Collaboration

I was completely mistaken to suggest sending a copy of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations to those emigrated to Pluto. They’ve certainly studied this bible well – at least for the first paragraph. That’s why they put so much emphasis on doing collaborative research.

No, it is not collaboration – according to their definition – if you are a rheumatologist and he is a cardiologist, and you two propose to do some work on premature atherosclerosis in lupus patients. It must be the marriage between a hematologist and a (basic) pharmacologist, a neurosurgeon and a musician, or a psychiatrist and an architect. (Alas, the children of the last couple – we know just too well – are called Fung Shui [風水].)

And polygamy is much encouraged – if you manage to arrange a wedding between three or more sexes.

Well, I do not object collaborative work, but there is no need to give up everything else, or do something merely for the sake of collaboration. Having people from different fields do not always result in fresh idea. More often then not they just use all the time to understand each other – or worse, to juggle with politics or bureaucratic formalities.

Our friends in Pluto have probably forgotten the most ambitious collaborative work in human history was the Tower of Babel.