The Covid-19 pandemic taught us how complex the science and management of infectious disease can be, as the public grappled with rapidly evolving science, shifting and contentious policies, and mixed public health messages. The purpose of scientific communication is to make the complexity of such topics engaging and accessible while also making sure the information conveyed is scientifically accurate. With that goal in mind, one MIT team recently transformed themselves into time-traveling comic book characters, in an effort to convey the fascinating history of infectious disease science. The multimedia project, 'A Paradigm Shift in Infectious Diseases,' follows its creators ' and the story's protagonists ' on a journey through scientific history. MIT Associate Professor Lydia Bourouiba and cancer-researcher-turned-graphic-artist Argha Manna travel across the world, leaping from one century to the next to learn about paradigm shifts in science from philosophers of science and to meet scientific luminaries and other scholars as they changed the understanding of infectious diseases and their transmission....
It is a great privilege to be a physicist because all you need to remember are the fundamental laws of nature and everything else is derived from them. There is no need to memorize individual phenomena because they represent manifestations of these laws. Knowing the laws that govern nature brings efficiency to the way you figure things out. All atoms in the Universe obey the same law of energy conservation with no exception. The universality of physical laws is remarkable given the backdrop of human interactions. There are no universal laws that govern people, as evident from the busy schedule of the legal court system. In difference from atoms, there is always an abundance of people who break societal laws. Psychologists are well aware of the risk of forecasting human actions; if the individuals are aware of your forecast, some will violate it just for fun. But even in human relationships, there is a path to better efficiency. It is followed by being truthful. If you speak the truth, you do not need to remember what you already said a while ago, because the truth is backed by reality and reality is always consistent with its past. Deviations from the truth require us to carefully craft subsequent deliberations so that they will be consistent. This in turn requires us to remember what was already said in order not to break apparent consistency and reveal the lie. After getting married, I told my wife that she can count on me being truthful in our relationship, because having an affair and remembering a false narrative is too much work. She noted: 'This is not romantic.' But she quickly realized that she can count on it, just the way a physicist counts on the laws of physics. Both are efficient ways to maintain simplicity, honesty and trust....
