Dr. Tee L. Guidotti, M.D.

International Consultant on Health, Safety, and Environment Management and Sustainability

Past President, Sigma Xi

Sigma Xi President’s Circle – Founding Member

“Sigma Xi is like a flag, standing for achievable, tangible, motivational excellence. Without it, new scientists cannot easily see where they are going. With it, they know that others have managed to get there and they can, too.”

Many Sigma Xi members are also active with other scientific organizations. What is most meaningful to you about being a member of Sigma Xi and what makes the Society’s mission and programs unique, in your opinion?

For me, Sigma Xi is a tangible, concrete way of connecting what I do in my professional life (which is occupational and environmental medicine) with the broader scope of science and STEM disciplines.  What we do in my field is exquisitely responsive to new technology and commercialization of applied science (because they both solve health problems and introduce new ones).  This may involve evaluating workers with occupational disease from a new chemical, assessing the impact on health of an environmental pollutant, understanding how ecosystem change affects human health in a community, or considering policies for health protection as part of environmental and social sustainability.  Sigma Xi helps me understand the background, anticipate the challenges, and put context around my professional activities in health, risk, and policy. 

As a recent President of Sigma Xi, is there something you learned in your leadership role that you wish more members knew about the Society and its programs?

The Society is a bulwark for the defense of science against distortion, abuse, marginalization, manipulation, and politicization. It does this not by direct confrontation but by insisting on and rewarding excellence in science so that the standards are clear and excellence is recognized (and by extension mediocrity or pretense are easier to discern). In the long run, this is a more reliable defense of the scientific enterprise than getting into the weeds of a particular issue but we do need someone to do that too. That's why Sigma Xi does and should work in partnership with other scientific organizations on big issues facing science.

How has your view of the Society evolved since your induction? Is there a certain perspective you have now about being a Sigma Xi member that would have been valuable to have at other stages of your research career?

All my career I have been a big fan of Dr. Jerome Ravetz and his idea of "critical science", which is the concept that the methods of science can be used to identify, document, and characterize problems of technology and society through the use of the methods of basic science. The classic example is the discipline of ecology, which studies complex biological relationships for their own sake, and how its conceptual framework and technical methodology came to be used to document environmental degradation, ecosystem threats, and pollution.  This idea has informed my own work in occupational and environmental health, which is fundamentally about the unintended consequences of constructing the modern world as we have without completely understanding what we were doing. Over the years I have come to understand that science is self-correcting on many levels, not only in correcting the errors of individual studies by replication but also on a grand scale in challenging the worldview and insisting on rigorous analysis of what we have done with science and technology. 

Why is supporting Sigma Xi philanthropically important to you? What would you tell a fellow member who is thinking about making a gift to support the Society?  

I would say, "Do it!" Sigma Xi is like a flag, standing for achievable, tangible, motivational excellence. Without it, new scientists cannot easily see where they are going. With it, they know that others have managed to get there and they can, too. 

Please contact Michael D’Ambrosio, Major Gifts Officer at Sigma Xi, at (703) 209-4628 or mdambrosio@sigmaxi.org to learn more about making your gift to Sigma Xi.