence their opinions deemed invalid. It is important to note that all scientists are to agree upon the cause of the earthquake, so that science as a discipline as a whole is legitimized and its circulation in the post-earthquake context allowed by the wider public.

In the later post-earthquake Nepal, a new series of scientists will soon be under development, in order that the legitimacy of science be generated in Nepal through sheer numbers among the total general public population. This “production-line” of scientists is itself quite dangerous, for such questions on the ethics and intellectual potential of the new scientists will be ignored, rather, people will be able to become scientists with relative ease, especially as the scientific knowledge of geology that these new scientists will have to learn and support seems quite simple in its current stage.