Stop framing STEM scholars as nerds dealing with complicated formulas

A few weeks ago, it happened again: a colleague with a non-science background boasted that mathematics is so incomprehensible. That really bothers me. The frame that mathematical formulas are inaccessible and eccentric hampers interdisciplinary collaboration.

It happened during the awards ceremony of two prizes. The first prize winner, someone from the humanities, was introduced very empathetically by that non-science colleague. The research methods were described with empathy; it was a nice piece of storytelling. But with the second prize winner, someone from the sciences, the very first thing said was that his research was very complicated - incomprehensible, so to speak.

The contrast was enormous. Where the humanities scholar was portrayed as a committed academic, the science scholar was stereotypically portrayed as a weird nerd. But the worst part was: the person who awarded the prizes boasted with a snigger that they didn't understand anything about mathematical formulas. At that moment, an in-crowd and an out-crowd were created. 

Math whiz
How can we work together if science and non-science people are still seen as separate groups, even at our own university?

Because this dismissal of formulas as complicated was definitely not a one-off. If you start paying attention, you'll see it everywhere. Every year, there are students in the interdisciplinary Master's where I teach who immediately throw their hands up at the first formula and resolutely proclaim that they absolutely can't do it.

I don't believe that. Mathematics is just a science like any other; a method for describing and investigating patterns and structures. My colleagues at the Freudenthal Institute are committed to making that method accessible to everyone. Working with formulas can be learned, it is not inherently more difficult than working with other methods. No one is born a math whiz. 

Climate crisis
Admittedly, academics from the natural sciences have long embraced this ‘mathematical formulas are inaccessible’ frame. It was a way to claim their place on top of the academic pyramid. A kind of gatekeeping.

A well-known XKCD meme is about this comparison of disciplines, in which several academic fields are ranked according to ‘purity’: sociology is applied psychology, is applied biology, is applied chemistry, is applied physics. But mathematics stands alone at the extreme end of this scale.

We need to stop comparing and ranking. The natural sciences are just as difficult/approachable/pure/relevant/academic as all other disciplines. Because how are we ever going to find solutions to the climate crisis if everyone working in- and outside academia does not work together on an equal footing?