Full STEAM at STEM

You may already be familiar with the acronym STEM. If not, it stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and was introduced to the world in 2001 by the US National Science Foundation (NSF) (1). But there's one essential group missing: the arts. I am committed to extending it to STEAM, and here is why.

Arts and science have long been inseparable partners in crime. You only have to look at the many manuscripts of the Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci to see this. His notes are littered with drawings, many of which have become popular works of art over the years.

Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” 

[©Paris Orlando used under CC BY-SA 4.0]

Illustrations as part of scientific papers can drastically enhance the content they cover; many publications include what's known as a graphic abstract, a single image that captures the most important aspects of the research being presented. Creating a good and informative abstract requires a mastery of artistic rendering and an eye for what is essential to the research at hand. Composition of elements, choice of colour and stylistic elements all come together in a well-formed abstract that summarises the findings of a 10+ page paper.

In February 2024, a now retracted Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology paper (2) caused controversy for its apparent and appalling use of artificial intelligence (AI) to create its figures. The anatomically questionable depictions of a mouse were quickly circulated and ridiculed by the scientific community, raising questions about the use of AI in publications and the trustworthiness of the peer-review process. Unlike a human researcher, the AI doesn't understand the context of the research and is ill-equipped to abstract the important information. It's as if the AI picks up some of the words in the text, makes up images to go with those words, and throws them together, often producing very colourful, pretty-looking images, but ultimately devoid of information. Clearly, the ability to translate complex content into a graphic, understandable and accurate representation is one thing that machines are far inferior to a true artist at.

Left: Example of a real graphical abstract from a published research article (3) [used under CC BY 4.0].

Right: GPT-4o mini's rendering of a graphical abstract for the same article,

even after providing the original figure as a template.

The fact that nature itself contains a fascinating, natural beauty is probably why so many of the early great minds of the last century doubled as artists. One striking example of nature's beauty is the prevalence of symmetrical patterns within it. While it is still hotly debated whether the human preference for symmetry is innate or something we learn to appreciate over time (4), there is a good reason why we find symmetry, and therefore beauty, in so many corners of nature. As researchers led by British scientist Professor Ard Louis of the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford wrote in their 2022 paper, symmetry and recurring patterns arise from the need for less specific information (5), or put more simply, it's less time consuming to draw only half a picture when the other half is just a mirror image.

Photo by Janiere Fernandez

Over the years, I have also come to realise just how many opportunities there are for artistic expression within the classic STEM disciplines, beyond nice looking graphs in a paper. From calendars with microscopy images, to team shirts and project patches inspired by those of space missions, to full-blown canvas art pieces created at international conferences, the possibilities for artistic expression in one's chosen discipline seem endless. A simple online search for SciArt shows just how much science can inspire and engage a wide audience without so much as a word.

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” 

 A proverb attributed to Frederick R. Barnard

(Advertising Manager, 1921)

Since almost all of the educational disciplines grouped under the STEM acronym are inherently intertwined with art and artistic expression, those who create this art should be considered valuable members of the STEM community, and thus equally represented in its chosen name. So let's go full STEAM and appreciate the beauty of science.

(1) https://www.britannica.com/topic/STEM-education (accessed December 2024)

(2) Guo X, Dong L and Hao D (2024) Cellular functions of spermatogonial stem cells in relation to JAK/STAT signaling pathway. Front. Cell Dev. Biol. 11  https://doi.org/10.3389/fcell.2023.1339390

(3) Ghosh, Susmita et al. (2024) Proteomic Characterization of 1000 Human and Murine Neutrophils Freshly Isolated From Blood and Sites of Sterile Inflammation Molecular & Cellular Proteomics, Volume 23, Issue 11, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mcpro.2024.100858

(4) Huang, Y., Xue, X., Spelke, E. et al. The aesthetic preference for symmetry dissociates from early-emerging attention to symmetry. Sci Rep 8, 6263 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-24558-x

(5) I.G. Johnston, K. Dingle, S.F. Greenbury, C.Q. Camargo, J.P.K. Doye, S.E. Ahnert, A.A. Louis, Symmetry and simplicity spontaneously emerge from the algorithmic nature of evolution, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 119 (11) e2113883119 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2113883119