In this talk I want to discuss some of my reasons for doing the research that I do, as well as my scientific excuses. People generally give only “scientific” justifications (excuses)  for their research, and rarely explain, or perhaps even consider, the real reasons why they choose either a career in research, or a particular project, or a particular approach to a project. Before we start I have to come clean. My motivation for a career in research has always been the opportunity to take long quiet holidays in some of the most remote and spectacular parts of the world, and to call it part of the job: flying around in helicopters with glamorous field assistants, clambering up volcanoes, crawling about under glaciers… visiting landscapes spectacular in both physical and human terms. I've been paid to go all sorts of places, to see all sorts of wonderful things, and I've had the opportunity to meet all sorts of wonderful people. What more motivation could I need for a career in research?!

If we are lucky we are faced throughout our life with choices. In making those choices (we like to believe) we can, to some extent, guide our futures. For example the student members of the GeoSociety are faced now with choices about their future careers: some of you might be considering a career in research. Different people look at things differently. Recently a former student (let's call her "Miss A") wrote to tell me that she was really pleased to have achieved just the job she wanted: it didn’t leave her a lot of time for her own interests, but it was well paid and had good promotion prospects. She said she was so busy she hardly had time to think. Now a job like that wouldn’t suit me, but it seemed to make her happy. We’re all different, and we do things for different reasons. A choice of career that suits one person wouldn’t suit another.  A choice of research project that would suit one dissertation student, or one member of the academic staff here, wouldn’t suit another. A Professor in this department  told me in a meeting a few weeks ago that he was particularly pleased with his new project because somebody else would have done the project if he hadn't beaten them to it and got the grant first. His attitude seemed strange to me, because I would be more interested in doing something that other people weren’t about to do: something that wouldn’t get done if I didn’t do it myself. My approach to choosing my research projects is different from that Professor’s. He sees science as competition, or as business, whereas I see it as creation, or as adventure. Our motivations are different, in just the same way that the motivations that led me to choose my career and Miss “A” to choose hers are different. Different people do things for different reasons.

I spend a lot of my professional life asking people why they are doing their particular bit of research, and why they are doing it in the particular way that they have chosen. I’ve been doing that for nearly 20 years, partly because it’s been a part of my job, and partly because I find the answers that people give quite fascinating. If we could assemble all the people to whom I’ve said “what are you trying to find out?” and “why are you doing that?” they would fill this room many times over (and I believe I would be in considerable danger)! And all these different people have one thing in common in the answers that they have given me. None of them have been completely honest. What they have always given me is their excuse for doing the research, not their reason. Sometimes people tell me what they tell me because they assume that I am only interested in their scientific motivation. Sometimes they tell me what they do because they think that I will expect them only to be concerned with scientific justifications. Sometimes, I’m afraid, they tell me what they do because they haven’t really thought through for themselves the real motivations behind their choices. For a few weeks before I was invited to give this talk I had (this) scrap of paper on my desk. It says: “The real aims of research projects.” I scribbled that down after my most recent encounter with a research colleague whom I felt was giving me what he thought would be plausible excuses, rather than real reasons, for what he was doing. When I was asked to choose a topic for this talk, this scrap of paper provided me with the inspiration for my theme.

Let me try asking myself those two key questions: what am I trying to find out, and why am I doing that? Let me tell you about the research I do and give you my scientific "excuses". I am trying to find out about basal ice. (Go here for a quick introduction to basal ice if you need it!). What exactly am I trying to find out? I have a long term set of aims (I've had them since 1984):

1. to relate basal-ice types to origins in specific subglacial environments
2. to identify preservation of ice-type signals in glacier-margin deposits
3. to use deposits to identify former basal-ice types and hence subglacial environments

So I have a coherent story that, I think, provides some internally consistent justification for what I do in my research. However,  those are my EXCUSES. They justify what I do. But they don’t explain it. I could have done something different, and still come up with a coherent excuse. I could have done rivers, or cities, or cancer, or the starving millions, or the history of art. My excuse builds a consistent framework around what I do, but it doesn’t tell you why I do it. It doesn’t tell you why I do basal ice as opposed to rivers. It doesn’t tell you why I do Geography as opposed to History. It doesn’t tell you why I do academic research rather than merchant banking.

Some of those reasons are historical accidents or personal circumstances that wouldn't interest you, other than to note that they may be historical accidents and personal circumstances. But to me, they are the essence of why I do research. My reasons are often private. Only my excuses are usually public. But now let’s look again  at my own research and ask again what I’m doing and why: not just the excuses this time… the some of the reasons as well. What I am working on at the moment involves organising trips to Iceland, Greenland and the Lake District. Why am I doing that?

ICELAND:
Excuse: I am personally curious because colleagues are saying something that I believe to be mistaken and I want to check the evidence for myself. Sense of curiosity justice scientific right/wrong.
Real reason: same as excuse (plus opportunity to revisit old haunts).
Personal feeling: duty. job. career / scientific responsibility, ugly glacier, mitigated by holiday opportunity. Puffins, but full of tourists.

GREENLAND:
Excuse: important to long-term research goals, key basal ice site.
Real reason: (i) I’ve fallen in love with a little patch of earth and I want to go there to visit every few years. (ii) my job demands that I do research, and I can do it here quite productively.
Personal feeling: adventure, excitement, fun, fear. Personal (hobby) interest in site glaciology. Long holidays, lovely countryside, and time to think.

LAKE DISTRICT:
Excuse: UK analogue, critical location for climate change and ice-sheet dynamics modelling from Geomorphic data.
Real Reason: I don’t get out enough lately - I want to be able to do fieldwork in nice countryside more often, more cheaply, and closer to home, without always having to stay away overnight.
Personal feeling: relaxing summer days out in the hills. Long holidays, lovely countryside, and time to think.
 

So where does that leave us at the end of my hour? What can we conclude from what I have said? Science is a messy, personal thing, and decisions in science are made for messy, personal reasons, as well as "scientific" ones. For me, science is a creative art, and a hobby as well as a job. But that's just because that's what I want it to be: that's the kind of approach that suits me. If a career in research gives you the opportunity to do things that you enjoy, then I recommend it.  If the type of career I have described doesn't appeal, then of course there are other approaches to research: there's room for thinkers, for doers, for modellers and experimenters and fieldworkers: the trick is to choose an approach that suits you.  My advice is that if you do decide to follow a career in research, make sure that you follow it in a way that suits you. We all do things for different reasons, and that's OK.