Apply Head To Wall; Repeat
Face-melting Rants, Research, Science, Whatnot
*Bonk**Bonk**Bonk**Bonk**Bonk**Bonk**Bonk**Bonk**Bonk**Bonk**Bonk**Bonk**Bonk*
This is what it looks like in print when I bang my head against a wall. One thing that I don’t do nearly enough here is talk about what I do. Why do I feel like I need to do this more or even at all? Because going type-y type-y does less emotional damage than burying it, that’s why. Actually (Also), Biomedical research is fascinating stuff and I don’t think there’s enough out there to illustrate this fact. Or maybe there is, but it lacks a certain articulation that enables people not involved to understand and/or appreciate what a spiffy endeavor it is. This is ultimately my goal, I suppose, that coincides nicely with never working directly for anyone ever again as long as I live: Freelance-write science crap to help lay-people understand junk about both stuff and baloney. Articulate is my middle name, as you can see.
The shortest explanation for the bonking is that shit in the lab isn’t working. Actually, let me be clear on this point and let this be the first in probably many lessons bestowed here concerning research: Shit in the lab rarely works. And ‘works’ is an incredibly subjective term. An experiment might work perfectly, but provide a result that makes you stand in one place staring at a wall for hours trying to figure out what it all means. Just because the result makes you want to punch a nun doesn’t mean that the experiment didn’t work, technically speaking. My problem with the results that I’m currently getting is that I can’t duplicate them. I’ve pooped out all kinds of spectacular data, highly publishable stuff, groundbreaking, earth-shattering, bodice-ripping science, but the kicker is that if I can’t duplicate any of it, basically it never happened. Like a tree that falls in an empty wood makes nary a sound, experimental results that can’t be duplicated never really happened.
And the time that’s been spent. My God. Repeating the same things over and over again and getting slightly different results, while following the same damn protocols. Every day. Over and over. I recently heard a story about someone who walked away from a different biomedical graduate program to become a lawyer and when asked why, she replied that there came a point where she just got sick of always being wrong. This is completely understandable and it’s a good thing to figure out early in the game. My limited experience with how research works, in and out of the lab, has shown me that it consists of the following basic life-cycle, which has been confirmed, more or less, by people in the know:
wrong wrong wrong wrong nada nope wrong zip zilch OH! wrong wrong HA! wrong nothing no hmm, that’s odd crap IT BURNS! wrong wrong victory! repeat
And victory isn’t a given. It doesn’t even have a solid definition. For some it might be getting a grant funded or being given tenure at some university or perhaps just getting published. Whatever. The bottom line is that the entire process is a perfectionist’s nightmare. If you have a fear of snakes, throw yourself into a pit full of asps, a la Indiana Jones. If you’re afraid of failure, however, I HIGHLY recommend you start doing research and learn how to get over it.
So, here’s the thing: I’m working with ridiculously small amounts of stuff. Think about one liter of something. Thought about it? Okey dokey, then. One milliliter is 1000-times smaller. One microliter is 100,000-times smaller, a nanoliter is a million-times smaller, and a picoliter is 100,000,000-times smaller. I play with the nano- and pico-levels of this and that, which means that room for error doesn’t really exist. Everything I play with needs to remain frozen and if it doesn’t or if it’s frozen/thawed too many times, it might or might not be adversely effected. The variables involved in why a result might be ‘odd’ are endless. Also, and I’ve stated this here before, mammals are fucking complicated.
I realize that the word ’should’ can be both a dangerous and debilitating one in any walk of life. It can weigh a person down like an anchor. I have less than two years experience with being in a lab environment and, truth be told, have seen more success than abject failure. Given my comparative lack of background, I’d say that I’m ahead of the power curve, generally speaking. Nevertheless, and I say this with the keenest understanding of how ridiculous and pointless it is, but THIS SHIT SHOULD BE WORKING AND MY WASTING TIME REPEATEDLY HAVING IT NOT WORK BECAUSE SATURN IS IN THE FOURTH HOUSE OR A BUTTERFLY SNEEZED OR I HAD A DREAM WHERE A FAT DUDE HOLDING A BUCKET OF APPLES STARTED LAUGHING AT ME IS DRIVING ME BATSHIT CRAZY AND MAKING ME DREAM ABOUT PORTLY FRUIT-BEARING PEOPLE.
Getting back to my original point, I still love research and science is amazing, but it’s kind of like getting kicked around by a bipolar elephant. Nevertheless, this rambling screed seems like an excellent way to inaugurate the ’science’ category. Next time: What’s an enzyme and why are they so fucking fickle with their love?
Sir @ February 26, 2010
Talking more about what you do? So you’re blogs will now contain more references to single-malt scotch and 20-year old co-eds in white cotton panties? I can’t wait!
Your description of your research problems makes me glad I’m in the humanities. In history, you just have to footnote the crap out of every academic thing you write so that someone else could go find your sources and challenge your conclusions. When I’m writing label copy for museum exhibits, I don’t even have to cite sources–I just have to be able to make it sound plausible to a layperson. (I could probably get away with making up all kinds of crap about certain topics and artifacts, but I don’t.) My three biggest research problems are 1) when an archives can’t find a particular historical document that I need to support my argument and that doesn’t exist in any other format, anywhere else in the world; 2) trying to prove to my academic colleagues that the research topic I’m most interested in (Civil War-themed tourist attractions, souvenirs, and historical memory) matters in American history–something every historian has to do, every damn day; and 3) convincing the general public and grant-funding agencies that American history matters, period. It ain’t curing cancer, but it’s still frustrating sometimes.
Ah, science. My own background in it (albeit in the social sciences and don’t you start snickering at my use of the word “science” in that phrase) gives me a keen perspective on your challenges.
Oddly enough, the research part of the social sciences was what really drew me in; I couldn’t give a flying monkey in a hurricane about the clinical part. Alas, it was not to be…
But the next time you get frustrated by your work, imagine that those particles you’re dealing with have no predictable behaviors whatsoever; they do what they want, whenever they want, whether it’s slapping their wife around or gambling their life savings away or cutting themselves. You can’t even attempt to replicate behaviors with *these* particles. It’s enough to drive one to drink (which is probably why social scientists are notorious drunks).
All this is to say that, well, even working with those temperamental nano- and pico-particles is sometimes (usually) (always) preferable to working with actual human being. Damn humans (God, I would have made such an awesome clinician).
Dude! Glad I’m in IT. Everything is cut and dried. Either it works (every time) or it doesn’t. (excepting for garbage data, but even that can be dealt with if you’re anal enough to code for every contingency.)
Keep the science coming, I’ll warm up the Thomas Dolby.
Oh wah, wah, wah!
Sorry. Did that sound mean? Although frustrating, your job/research sounds so cool to me. I guess the grass is always greener…
So then she became a lawyer… and discovered that instead of being always wrong, she was then assigned clients who never pay her even when she’s right because getting up-front retainers is television fiction.
Wait. What are we talking about??
Shady180: If those two things had been my job, I’d have already died happy and wouldn’t currently be concerning myself with annoying little things like DNA replication and autoimmunity.
J: History was my first academic love. I grew up reading historical non-fiction as a hobby because I just couldn’t get enough of the stuff. I still read a lot of that genre, probably more than any other. There were a number of reasons that I never pursued it academically, but paramount among them was the fact that I was afraid that all the fun would be sucked out of it if I had to do it ‘professionally’. I still sort of think that, but if I ever become independently wealthy, I would love to return to school for degrees in philosophy, history, english, and theology just because. The sciences are lovely, but the humanities feed every part of the mind and soul.
Trish: I freely acknowledge that working with humans as the subjects would definitely be worse. It actually is a good thing to remember. Working with a very small part of them is as close as I want to get.
Bob: I never though that I’d miss computer programming, but at least in that field, you can get immediate feedback on whether or not what you did worked, then fix it. That was THE perk to doing that junk. Of course, sometimes you get to deal with remarkably vague compiler errors that seed hatred in one’s heart, but eventually you can work through it. There’s no hatred in a lab; failure is part of the game and makes you look more closely and think more acutely. The annoying part is that the feedback isn’t immediate, time is your enemy, and patience is mandatory. All of that sucks, each in its own special way, but the payoff when stuff works is worth it. So, while I may rant, it’s done only as an outlet.
Alli: There’s no need to apologize. The lab tech and the PI both respond in a similar way whenever I start to engage in anything vaguely resembling a whine.
Shari: Yeah, I’m not sure I’d have chosen ‘Lawyer’ as a profession where I could always be ‘right’. The legal system is significantly more fickle than anything with which I could ever work. There’s a lot of need for people with my background to go into patent law, but the kicker is that 1) Law school and 2) It’s incredibly lucrative unless one little thing goes wrong with something, after which you can never work in patent law again. In other words, one strike and you’re out. The law and the myriad ways in which it’s arbitrarily administered makes me itch, anyhow.