Survival of the Kindest: Neelika Malavige (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Prof. Neelika Malavige’s talk titled “Survival of the Kindest” at TEDxUSriJayewardenepura 2024 conference.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

The Concept of Survival of the Kindest

So, like most of you, one day I was just browsing through social media, Instagram actually, and I came across this cover page of New Scientist. And it said, “survival of the kindest.” Now, what does survival of the kindest mean? I mean, I was very intrigued by this.

Because from childhood, what we have heard is survival of the fittest. And what Charles Darwin meant was species which can adapt most to the change in the environment are most likely to survive. Many of us have taken it literally. And so survival of the fittest is meant, taken by us as to be the best out of the best or to succeed, nothing wrong with that of course, that you have to suppress the rest, you have to get rid of all competition.

Because of this unhealthy level of competition, we see a lot of mistrust and distress among the community. But when we come to survival of the kindest, how does that affect us? Now if you look at the human species, after all, the human species now dominates the world. So how did we become the dominant species in the world?

After all, if you compare us to other animals, they are much larger, bigger, stronger, and faster than us. And most of them can kill us in seconds. Is it because of our intelligence? If you keep the most intelligent man and a tiger, who will win?

The Power of Human Collaboration

We don’t want to ask that question. So I don’t know how many of you have read “Sapiens” by Yuval Harari, and he explains in his book that the reason why us humans have been able to dominate the world is because of our unique ability to collaborate with each other and work towards a common goal. So because humans work together, they were able to hunt large animals like elephants and rid of dangerous predators like saber-toothed tigers and dominate the world. And if you think about the things we enjoy right now, the accommodation we have, transport, food, films, music, it’s not one man’s achievement.

It’s because of the collective effort of a large number of individuals. So how does this translate into research and achieving the best in science? I want to reflect on my early research career where I started, which was in Oxford. So when I got the opportunity to do a PhD in Oxford, I was absolutely thrilled, so excited.

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But at the same time, I was quite worried and had quite a lot of insecurities. Am I good enough? Will I succeed? You know, all the little insecurities we have.

Personal Experience of Kindness in Research

And about three to four months into my PhD, I had set up this really important experiment. It took weeks to set up. It was super expensive. And at the final stages of this experiment, my daughter fell ill.

I mean, she got the flu. There’s no way that I can send a sick child to nursery. I had to stay with her to look after her. My husband had gone back to Sri Lanka for some work. It was just me and her. And I was feeling quite upset at this moment, and I was quite scared. I mean, what will people think of me? Will they say, “You can’t let your personal life interfere with work, those problems are not ours?”

Will they say, “You spent such a lot of money on it, and now it’s ruined?” I mean, whatever people said, I didn’t have any choice. So I called my friend in the lab and said, “You know, my daughter is sick, I won’t be able to come in. The experiment will be ruined.”

And she said, “Okay, where did you stop?” So I told her. And she said, “Don’t worry, we’ll look after it.” And they did. All my friends in the lab completed the experiment and looked after it. So from that day onwards, when anybody else had a personal crisis, a tough time, I would step in and help them. So during my third year, I had to develop this real-time PCR assay. I’m sure all of you are familiar with real-time PCR assays now.

The Impact of Kindness in Scientific Progress

Those are the type of PCRs we use for COVID. Back in those days, those were not very frequently around, and we had to develop them ourselves. So for that, I had to clone bacteria, plasmids, you know, all this stuff. So I worked really, really hard to do this.

And however hard I worked, it was not working. Over and over again, I was repeating it, nothing was happening, no result. And I was getting more and more frustrated and quite anxious. So this guy stepped in and said, “Don’t worry, I’ll help you.”

So he sat with me for weeks, worked alongside with me for weeks until I could do it by myself. So what did my friends and this guy who helped me set up this real-time PCR assay get out of it? Nothing. Did they know that they would get nothing out of it?

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Yes, they did. That’s how they do stuff there. They help each other. They are there for each other.

And in my PhD, the most important lesson I learned was not about immunological science, not about how to do these techniques, but how far kindness can take you. And when people are kind towards each other, how far they can progress, how fast they can progress. So then several years later, in 2019, I applied for this Wellcome Trust Grant Science Award. And I was lucky enough to get selected for this final interview.

The Culture of Kindness in World-Class Research Institutions

Now, this final interview is much, much more scary than any PhD, because there’s a room full of experts, professors from different universities in the UK, just firing questions at you.

They could ask anything. So it’s definitely more difficult and scarier than a PhD interview. But then so many people in Oxford, professors, everybody coached me to how to face the interview.

They took hours, different people just to coach me. And I was amazed. Why were they doing it for me? I mean, obviously, they were not jobless people. They were very, very busy people. But they took time to do this for me. And this really shocked me. But this is not something they did for nobody like me.

This is what they do for all their colleagues. So when somebody puts a research grant application, so many people go through it, give feedback, input. So that the colleague has the best chance of succeeding. If somebody is giving a talk, presenting their research, so many ask questions and give feedback, so that that project really progresses well and the best science comes out.

Not asking questions to put somebody down or showing how clever you are. So that just taught me a really important lesson, how powerful being kind is. So if you look at all these world-class research institutions, I mean, of course, they have fantastic infrastructure, funding, large number of staff. But more than that, they also have this culture of kindness, which is an incredible power.

The Need for a Culture of Kindness in Sri Lanka

It gives you so much power to go forward fast and do the best. So now if you compare with things over here, I mean, how many people share their expertise with others? How many would want to do that so that others can progress? When you have students, PhD students, master’s students, I mean, how many actually want to allevate that student and try to make the student achieve the best possible things that he or she can achieve?

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But if you have that culture in Sri Lanka, where you get in these places, the culture of kindness, would it make things different? So again, I’ll talk about my experience during COVID. So as all of you know, COVID just fell from the sky, literally. And all of us were in such great difficulties.

Every country faced difficulties, including Sri Lanka. And 31 of us in our team in Java, Danapura, stepped forward to provide service to this country. 31 of us worked 24 hours, 7 days a week, for so long, voluntarily. And we did over 200 PCRs, over 15,000 variant PCRs, antibody tests to discharge patients so that they can go home, contributed to genomic sequencing over 3,000, and at the same time, engaged in research of how vaccines work, how the population was exposed, and so on.

And in two years, put out 28 publications. Now, this is a lot of work. It was extremely tiring. People who knew the resources we had to do all this work, were asking, how did we achieve this?

The Power of Kindness in Achieving Great Things

I mean, how did we do all this work? So this is our team. And it was possible because of the way we interacted with each other, because we were always there for each other. Everybody was happy and enjoyed it thoroughly, although they were very tired.

So if somebody had any difficulty, there were so many others to step forward and help them. If somebody didn’t know something, there were so many to step forward and help them. And we were just one big family working towards a common goal, and just loved it. Now, currently, Sri Lanka is going through a difficult situation.

I mean, that’s a wrong statement. Sri Lanka has been going through a difficult situation for as long as I remember. And we have very limited infrastructure. We have very limited research funds.

That is not going to change tomorrow. We would want it to. We really wish it would, but it won’t. That’s the reality.

And we can’t change it overnight. What we can do is change the culture, change the way we work. Because by harnessing this power of kindness, you can achieve incredible things. Thank you.