226
H. von Storch, J. S ¨
undermann, and L. Magaard
Die lieben Kollegen
29 come of course in all sizes and shapes. There are the nice
ones, the ones that are generous, that are stimulating, and that are open-minded—
Hank Stommel was a prime example of that. And then the average that doesn’t care
and is uninterested or irrelevant to you. Then of course the bad guys, the people that
are arrogant, troublemakers and are vicious. You have them all, scientists are just like
any other people.
You essentially select a group with which you feel comfortable and want to do
things. That group changes with time, with the interests that you have. Some people
stay a whole life in the same group because they never get away from a particular
subject. You change the groups when you change topics; you talk to other people
when you deal with deep circulation than when you do El Ni˜ no or climate.
Are there different ways of thinking? Is there an American way of thinking in oceanography, or a western European or a Russian way of thinking?
There will always be schools, that means interest groupings around a problem like
NORPAX or like GEOSECS. GEOSECS was one of the closest groups that I have
ever seen in scientific cooperation. There are more loose groups, but it is hard to
say—I haven’t been too much involved in group efforts.
Have you experience that certain groups were blocking progress?
Oh yes. As already said, science is very often a matter of fashion. When everybody was in ocean eddies, we had to fight long battles to get ocean monitoring
going. In later years the people who wanted to make so-called process-oriented
experiments were fighting bitter battles at the National Science Foundation with
other people who wanted to make ocean surveys like GEOSECS or like the WOCE
sections.
In the sixties there have been longstanding battles between the U.S. East Coast
and West Coast, Woods Hole versus Scripps. That went on. It was a competition
of opinions, very often. The Woods Hole people were interested in controlled experiments like MODE and POLYMODE and the kind, and the Scripps people were
largely interested in the larger ocean surveys that had relation to fisheries, climate,
and to largescale features. These are opinions that go back and forth. There is fashion
in science and group building, no doubt.
V
What are your forecasts of the future of science?
My general forecast of what will happen in the future is that first of all we will get truly
global coverage of observations, from satellite and eventually from other systems like
29 The dear colleagues.
H. von Storch, J. S ¨
undermann, and L. Magaard
Die lieben Kollegen
29 come of course in all sizes and shapes. There are the nice
ones, the ones that are generous, that are stimulating, and that are open-minded—
Hank Stommel was a prime example of that. And then the average that doesn’t care
and is uninterested or irrelevant to you. Then of course the bad guys, the people that
are arrogant, troublemakers and are vicious. You have them all, scientists are just like
any other people.
You essentially select a group with which you feel comfortable and want to do
things. That group changes with time, with the interests that you have. Some people
stay a whole life in the same group because they never get away from a particular
subject. You change the groups when you change topics; you talk to other people
when you deal with deep circulation than when you do El Ni˜ no or climate.
Are there different ways of thinking? Is there an American way of thinking in oceanography, or a western European or a Russian way of thinking?
There will always be schools, that means interest groupings around a problem like
NORPAX or like GEOSECS. GEOSECS was one of the closest groups that I have
ever seen in scientific cooperation. There are more loose groups, but it is hard to
say—I haven’t been too much involved in group efforts.
Have you experience that certain groups were blocking progress?
Oh yes. As already said, science is very often a matter of fashion. When everybody was in ocean eddies, we had to fight long battles to get ocean monitoring
going. In later years the people who wanted to make so-called process-oriented
experiments were fighting bitter battles at the National Science Foundation with
other people who wanted to make ocean surveys like GEOSECS or like the WOCE
sections.
In the sixties there have been longstanding battles between the U.S. East Coast
and West Coast, Woods Hole versus Scripps. That went on. It was a competition
of opinions, very often. The Woods Hole people were interested in controlled experiments like MODE and POLYMODE and the kind, and the Scripps people were
largely interested in the larger ocean surveys that had relation to fisheries, climate,
and to largescale features. These are opinions that go back and forth. There is fashion
in science and group building, no doubt.
V
What are your forecasts of the future of science?
My general forecast of what will happen in the future is that first of all we will get truly
global coverage of observations, from satellite and eventually from other systems like
29 The dear colleagues.