What scientists can teach us about thinking together

A Nature article caught my attention this week with a very practical question: how can scientists make their lab meetings work better?

What struck me was not only the laboratory context. It was the fact that science has protocols for almost everything that matters — how data are collected, how experiments are designed, how results are analysed and how findings are reproduced.

But what is the protocol for thinking together?

That question immediately connected with my own work on collaboration. In Architecting Collaboration, I describe five steps, drawing on David Strauss, that help groups work more effectively: involve the right stakeholders, build consensus progressively, design the process, designate responsibility for facilitation and make good use of group memory.

Applied to a lab meeting, these ideas raise some simple questions. Are the right people in the room? Is the purpose of the discussion clear? Is the group presenting results, interpreting them, challenging assumptions or deciding on the next experiment? Can junior researchers disagree safely with more senior colleagues? And what happens to the alternative hypotheses, doubts and insights generated during the conversation?

AI is now making the last part increasingly easy. Platforms such as Google Meet, Zoom and Teams can capture transcripts, summaries and action points almost automatically.

So perhaps the more interesting question is no longer whether we can preserve the memory of a meeting.

It is whether the conversation was worth preserving.

This is where my Brain Hygiene experiment is beginning to stretch beyond individual attention and into collective thinking. If the quality of science depends partly on the quality of collective reasoning, then the way people meet, listen, question and think together deserves the same rigour we apply to everything else.

The protocol for thinking together is not a luxury. It is part of the method.