Lucia Martinelli: science is a political question – Barbara Bonomi Romagnoli

It is a sultry Sunday in mid-June, the gardens of the Trento station offer a cool shelter to several people between the statue of Dante and the pond. Just look up and Cesare Battisti’s mausoleum is there, on the hill overlooking the city, in memory of the Italian irredentism of the early twentieth century.

Lucia Martinelli, researcher at Muse, the Science Museum of Trento and president of the European platform of women scientists, a network of about 15,000 female scientists from all over Europe, was born not far from here, in her grandparents’ house. Her mother, a housewife and very creative, “knew how to talk to everyone and opened a house to anyone who needed it. At the end of the fifties, acquaintances arrived from neighboring countries, for a medical examination or to look for work, and she, with her great humanity, welcomed them for a coffee. I was little more than a child, now I tell myself that I took the empathic soul from her ”.

Lucia Martinelli has many souls, since elementary school she was passionate about music, she also played the ancient organ of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, but she was also curious to know what tuberculosis was or how allergies were treated: “The teachers they said I had too many interests: the truth is that I also identified a lot with the rationality of my father, a post-war public reconstruction engineer with great dissemination skills. I had difficulty with math and physics, but when he explained them to me he would exclaim: ‘It can’t be that easy!’ ”.

Growing up in Trento in the sixties, she learns at a very young age to play the guitar to sing the revolt and while we arrive at the restaurant, a historic place a few steps from the Duomo, she tells of how important music is in her life. During the conversation an entire playlist will come out, with songs ranging from Piazza Grande by Lucio Dalla to the ballads of Claudio Lolli that bring her heart back to the city of her studies in Chove en Santiago, taken from a sonnet by García Lorca in Galician and discovered during his stay in Santiago de Compostela with a Marie Curie bag, passing through Il player Jones by Fabrizio De Andrè, “who throws his instrument and his identity to the floor and goes on without regret”.

This is the philosophy that accompanies her since, after high school, undecided between Dams and biology, she moved to Bologna and graduated in biological sciences in the years of the metropolitan Indians (the so-called “creative wing” of the ’77 movement , born after the protests of 1968 in the area of ​​the extra-parliamentary left) and the dioxin incident in Seveso: “I went to attend the meetings in chemistry and I was also very interested in occupational medicine, but I wanted to deal with genetics, which in Italy was not yet very developed. So after the thesis I did my doctorate at the Agricultural University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, where plant biotechnology was developed. I would have liked to return to Bologna and stay there, but being a pioneer of those techniques I first had a job opportunity in California, sent by Agrimont-Montedison. Then I founded biotechnology research in the laboratories of San Michele all’Adige: the province of Trento was already at the forefront to support research ”.

Martinelli went through the nineties as a protagonist with the controversy over genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and is keen to clarify: “I was part of a generation that believed it could save the world with these techniques. The problem, however, is not science but its use. At the beginning of the 2000s, research in this sector shifted from the public to the private sector: on the one hand, industries forced their hand in the application, and on the other, the scientific community was unable to communicate that these techniques were not they only serve for profit, but for knowledge ”.

Today we have GMO seeds and foods, but with very precise and rigid regulations in Europe: “It’s a political question: how do you apply science, to whom the knowledge is in your hands and how it is communicated”, explains Martinelli, “on GMOs as on vaccines it is necessary not only to clarify the scientific aspects but also the personal and social ones. However, where there are ideological positions, a real confrontation is difficult ”.

It is not good, Martinelli is convinced, to give lessons: “One of the most difficult things for anyone to accept is that science does not give certainties and this is very disturbing. If a doctor tells me I have a 30 percent chance of getting well, what does that 30 percent mean for me? Is it a lot, is it a little? What emotions does it trigger me? The scientific community, of which I feel a part, often does not have the necessary empathy, believes that technical explanations lead people to accept a technology or a drug, while people need to understand above all the context, as well as the technical side. . An important aspect is trust. The degree of education does not necessarily produce confidence in science and in those who offer it. People want to be heard and feel that you understand their doubts. We cannot demean who you have in front of you with a lesson ”.

After many years of study with multidisciplinary international groups, Martinelli believes that “in Italy we continue to separate too much the humanities from the scientific ones. With the result that the average people have little scientific knowledge and the average scientific community has little interest in the cultural aspects of science and little communication skills. This helps to reinforce the stereotype of the ‘mad scientist’ or, more in bad faith, paid for by industry. We often hear that scientists are atheists or agnostics, I prefer to talk about secularism ”.

Secularism means listening without prejudice, but without derogating from solid and reproducible values ​​and methods. It is also for this reason that he has been working on communication for years, weaving science and art together. Among his projects also ETERNEeTÀ, the staging of a dialogue between a scientist and an artist on a very topical theme: the fear of aging.

“When I was in college, we had formed the ‘amoeba collective’ which is theoretically immortal. But the idea of ​​this performance was born from various suggestions, including the story of Henrietta Lacks, a black woman who died young in the 1950s from cervical cancer of the uterus and who never knew that her cells, taken with biopsy, are still used in laboratories today, and have even won many Nobel prizes. I have thought a lot about her story. I share the WHO idea: ‘It is better to add life to years rather than years to life’. What is the use of living long but badly? Science should focus on improving the quality of life ”.

Not only that, adds Martinelli while we are tasting a typical Trentino dish: “Still many people in the scientific community do not take into account that current science must consider gender innovation from both a biological and cultural point of view. For example, there is the risk of transferring our stereotypes to artificial intelligence, even those related to gender “.

“Prejudices can make science subjects less attractive to women,” she explains. “If you represent me only male or female models, Nobel Prize winners, it is certain that I am discouraged! Scientists are normal women, descended into our time. We must ask ourselves in which models a girl can identify herself today. It is no coincidence that since Samantha Cristoforetti talks about her work in schools, many girls say they want to be an astronaut or study science, because they feel close to her ”.

According to Martinelli, we are all living models and she focuses on an aspect that is fundamental for her: “I believe that no one should waste their talents, nor can we allow others to put them in check with bullying or mobbing, I consider them enormous crimes. This is also why I believe that mentoring, exchanging and supporting other people is very important. In my career I have experienced various obstacles, but I have also had a lot of help, even just a piece of advice or an opportunity, and I feel gratitude for all these people: I also hope to be able to do like them “.