One aspect of science that is sometimes hard to swallow is that it can be very unforgiving. At least that is what I tell myself when I either screw up an experiment or when experiments don't work out my way. The way I see it, if the experiment is well set up and executed you will get something out of it. Now, more often than not you end get a result that is either negative or does not fit your model and as such you don't know what to interpret it. The downside to research is that no matter how hard you try, and no matter how hard you wish things to work in your favor, if your experimental setup is flawed odds are against you.
Thankfully there are occasions when we get lucky and get a surprising results out of flawed experiments, or experiments that where the scientist made a mistake, that point us in the right direction. I actually think that this element of science is not recognized enough by us scientists. You have to be smart enough to see lightning strike and learn what to do with it, but in the end the initial discovery was pure chance.
On the other hand, there are days like today where the scientists just screws up the experiment beyond recognition. In the armed forces this is called F.U.B.A.R.
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Another common acronym, and one of my personal faves, is S.N.A.F.U.
Which means, Situation Normal All F#(&^d Up.
For more about SNAFU, please follow the link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNAFU
This is a very informative and well written article.
As usual, I think you are right on all fronts. There is an element of luck in good science, but benefitting from that luck demands two things- an experiment designed well enough to detect the phenomenon and sufficient attention to detail to notice it.
One of the most talented postdocs in my grad lab built a project on a control antibody that cross-reacted with something that had a cool staining pattern. It was a fortuitous observation, but he deserves a lot of credit (a) for noticing the pattern and (b) for developing a strategy to figure out what it was actually binding. If it had been me, I don't know if I would've noticed, and even if I had, I don't know that I would've chased the unknown epitope. That's why he's the kind of scientist that will get a faculty position at a top notch place, and I'm not.
Yes, science is just like a woman.
Natalie, that reminds me of Demetri Martin's sames and opposites thing about an ex-girlfriend being similar to an okay movie.
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