Acting out the case study with Kuru and the tribe from Papua New Guinea solidified my understanding of the scientific process as well as how physicians (and anthropologists) perform their analyses and the shortcomings of each one. I was definitely expecting the physicians to discover more information and come to a conclusion quicker than the anthropologists, simply because they would have hard data and evidence of any biological clues from the Papua New Guineans. The fact that the anthropologists realized what the real issue was shows that the fields of science are not hard and fast, they often have to collaborate to achieve the result that they want.
I’m hoping that I can realize more ways in that scientific fields can collaborate with each other, and with artistic fields. Although science and art seem entirely separate I think there can be ways that art can express scientific thoughts and ideas that graphs or data tables cannot. The collaborations between anthropologists and physicians also shows that although it may seem that one has all the evidence needed to draw a conclusion, that is not always the case. As a physician, we had done as many experiments as we could and gathered as much data as possible, and had drawn a conclusion that we thought seemed satisfactory. And yet when another team presented their conclusions we were wary to accept what they had come up with. But ultimately we realized it was necessary to revise our conclusion. It made us realize that there is always room for revision and it’s very important for scientists to be open to other team’s ideas because we might not be getting the whole picture.