Science Tattoos!

For many years I have wanted to get a tattoo. I've balked at the price and at the lack of seemingly decent tattoo parlors around where I live, but I've decided to go ahead with what I can find.

And what kind of tattoo am I getting? A flaming skull? A heart inscribed with my lovely wife's name? Pictures of my kids? "Momma"?

No, of course not. I'm a scientist, after all. It's got to reflect my scientific interest (no offense to Mom, my wife, my kids, or skulls, thank you).

I am choosing to have permanently inked into my left upper arm the image at left. It is the first critter I studied, while as an undergrad. I studied the Cottonwood Borer beetle's reproductive anatomy and behavior in GREAT detail. Yes, not all science is for the betterment of mankind, but I found it fascinating, and still do. The beetles are about 2 inches long from the front of their head to the tip of their butt (though the antennae are longer). That little research project (which also involved learning some pretty detailed and traditional procedures and instrumentation) led to years of entomological research, then toward a career in biotech. The beetle isn't exactly colorful, but the story behind it means a lot to me. Sadly, we never published the work.

And then yesterday I came across this amazing blog dedicated to nothing else than documenting science-themed tattoos, imprinted onto scientists who study those topics:

http://carlzimmer.typepad.com/

Absolutely fascinating! People have sent him pictures of their tattoos on everything from evolution to zoological anatomy, subatomic particles to mathematics, computing to ecology.

Some of my favorite examples from those pages include THIS one, THIS one, THIS one, THIS one, and THIS one (but it is so hard to choose!). Enjoy!

African-American Scientists: Earnest Everett Just

February is Black History Month. It is a time for us to remember the sacrifices made by African American forefathers in building America, and the contributions they have made, and continue to make, toward making our nation great. When we think of those contributions, too many of us focus on the famous stereotypes: singers, sports stars, social and equal-rights figures, great though they are, but too often forgotten are those who contributed in the other fields. It is in this vein that I feature on this blog, each February, historical and contemporary African American Scientists.

Earnest Everett Just was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1883. His mother was a teacher, and thus knew full well the importance of a good education and the challenges facing African Americans to get an excellent education at that time. At 13, he was sent north, to New Hampshire, to attend a college preparatory school, Kimball Academy. He finished in only three years (instead of four) and graduated class valedictorian. He went on to Dartmouth College, specializing in cell biology studies, earning degrees in biology and history. Again, he was class valedictorian, as well as magna cum laude. Next he went to Howard University, where he eventually became the head of the Department of Zoology, and stayed until his retirement, except for a brief period during which he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Just's greatest contribution to science resonates even to my own career, studying live-cell physiology. Just believed in the radical notion of studying cells as close as possible to their natural state, looking at the whole, living cell rather than breaking it up into its component parts. He became well known for his studies of marine mammal reproduction and fertilization events, as well as cell division, parthenogenesis, effects of UV radiation on chromosome number, and studying the role of the cell surface in its overall physiological state, much of which took place at the Marine Biology Lab at Woods Hole (one of several marine science centers set up over a hundred years ago). Like me, microscopy was his chosen mode of observation.

Increasingly frustrated with the racial prejudice in the United States, Just studied abroad starting in 1929, eventually studying in Italy, Germany, and France.

In 1940, Just was briefly a prisoner of war when Germany invaded France. The U.S. State Department negotiated his release, but he grew ill just before being captured, worsened during the imprisonment, and never fully recovered. He died of pancreatic cancer in October of 1941. He was survived by his wife and three children.

Here are some additional resources about the life and accomplishments of Earnest Everett Just:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Everett_Just

http://esperstamps.org/h19.htm

http://web2.ccpl.org/prvEmployees/HTML/scienceproject/ScienceWalk/Ernest%20Everett%20Just.html

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0775692.html

http://www.blackinventor.com/pages/ernestjust.html


Picture taken from HERE.

Science Policies Of Presidential Candidates

Anymore it seems that if you are a Republican politician, your only interest in science topics is to oppose anything with the words “stem cell” or “evolution” and to support anything having to do with defense. If you are a Democratic politician, stem cells and evolution are back on the table, as well as protecting our environment and fighting global warming. So let’s hear it for the Dems, who wish to protect our health, fight for rationality in teaching science to our children, and actually want to protect the world we live in.

But don’t take my word for it. Below are three links to the stances of each of the candidates (including those who have stepped out of the running) on science issues, including their actual quotes and even videos. Enjoy!

BioTechniques:
http://mailcenter3.comcast.net/wmc/v/wm/47AC9192000792C500002A4122155517240A9D0109040705D202019C0E06?cmd=Show&no=317&uid=1326&sid=c0#news

Popular Mechanics “Geek The Vote 2008”:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/geekthevote08

The Huffington Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-blumenthal/us-presidential-candida_b_60549.html


Image taken from HERE.

The Scale Of Things

My professional life has been spent attempting to see things not normally visible to the naked eye. Peering through magnifying glasses, dissecting microscopes, high-end light microscopes, even transmission electron microscopes, trying to see sub-cellular structures and even localizing individual protein complexes. I never tire of it. Yet no matter how small the structures are that we study, we find there are ever smaller magnitude objects to find.

The same goes for large structures. No matter how far out we look into the universe, galaxies continue to appear. We are such a tiny part of that universe that we easily disappear in the immensity of it. When I try to comprehend how individual proteins fit into that grand scheme, it makes my little, confused head whirl.

So it is with a great pleasure I recently discovered this nifty webpage devoted to comparing the sizes of everything from quarks up to the known universe, from Angstroms to light years. When you visit, feel free to click around on things and scroll back and forth:

http://www.nikon.co.jp/main/eng/feelnikon/discovery/universcale/nano.swf

And, while we're on the topic, here is a similar little journey called "Powers of Ten" which takes you from the edge of the universe down to the sub-atomic level (likely you have seen it, made in 1977 by Charles and Ray Eames, but still excellent):

http://www.stage6.com/user/air44/video/2068223/Cosmic-Voyage-HD---(Power-of-Ten)(a plugin is required, but it is worth it !)

So, if you have a hankering for feeling insignificant in the grand scheme of things, please, give these a click!

Mad Scientist

Ah, the scientist is a quiet creature, given to working long hours in a sterile lab. Humming equipment and bubbling concoctions are his only company as he contemplates his experiments and reviews reams of data. He adjusts his taped-up glasses then shuffles to his office for a momentary caffeine break before returning to his diligent work. He is a humble being whose greatest excitement comes with those rare eureka moments when experimental results come together.

NOT. Is that really what you think we're like?

Well, okay, maybe a little. Fine, maybe a lot. But most scientists I know are cynical beasts who work when they have to, long into the night amidst noisy machines, piles of hastily organized papers, and scribbled lab books, but enjoy a good beer as much as the next fellow and can be prone to all the weaknesses, passions, and emotions as the next guy. And you've got to watch out for those "quiet types," don't ya know!

Take for example one biochemist gone bad. Larissa Schuster ran a chemical company with her husband, Timothy. Their marriage went south back in 2003, so logically the only option she had was to KILL HIM WITH ACID!!

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-12-12-3963774793_x.htm

Yes, that's right. For the low, low price of $2000 she hired a lab technician, James Fagone, to help her taser her husband and knock him out with chloroform. Then they dumped him into a barrel and, while Timothy was still alive and breathing, poured hydrochloric acid over him, dissolving him alive! Yikes!

But they screwed it up. Not only did they fail to dissolve all of the body, but Schuster rented a storage unit in her own name and put the half-dissolved body (legs still sticking out of the barrel) into the storage unit where it rotted and attracted attention. Thus she and the lab assistant were caught.

Too many late nights in the lab breathing fumes! Tsk, tsk. Typical chemist – thinks she can solve (or dissolve) her problems with chemical reactions. Better living through chemistry!

But the real moral of the story is this: there are a lot of really, really desperate lab assistants out there! Can you imagine how that conversation went?

Schuster: "Hey, Fagone, you wanna make some extra money on the side?"

Lab Tech: "Hmm. I don't know. I'm underpaid, like all lab rats, but your tone makes me think twice."

Schuster: "I'll pay you $2000, and you'll get to dissolve stuff with acid."

Lab Tech: "Cool. I'm in."

First degree murder may not be worth playing with acids and solvents, but I'll bet their fellow prisoners will be giving them plenty of breathing room as they serve out their life sentences!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some lab work to attend to…. and there's acid around.... Mwa ha ha ha ha!



Image of John Carradine from Invisible Invaders taken from HERE.

Name That Critter

When intrepid scientists discover a new species, how the heck do they name it? Everything's gotta have a name. After all, science can't describe a species and the implications of its existence by always referring to it as "that onion fly that Dr. Pocketprotector found in Walla Walla" or "that little brown bug".

Most species you'll hear about have a common name (such as the Great White Shark), but because common names differ by region or language, or multiple critters can be called by the same name, all known and identified species have a scientific name which belongs to no other species (such as Carcharodon carcharias). As with nearly everything in science, scientific names have a particular structure to them. Using what is called binomial nomenclature and latinized spelling and (usually) Greek origin, the name has two parts: the first is called the "genus" (which is capitalized), and the second is called the "specific name" or "specific epithet", and is uncapitalized. Both are italicized. The science of identifying and naming life is called Taxonomy.

The genus is usually reserved for known groupings of creatures, but sometimes something is found that is novel enough for a new genus, too. With the specific name, though, anything goes. Scientists usually name the little bugger after some descriptor. For the Great White Shark, the scientific name is derived from the Greek words for "sharp (or jagged) tooth", but names have been made based on words from local languages, people names, or even puns.

For instance, there are at least three species named after Gary Larson, cartoonist for the Far Side, including a beetle, a butterfly, and (my favorite) an owl louse (Strigiphilus garylarsoni). Another is named after an alcohol (the blue agave plant, named Agave tequilana, is what tequila is made from). The chigger, Trombicula fujigmo, is named after the WWII slang for "fuck you, Jack, I got my orders". If you've ever been "bugged" by this irritating pest, you'll know the name fits. HERE is a neat page of other funny or original scientific names. The taxonomist who makes the discovery of the species gets the right to choose the name, but in modern times does not name it after himself. It is accepted practice to name them after someone else. I have personally known taxonomists who named new species of diatoms after each other, for instance. "Hey, Roger, if you name Species X after me, I'll name Species Y after you."

A new trend, though, is auctioning off the right to name a new species. In this day of ever-reduced funding for academics, universities are getting creative for fundraising. Just the other day, a new species of butterfly was named for the winning bid of $40,000:

http://www6.comcast.net/news/articles/odd/2007/11/23/ODD.Butterfly.Naming.Rights/

HERE and HERE are the announcements from when the contest started.

The Florida Museum of History discovered a rather large and ornate butterfly (see picture) mislabeled in a collection of other Mexican butterflies. After determining that it was previously unidentified, they announced the contest. On November 22, the winner was announced. The winner, from which the butterfly was named, was the late Margery Minerva Blythe Kitzmiller of Malvern, Ohio, on behalf of her grandchildren. The common name will be the Minerva owl butterfly. The scientific name will be Opsiphanes blythekitzmillerae. Doesn't exactly roll of the tongue, in my opinion, but naming a butterfly after her is a fitting tribute to someone who "wrote poetry, played piano, and sang." Since most butterflies of this size and appearance have likely already been named, and this is the first new species in this particular butterfly family to be named in a century, this is an honor not likely to be repeated anytime soon. Proceeds from the auction will go to research on Mexican butterflies.

But this isn't the first time a little beasty's official name has gone on the auction block. A Bolivian monkey was named for $650,000 in 2005 (by the World Conservation Society), after The Golden Palace.com, an online casino company that won the rights. HERE is a link to the Golden Palace monkey's homepage. I urge you to visit. It's a real "hoot"! And 10 previously unknown fish were named for a total of $2 million just this September, including a shark for $500,000 (article HERE).

What is science coming to? The stuck-up, overeducated scientist in me is appalled, but the snarky lab rat in me is smirking. Before long, academic institutions all over the nation may be opening up Departments of Taxonomy as more of a source of income than for the sake of scientific curiosity.

I wonder if there are any unknown rodents out there that are yet to be identified. Do you think they would name one after me? The common name could be, of course, the Angry Lab Rat, and the scientific name could be Rattus iratuslabus. Kinda rolls off the tongue, if I may say so.


Image taken from HERE.

Science Cartoons!

I couldn’t pass this up. Below is a link to a webpage with galleries of science-themed cartoons created by the famed Sidney Harris. Enjoy!

http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/gallery.htm

Science Salary Survey

The results of a survey on scientist salaries was just released in the current issue of Microscopy Today:

http://www.microscopy-today.com/MT2007_Salary_Survey.pdf

I’m always leery about these surveys. Not because I think they are inaccurate somehow, but because I always seem to fall at the lower end, or less, of whatever bracket fits me. That just makes me angry at my cheapskate company. But, seeing as how this particular survey is most suited for me, given it falls in my particular line of work, I took the bait. As usual, it makes me none too comfortable to see the results.

First they compared salaries by discipline. I’m in the biological sciences. Naturally, they fall lower than either physical sciences (like nanotechnology) or traditional sciences (like chemistry and physics). Bio peaks around $51-60K, where the others plateau at higher salaries. Okay, I’m used to it. Next!

Then they looked at salary by institution type. Academic falls lowest, peaking around $51-60K. I’m glad I left academics. I don’t enjoy starving for my hard work. But Industry scores only slightly higher at the next bracket, $61-70K. Fine. I’d live with that. But Industry also has a second peak, much higher, at $91-110K. Those would be the “Big Talking Heads” who run the company. Yay them. Government work earned a bit more, but the best of all were vendors and suppliers. Their salaries just keep going up up up. I’ve had a few chances over the years to take positions with some instrument manufacturers selling and being a tech for their products, but I just couldn’t stomach the idea of traveling all the time.

When they looked at salary by title, there weren’t any real surprises. Students earn slave wages, while corporate managers get the biggest slice of the pie. You should see the graph! Professors earned a pretty good salary, peaking in the $91-110K bracket. Pretty good, if you can weather the process to get there.

The kicker came with the comparison of salary versus educational degree. No surprise that doctorates earn more than bachelor’s, which earn more than high school. But what surprised me is that there is really no difference between bachelor’s and master’s level. So that extra two years I spent earning my master’s degree didn’t really do anything for me in terms of potential salary. So if you’re going beyond a batchelor’s, skip the master’s and head straight into a doctoral position (which most folks seem to do anyhow, it seems). And what about post-docs? Forget it. If you think you’re going to get more money by earning your doctoral then post-doc-ing around the country, there was no significant difference there, salary-wise. Maybe you’ll be more hire-able in certain careers, though.

Years of experience only mattered for the lowest and the highest pay brackets. All those in the middle were pretty mixed, meaning that if you’re a newbie, you ain’t getting’ squat, and if you hang in there long enough, at least 26 years, there’s a slim chance you’ll move up in the pay bracket. But given the volatile nature of science careers, I laugh at your chances.

So there you go. If you’re a scientist, now you’ll know approximately how much you’re worth, or not worth, compared to 624 respondents to the survey. Now go buy a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and make yourself feel better about the years you spent in academics and the loss of social life to get you to your lab bench. Then use this info to ask for a raise. You can do it!


Image taken from HERE.

Tagged By A "Meme"

Damn. I’ve been tagged for one of those blog “memes” (which is somewhat akin to the sociological term, HERE). In short, this is one of those phenomena of the blog world, which I consider to be similar to viral email chain letters, but more interesting. The rules are thus:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don't forget to leave them a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

I have Tantalus Prime to thank for this, from a comment he left in a recent blog post. Normally I would ignore completely, but I have to admit to a certain bizarre interest in meaningless facts about strangers and thus assume you have the same interest in me. I’ll be a good sport this time, as I have a good deal of respect for Tantalus and his blog site, even if he is a damned robot. But I’m going to bend the rules in one regard, and completely break the rules in another. I’m bending by only talking about my facts/habits as regards to science, health, or working in biotech (the whole point of this blog, don’t you know). I’m flagrantly breaking the rules by not passing it on to eight other blogs. I don’t care to be part of the virus. So there. If you as the reader are so inclined, you can consider yourself “tagged” and take it upon yourself to continue the chain.

And if any of my tens of readers decide to tag me again, I will ignore completely, delete your comment, and leave a nasty-gram on your blog site. [insert scowl and gnashing of teeth]

So here are my eight random facts/habits about myself in regard to science, health, and working in biotech:

1) When working late at night or on the weekend at my biotech company, I sneak upstairs to the R&D Director’s office and snag some chocolate from the dish in his office lobby. Then, if I’m having extra trouble staying awake, I go up to the executive conference room. There’s a little food prep room with a fridge adjoining to the conference room. The door to the prep area is usually locked, but I crawl through the little service window between the rooms and steal a cola from the fridge. I consider this “donation” a tip for my undying loyalty and late night work, and since the only employees who got a bonus this year were the top executives, I’m not sorry at all for my theft and will likely continue illicitly feeding my late-night caffeine and chocolate addiction.

2) When I was around 11 or 12, my mom got me a kid’s chemistry set. It was a plastic affair with dozens of little bottles of compounds and some basic equipment. She also got me a basic microscope. I loved my little “lab”. It was probably the one best purchase she ever made for my career. But early on I lost the instructions (if there were any), and had little idea what experiments to do with it all. I had lots of “brilliant” observations on my own, though, like making tar out of wood, and discovering that the pH indicator, phenolphthalein, can also work as a preservative (using mashed poke berries as a model). This allowed me to use the berry juice as a non-molding purple ink to write with.

3) I once discovered a population of endangered lilies in the Rockies of central Idaho.

4) I daydream about leaving biotech and bench science and doing work for some forest ecology topic, as I had a couple summers of my college years. But there’s little money in it, I’m out of shape, and there are few full-time, year-long positions with which I could support my family. I’ll keep daydreaming. Maybe some day ….

5) A Bunsen burner leaked and started a fire in a histology lab I worked in during my Master’s studies years ago, made worse in part due to ignorance of an undergrad researcher and lab shelving that had been painted with flammable paint. There were a lot of flammable solvents around. I attempted to snuff the fire by inverting a giant beaker over it, which only shattered the beaker and made the fire spread. I then put it out with a fire extinguisher. What a mess. I let the undergrad clean it.

6) Because of the highly bureaucratic way my evil biotech company is run, it is almost impossible for lab rats like me to innovate new products and techniques there these days – a far cry from the way we used to do things at my work. So I have gone to doing unapproved, “underground” experiments to follow my intellectual curiosity whenever I get a few hours of unexpected down time (which, unfortunately, almost never happens now). I have told no one about them, and if asked, I will deny it. Maybe some day, when innovation is truly allowed again, I’ll reveal some new product ideas from it all.

7) I’ve nearly drowned twice (once in a swimming pool when I was around 10 years old, and once while undergoing river rapids training for the U.S. Forest Service in my college years). I had another close call while canoeing with my family as a teen. Perhaps I was saved by good karma, since I had saved a girl from drowning in a YMCA swimming pool when I was about 9 years old.

8) I love bugs. Almost a decade ago I was an entomologist, dissecting beetles, fruit flies, and moths to study their physiology, making observations about insect behavior, and collecting a particular family of beetles. Most of my studies were centered around insect reproduction. So much so, in fact, that when a friend’s grandmother heard what I did for a living, she dubbed me “Mr. Genitalia.” I don’t mind the nickname.

There you go. Eight “science” factoids about moi.

Tag, you're it, but only if you want.


Image taken from HERE.

Public Speaking For Scientists

In my profession as a biotech scientist, good public speaking skills are essential. In fact, having bad public speaking skills, particularly due to shyness, is one of the Seven Deadly Sins for Lab Rats. The last thing you want to do is get up in front of a bunch of scientists and look like a moron, especially if they know as much as you do about areas of your own study, and possibly more. In any given crowd there will be novices and experts. Somehow you have to appeal to them all while giving them at least one good nugget of information they could fine intellectually stimulating. The big thing is for people to overcome their fear and make themselves comfortable standing up in front of (sometimes) dozens or even hundreds of perfect strangers and sounding both knowledgeable and relaxed. Today’s blog from Scott Adams was about that. HERE is a good article on overcoming that fear.

Scientists aren’t shy when it comes to pointing out flaws in your protocols or logic. In fact, it’s what we are trained to do. So much so that when the question and answer period comes at the end (as most are prone to do), you expect critical questions to be asked about why certain choices were made in the experiments and how we made certain assumptions about the data and results, and you have to explain. Sometimes you will gather new insights about your process and can go back to the lab to test them out. That’s the real value of these presentations. If, being a scientist, you give a presentation and there are no questions or comments at the end, then either you’ve blown them away with your incredible genius, or you’ve failed in your mission entirely and wasted a great deal of your time and that of the audience. As much as I would love to think I fall into the genius category, I would have to admit my failure. Luckily, I can’t think of any talks I’ve given lately that were complete failures that way.

Inevitably there will be one older professor in the audience who will glibly point out some crucial mistake you had made that surely could have avoided if you had only read their seminal paper on whatever obscure protein or cellular process they’ve studied for decades. If it’s a good idea, you say so, and get the reference from him later. Probably 90% of the comments are that way. If not, you say “Thanks, I’ll look into that.” That’s usually code for “Thanks for pushing your own interests, dumbass, and abusing your authority to make me look bad in front of my peers. I’ll ignore your comment.”

I’ve taken a couple public speaking courses, but only because I went to a liberal arts college. They were taught by the sociology department. Oddly, science departments don’t seem to include speaking classes. This always perplexed me, given the importance of it. It seems they assume you’ll somehow pick up the skills by watching other (sometimes very bad) speakers during the seminar series. So the classes you learn from are geared more toward speaking from a marketing perspective (“Here’s why my product is a good one”), or a dry information perspective (“Here are the latest sales figures”). Science is at its core an interactive discipline based partly on rational thinking and partly on peer review. The talks have to keep that in mind (“Here’s my data, now tell me where it’s lacking”). Oh, sure, you have to enunciate, make eye contact, not rely on notecards, not stutter and all that sort of thing, too (HERE is a starting place for learning). That much is in common, and scientists by and large are really good about those basics. But here are some additional recommendations that I am vainly going to make to my fellow scientists, even if I am sometimes guilty of not following all of them:


DON’T BE BORING. For crying out loud, reams of data and slide after slide of chemical structures will put your audience to sleep in minutes. Only the worst geeks will stay awake. In every experiment is a story crying to get out. Pretend you’re trying to tell your grandma about the purpose of your experiment. The story you tell will inevitably be reductionist to the point of being interesting. Refer to that story off and on through the talk. Talking about your studies of filamentous actin and its role in G2 states of cellular division is dry. Adding that the protein conjugate you used is highly poisonous and was purified from the Death Cap Mushroom is much more interesting.

HUMOR IS GOLDEN. Scientists love stories of how experiments went wrong but resulted in unforeseen eureka moments, or how they got fed up with someone and wanted to prove them wrong, only to prove them right but then one-up them. Some scientists are so dry in their presentations that you wonder if they’re drugged.

DON’T BE FLASHY. Leave the animated graphics and marketing logos for the sales folks. Scientists just want the facts. Nifty text fly-ins and superfluous decorations from clip art are simply annoying. One example of doing it right was when a guy I work with recently showed a slide of a simple Excel chart on a white background. He said it was the only flashy slide he had with animation then proceeded to grab the cloth screen with his hand and shake it, making the text scintillate.

GET TO THE FRICKIN’ POINT, ALREADY. Scientists love to go on and on about their specialty. Who can blame them? Many have spent half a decade focusing on one obscure metabolic pathway or gene studied by only a handful of other scientists around the world. Chances are, though, most of their audience could care less about most of that work. They really just want the highlights. Know who your audience is and gear it to them.

DON’T BE AFRAID TO TURN OFF THE PROJECTOR. Here's a big one. Nearly every presentation I’ve seen in the last 10 years has been solely a PowerPoint presentation. That’s okay. That’s the best way to get across most of the points. But somewhere along the way it seems most of us scientists have forgotten the fine art of turning up the room lights, raising the screen, and putting away the laser pointers. Draw on a chalkboard. Gesture with your hands. Get out from behind the frickin’ podium and use the space up front. Maybe, in your wildest moments, even produce props to pass around the room, such as chemical models or actual (non-toxic) samples from the lab. It’s so rarely done, I would consider the presentation a novelty worthy of attending even if I otherwise would have no interest in the topic.


So, to my tens of readers, what have you done to make your presentations more interesting?


Image taken from HERE.

Nudging The Wall Of Dogma

Brothers and Sisters, I come before you now to report that one of our congregation, the reverend Dr. Francis Collins, Director of the National Human Genome Institute, has testified of his love of the Lord. Ye-es!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/03/collins.commentary/index.html

Do you see the light? I sa-id, Do you see the light, brother?Back in the Dark Ages, when Europe languished under the yolk of the Catholic church, and all science was faith-based, the few scientists and doctors allowed to study their profession were forced to have as their driving force NOT the pursuit of the unknown interactions of their environment, but the search for God in the workings of life. I think of Roger Bacon, searching for holiness in the refraction of light in rainbows, for instance. There’s a reason why it was called the Dark Ages. What we didn’t know was explained away as the workings of God, not to be explored without consent from the Church. Long before that, even before the prototypical Greek enlightenment, were tribal beliefs, still found in the dark jungles and vast savannas of the world, where all the unknown was explained with magic and mysterious gods.

Now the director of the human genome project has fallen into the same holy trap.

Collins’ goal, in his letter to CNN, was to profess his belief in Christianity, his theological exploration that led him there, and that scientists can pursue their science just fine and rationally, thank you, while still believing in God and faith. He elaborates by suggesting that science is correct in its analysis of the world, including evolution, but that the source of the world’s complexity, and even the source of the first evolutionary steps of life, is not a random event or process but the hand of God. That somehow it all fits into a celestial plan.

We’ve heard this before. It’s called Intelligent Design.

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, Intelligent Design is nothing more than Creationism cloaked in pseudo-scientific babble. There is nothing testable about it, and that makes it untenable for serious scientific scrutiny. Worse, it is a cop-out no different from the alchemical stumblings of the Dark Ages and tribal worship. Yes, my flock, let us fall to our knees at our lab benches and pray, for we must be on the cusp of finding God at the edge of the unknown.

Scientists can believe whatever they wish when they walk around on the streets, go home, or attend church. There is comfort in thinking that some paternal hand is guiding the seeming chaotic nature of our world. But when you walk through the lab door, check your faith at the coat rack. The danger here is obvious. When you start believing that the truth you are searching for is one taken on faith, you start overlooking data and pursuing the wrong path. In fact, like the alchemists of the Dark Ages, it blinds you to progress until it stops you altogether. At some point further experimentation runs against the walls of dogma and becomes blasphemy. Think here about Galileo and his run-in with the inquisition. As science has progressed, every hundred years or so that wall of dogma gets pushed back a little further, such that we can now accept that the Earth revolves around the sun, for instance, or that species change their morphology and DNA from generation to generation, mediated by natural selection, to slowly form a new species. Though Creationists argue against evolution, even the Vatican admits the evidence for it has substance. Now neoconservatives like Collins have pushed the wall of dogma back further, once again, to the dim envelope of science, and said that THERE, at the base of all evolutionary beginnings, or at the moment of the Big Bang, we can know the finger of God.

Eventually science will open those doors, too, and find only godless, rational data and a fractal-like, ever-expanding set of questions to be explored. There will always be conservatives there, too, pointing the finger down those dark hallways and saying that God is just down the next corridor.

And how will Collins’ belief structure change his role in analyzing the human genome? Who knows? Will he steer his lab rats away from exploring the function of human embryonic stem cells, for instance? Will he attempt to find the finger of god in those moments of genetic divergence hidden in our DNA, overlooking some crucial factor that would shed light on natural speciation? If any data goes against the prevailing neoconservative agenda, will he have an open mind enough to question those beliefs, or will the data be shelved, ignored, or buried?

HERE is an excellent and funny schematic demonstrating the difference between science and faith (from Wellington Grey’s blog).

Thump your Bible as you please, Dr. Collins. Just don’t bring it in the lab.

Can I get an Amen?

Is The Company Logo Branded On My Ass, Or Am I Just Square?

A coworker of mine hurt herself while exercising yesterday. Today it hurts her worse, and there is some swelling. We think she pulled a muscle. She needs to go to a clinic or see her doctor, but despite urgings to do so from me and others, she hasn't gone and has continued working, including operating equipment that likely makes the wound worse. "Yeah, I should go," she said, "but I have all this work to do, and I have a meeting this afternoon."

"Why do you continue?" I asked. "Why are you so devoted to this place that you won't even attend to your personal health?" But then I followed this with a self-reminder that I have continuously sacrificed my own personal time and health (usually sleep) to come in late at night and on the weekends to try to catch up with work.

Answered my coworker: "The way I see it is I'm less likely to get fired this way."

I laughed, in a sad sort of way, like chuckling when you see some hapless guy on TV's Funniest Home Videos take a hit in the crotch when his kid misses a baseball and accidentally slams the bat into the family jewels.

Then she asked me why I devote myself to my work so much. I shrugged and replied: "I guess I do it out of an innate desire to innovate and an unquenchable scientific curiosity."

She gave me a shocked and horrified look and uttered: "Oh . . . my . . . god. That sounds like something you would find printed in the company's propaganda magazine."

Yes, I admitted, she was right. I shook my head in self-disappointment. Have I been at this so long I'm starting to talk in corporate-speak? Is my unconscious devotion to my work really that bad? I rushed to the bathroom mirror and check out my forehead. Luckily there is as yet no company logo stamped there above my uni-brow. Then I went to the logbook that shows who was at work after-hours and tallied up the time I'd spent there late at night and on weekends. I counted a total of 12.5 hours in the past month, usually between the hours of 9PM and 1AM. This doesn't count the hours that I came to work early or left late. And I plan to be there several hours tonight, too. I drooped my shoulders and stumbled back to my office, where data analysis awaited me.

I don't work out of a desire for promotion or raises (which are almost non-existent at my company), and getting fired or laid off actually sounds appealing in a weird way. Quitting would be "my fault" and would surely lead to my family living in a cardboard box, yet I'd love the chance to escape. So my coworker's excuse doesn't apply to me. But I must admit to giving in to some of the pressure from my boss. See my previous post on the subject of work hours (HERE).

No, I honestly believe what I said, even if it's in the words my HR department would use. I think any good scientist would feel the same. It's in our blood. Even if we were ditch-diggers we would experiment with the best grip on the shovel, measure the average shovel-fuls of dirt to reach optimum digging efficiency, or examine effects of digging the ditch on neighboring plant and animal species. As long as I am at my job, I will do the best I can – not for the sake of my boss or the welfare of my company, but out of a sincere desire to excel at what I do and to humor the little scientist within me (some would say he's a mad scientist, but he would respond that he is perfectly sane and the rest of the world is mad!). It's sort of like what Gandalf said about Gollum, in The Lord of The Rings. "He both loves and hates the ring, as he both loves and hates himself." Yes, my Precious, I both loves and hates my job. gollum. gollum.

So, yeah, innovation and curiosity are part of who I am, like so many great scientists and lab rats. Someone once said I had the mind of a genius. They're right. I keep it in a jar over my lab bench. (pic)

But would I stay here if I were wounded, instead of seeing a doctor. Hell, no! I know you're reading this, Coworker. Go see a frickin' doctor already!

UPDATE (3/30/07): I wound up going back to work that night from about 10:30PM until 4:15AM! Jesus Christ! When I told my boss about it, all he did was shrug and say, "Oh." No pat on the back for my devotion, no sir-ee-bob. gollum.... By the way, Coworker went to a medical clinic a couple hours after I posted. After several hours of waiting, they finally admitted her, confirmed it was probably a pulled muscle, told her to wear a padded brace where the injury was, and told her to come back if it didn't help.

The Medicinal Power Of Moonlight and Pig Bladders

My mom is a firm believer in New Age beliefs. She wrote a book on Nostradamus, reinterpreting his verses for predictive ability (HERE is a link to her book). She also wrote a pamphlet entitled "The Power of Crystals," as in quartz crystals having energy of their own that can be tapped for special supernatural uses. I can't say I always share her beliefs, but they are at least entertaining and certainly point to her open-mindedness. She's a regular reader of this blog, after all (but, then, doesn't everyone's mom read their kids' stuff, even if it's dreck like this?). I must admit a good deal of fascination in "alternative" views of reality, including UFOs, ghosts, and predictions, with a degree of irrational belief. If even 1% of it is true, most of these things would be groundbreaking and mindwarping.

I can't scoff at my mom, though. When I was a teenager I had a nasty wart growing on a finger for more than a year. One night, when there was a full moon, she convinced me she could remove it by casting a sort of spell. Smiling, we went outside, and in the light of the moon she rubbed the wart in some special way. I can't remember if she said anything while doing this (Mom, maybe you could leave a comment and describe the procedure!). Laughing, I went back to whatever I was doing. But within a couple weeks the wart sloughed off and never came back. Coincidence? The scientist in me says yes, but I admit a certain degree of bewilderment.

A recent news report describes something less magical, but just as interesting. Think, for a minute, of shaman remedies where a wound is treated with extract from some forest plant, and you'll be on the right path.

Animals such as salamanders are able to re-grow limbs and tails that have been cut off. Even human fetuses have a similar regenerative ability. Science is still figuring out how. Then one day a researcher was trying to replace a dog's aorta with a piece of intestine. The wound healed amazingly fast and the intestine re-formed into a sort of aorta. After years of study, it became apparent that extracellular matrix from the intestine had guided regeneration of the tissue. Extracellular matrix (ECM) of this sort is found in a number of other organs, such as bladder. Because ECM is cell-free, it isn't rejected by the body's immune responses.

As a result of research, ECM patches have been used for a number of years to help heal torn rotator cuffs, hernias, and in veterinary medicine. Now there is a report describing how ECM is able to grow back missing tips of fingers by applying extract of pig bladder:

here: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070219/ap_on_sc/regrowing_fingers_4

A company called ACell, formed by the researchers who first discovered the technique, is testing the product for many such uses. A brother of one of ACell's founders accidentally cut off the tip of his finger in 2005 by sticking it into a moving hobby plane propeller. In his words, "I pointed to it and said, 'You need to get rid of this engine, it's too dangerous.' And I put my finger through the prop." Oops! Talk about dumbass mistakes.

Doctors told him his fingertip was lost forever, but he went to his brother at ACell and received a paste of ECM from pig bladder, which he applied to his finger tip every two days for four weeks. Now the finger tip has grown back. In fact, the nail grows at twice the rate of the other fingers, and the skin on the tip doesn't crack from cold weather like his other fingers!

Now the military is testing this technique on missing fingers of soldiers from Iraq. If they can manage to grow back even a slight stump or digit to pinch with, their lives will be far better than the alternative: http://webreprints.djreprints.com/1646641311092.html.

It ain't magic, but certainly it is the application of something we still don't fully understand. In the words of Arthur C. Clarke, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," but I would add that those technologies need not be "advanced" in the sense of novel physics or computer power. Sometimes the most advanced technologies are reapplications of what nature has already given us, or what our forebears already figured out and modern society forgot.

So is there a scientific explanation for my Mom's wart-removal technique, or is it just hocus-pocus? Will science one day re-embrace the old "eye of newt and bladder of pig" philosophy of Medieval medicine? In any case, Mom, keep letting me in on your alternative views. Science, shaman magic, and New Age beliefs all have one thing in common, they constantly revisit and re-adjust our concept of reality in search of the elusive truth.

By the way, if you've got any warts, the next full moon is March 3rd ….

Critical Thinking And LEGO Robots

It's amazing what can happen if people think.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of watching some local school kids demonstrate their LEGO robots. They were part of a team from an area middle school. These bright, culturally-diverse 6^th, 7^th, and 8^th grade boys (and a girl) competed on a state level and won awards for their ability to build a robot of their own design to perform specific tasks that the competition demanded (such as traveling a short distance to trigger devices or drop an object into a specific location), all out of parts from LEGO robotics kits. Though the obstacles the robot had to overcome were pre-defined, their robot design and programming was formulated on their own, with minimal assistance from the team coach and high-school kids who acted as mentors. Maybe they could have learned something by being told exactly how to build and program the robot from a specific blueprint, but I guarantee they learned more about robotics and, generally, critical thinking, by coming up with their own design and testing it.

Beats the hell out of the "spaceships" I built with LEGOs at their age!

Education is a marvelous thing, as it gives you a toolbox of knowledge from which consider the world (like a box of LEGO blocks), but that knowledge is useless if you can't learn to apply it creatively (like making a friggin' robot out of them). I think back to my organic chemistry classes as an undergrad, for instance, where I was forced to memorize very complex chemical reactions and structures, only to regurgitate them on the next test before cramming my brain with more information. Within a year or two of taking the class I doubt I could have remembered even 10% of what I learned. A decade later I might have recalled only a few bits and pieces. As a scientist, I have been taught to think critically, not just about science questions, but about all things. It's in my nature to question things (even if it makes me look cynical in the process), but as my Organic Chem class illustrates, even science has obstacles to overcome.

Recently, a professor at Ohio State University tested the role of critical thinking on his introductory-level biology students:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070221093213.htm

The 300 or so students were taking a lab class on the role of enzymes in biology, and fell into two groups. The first group of students was given prepared enzymes and step-by-step instructions on how to test them. The second group was given a raw turnip from which they had to extract the enzymes themselves and then come up with a plan of their own to test them, exercising their critical and creative thinking. In the end, they were asked a simple question, "Where do enzymes occur in nature?" The correct (and simplistic) answer: "In living tissue." Only 23% of the "step-by-step" group got it correct, compared to 83% of the "critical thinking" group.

Said the professor, "The students in the first group were just as intelligent as those in the second group. They just lacked confidence. No teacher had ever asked them something as simple as how do they want to display what they saw in the experiment. They had always been told how to do that. Educators thought they were doing students a wonderful favor by giving them step-by-step instructions."

And that was at the college level! How often do you think the average grade school student in America is asked to think critically about the information they are taught? How much is rote memorization? In this day of standardized testing, I'm doubtful critical thinking raises its shy head, even in science classes.

And we wonder why people adhere to horoscopes, latch onto the latest fad diets, or believe anything presented on the evening news as undeniable fact. Come on, folks! Critical thinking and creativity drive innovation and reveal the truth behind the veils of ignorance. Think back to your favorite class in school. I'd bet my left thumb that it was one where you got to be creative and didn't have to cram your brain with memorized details, yet learned a lot.

When I saw those kids and their robots, hope sprang eternal. Will they now apply the abstract lesson they learned and raise their hands more in class, questioning why the teacher said what she did?

The 8^th-grader in me is dying to get one of those LEGO robot kits.

Science Workshops and Conferences, Part II (eating out)

You won't find me saying many great things about my evil global biotech company on this blog, but this post is an exception.

Attending conferences and workshops is often difficult because I have to deal with being away from my family, travelling, long hours, and catching up with piles of work when I get back. But one of the great joys of attending conferences and workshops is the food.

As you may recal from previous posts, my eating habits aren't exactly Weight Watcher's. My lunch a couple days ago, for instance, was composed of an airport hot dog with mayo and mustard, washed down with a Pepsi. Under normal conditions, I'm often too busy even to eat lunch, and supper is often eaten in stages as I and my wife feed our kids.

But when I travel on the company's dime, I eat like a friggin' king. Before you gasp in horror at my apparent lack of corporate responsibility, please note there is a travel policy which limits how much can be spent on meals. For a city as large and expensive as the one I'm in right now, that limit is $60 per day per person. Since eating out is my only option, costs can really add up. In large cities, a plate of good food can cost $20. Still, $60 goes a long way.

I'm not a breakfast person, and lunch is usually just a sandwich, so that leaves a gourmet budget for supper. We're talking appetizers, fancy drinks, large dishes of exotic food, and a decadent dessert. "Would you like a refill on that drink, sir?" You betcha, Pierre, and don't forget the little umbrella! And since I tend to eat with likeminded colleagues, the table becomes a gourmet smourgesbourg of monumental proportions.

Tonight was a meditteranean feast worthy of Alexander the Great. Yesterday: all I could eat of high-quality sushi. Domo arigato, evil biotech company!

Science Workshops and Conferences, Part I (presentations and language)

Today, and for the next couple days, I am attending a scientific workshop in another state. For those of you who aren't lab rats, this is an event where a couple hundred scientists get together in a cramped, sweaty room and watch other scientists describe their very important and earth-shattering breakthroughs. At least, that's the idea. In reality, the attendee in the audience winds up half-sleeping through half of the presentations as he waits for the couple presentations that actually relate to his own research, much of which may already be found in the presentor's published papers. But there is always some nugget or two that make it worthwhile.

Over the years I've heard debates about what language is most important in the world for commerce or films or whatever. For science, the universal language is English, hands down. Sure, you'll find journals written in Russian or German or Chinese, but the vast majority of science is written in English. Since science is an international affair, many of the speakers at workshops and conferences are bound to speak English as a second language (or third or fourth), so sometimes the accent is so strong you only understand about 60% of what was said, even if you're familiar with the science. If you work in science, being around folks from all over the world on a daily basis is normal. Most days at work I interact with coworkers from Russia, England, Ukraine, Taiwan, Mexico, and China. I really get a kick when I overhear conversations, in English, between people from different languages. The other day I passed by three coworkers (from China, Russia, and India), all speaking English with heavy accents from their native languages. It's hard for me to understand them sometimes. How the heck do they understand each other?

More later. Time to get back to the very groundbreaking science presentations....

Raising the Dead

Mad Scientist Syndrome. You know its symptoms: a seemingly respectable but overly-ambitious scientist goes “renegade” with a genius but ill-considered experiment, stirring up some unholy broth or lightning-generating device, then experimenting on himself or an unwitting victim to create a nightmarish scenario. In the process, his eyes grow wild, he has an uncontrolled urge to utter “Mwa ha ha ha ha”, and he can’t seem to control his hair no matter how much hair spray he puts on. 50’s sci-fi movies were full of them and their beastly creations, trouncing hapless eastern-block villages or slaughtering innocent teenagers parked at Make-Out Point.

The truth is that most of us scientists are more like your local librarian than Dr. Frankenstein (although I can name a lab rat or two who resemble Dr. Frank-N-Furter). There have been a few real-life mavericks out there who fit the bill, though, like Nikola Tesla, John C. Lilly, and Edward Teller.

Well now we have a real-life Dr. Frankenstein, of sorts. Imagine, if you will, how you would react if someone brought a person back from being very, very dead. It would be weird and wrong, unethical, but probably not nightmarish since it’s easy enough to avoid, kill, or in some other way control your average zombie. Now imagine how you would react if someone brought back a horrible and naturally extinct virus like smallpox. Okay, that’s nightmarish! By the time the last victim died in 1978 and the disease was eradicated in nature, up to 500 million people had died worldwide in just the 20th century alone.

Finally, imagine that you had the ability to bring back an infective virus from millions of years ago with an unknown pathogenic effect and known human infectivity. What would you do? A French (mad) scientist by the name of Thierry Heidmann recently faced this question:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=AAE5AA31-E7F2-99DF-3D8667A185A61229&ref=rss

Heidmann took sequences of a retrovirus found degraded in human DNA, which infected human ancestors five-million years ago and resequenced it (basically bringing it back to life). This resequenced retrovirus, which he named “Phoenix”, was put into human and mammalian cells and found to be “mildly infective.” They used only biosafety level 3 (comparable to studies of 1918 flu pandemic, compared to smallpox which rates a 4) and apparently did not have national or international oversight. They do not yet know what, if any, clinical effect if would have on an organism.

Eek! So let me see if I have this right: Heidmann brought back to life a very ancient but extinct virus which was known to have infected human ancestors, without knowing how infective it was, what clinical effects it might have, and without the highest level of safety or oversight?

Do I hear a “Mwa ha ha ha ha”?

Saving Humanity Can Wait Until It's Profitable

One of the big differences between working in academic science and working for my evil global biotech company is the degree of visibility. When I was a young and optimistic college student, my science professors drilled into my innocent and naïve brain the belief that Science, in its purest form, is all about sharing data and ideas. When you generate data or brilliant ideas, you project that information to your immediate colleagues in regularly-scheduled seminars. When you come to some significant conclusions to a project, you write it up and publish it, but only after a jury of your peers reads it and agrees with your methodology, and novel innovations are passed around and added upon by others. In this way you get a higher degree of unbiased results, promote the sharing of ideas and technology, add to human enlightenment, and generate a brighter future for all mankind [insert heavenly music here].

Well, even in academia things don’t always work that way, of course. All of us lab rats can think of examples of science faculty who have manipulated data, hidden negative results, or kept important findings under wraps until they had a chance to publish and get the coveted grant monies or patents. This is human nature and self-preservation at work. Still, even *my* jaded mind thinks that academia still strives to reach those lofty goals.

But not evil global biotech companies. This is one reason I label them “evil.” Oh, sure, they talk the good talk. Every biotech conglomerate has snappy mottos like “Getting closer to the patient” or “Bringing vision to medical discovery” which they splatter on all their marketing publications and preach to their employees at pep rallies, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one of their employees who truly believes that company profits don’t outweigh the good of mankind. I’ve led the development of dozens of products for my company, and these days no innovative idea moves forward until it goes through a gauntlet of business cases, voice-of-customer calls, and marketing considerations before any significant amount of lab testing is conducted.

What? That novel compound to study multiple sclerosis will only make a profit of $500K in its first year? Chump change! We only deal in millions, baby! Secret away that brilliant idea until we think we can earn more on it, if ever.

And that brings me to my main point. Given that this is the “season of giving” and our thoughts are supposed to be on the good of mankind, let us in biotech pause for a moment to make a New Year’s resolution, shall we? Repeat after me:

“I, Lab Rat, do hereby swear, on pain of my kidneys exploding, that I shall consider the good of mankind above profits. If the good of mankind matches the profits, I shall continue to shamelessly make millions for my evil global biotech company. If the good of mankind is not profitable, I shall henceforth find a legal way to let the academic community in on my secret, such that their brilliance may build upon my genius and help the world thrive. Amen.” [insert heavenly music again]

Personally, I like my kidneys unexploded. When I get off my vacation and return to the hectic life of my company, I think I’ll dredge up an idea or two and find a way to get them “out there.” My company could use some good karma.

The Seven Deadly Sins for Lab Rats

From time to time I get pretty bothered by what I see as stupidity in the lab, or even just inefficiency, especially if it affects me and slows down my work (it's all about me, don't you know. Call me Prideful). So I've decided to list what I feel are the Seven Deadly Sins for lab rats like myself. You know the normal Seven Deadly Sins, right? Lust, Gluttony, Greed/Avarice, Sloth/Laziness, Wrath, Envy, and Pride. Well throw those out the door, Bubba, because none of them actually bother me in the lab. Heck, many of them are major drivers for biotech and academics! And I wouldn't mind a little more lust and gluttony. So here are the seven sins (in no particular order) that I feel are more appropriate for folks working in lab settings:

Disorganization: I'm guilty of this one. My lab book is a mess, and my desk matches it. My lab fridge could use some organization, too. At least my lab bench is clean. But let's face it, if you aren't organized you could lose all those tidbits of protocol and innovation that spring from your genius mind (at least, *my* genius mind – remember, Pride is not a sin in the lab!).

Recklessness: Safety first, folks! Put on your lab coat, gloves, and safety glasses, keep an extinguisher and first aid kit nearby, and don't do anything stupid. Nearly every lab has explosive, mutagenic, radioactive, pathogenic, or corrosive chemicals or materials. We have a lab assistant at work who cleans glassware. He routinely handles potentially-contaminated glassware without gloves, puts broken glassware back into drawers, and walks around in "clean" areas in his stained lab coat (including the bathroom, ew!). I keep expecting him to keel over any day from self-poisoning, and no doubt he would glow from all the dyes he has exposed himself to. I just hope he doesn't poison my fat ass in the process!

Bias: Go ahead, be optimistic. But check that optimism (or pessimism) at the lab door, cuz I want the ugly truth to my data. We had a director here a few years ago who had pre-conceived notions about what the results should be for a product in development. When the product sucked, he blamed us for "not thinking optimistically." We were eventually vindicated when the data was overwhelmingly bad and the customers were complaining, but things would have been so much easier if he had just seen the light. Hiding bad data to make yourself look good counts here, too.

Sloppiness: My first boss at my evil global biotech company had been a man who had no lab skills whatsoever. He could never stick to a protocol or measure anything. He'd throw in a little of this and a little of that and let the solution mix for, oh, a *while*. Yet he thought he was hot stuff. "I worked with a Nobel laureate," he'd boast, but he could barely operate a pipettor. Funny, he couldn't repeat any results 'til I got hired. Lab work ain't Granny's cookin'.

Shyness: I've heard it said many times that one of the greatest phobias people have is public speaking. No scientist can go long in the biz without giving presentations on their data, at least to lab groups, but also at conferences, and sharing their techniques with their peers. Schools and colleges don't do enough to teach public speaking and writing courses. Do you have a fear of public speaking? Don't worry, we'll only laugh at you on the inside.

Ignorance: You've got to know your science and techniques, and *admit* it if you don't. At the very least you should know who to go to or what references to check. I can think of plenty of examples where I got projects or compounds passed to me from others to do R&D on, but spent most of my time figuring out all the stuff they messed up. I don't want to take the fall for their incompetence. It doesn't pay to be a dumbass, folks. Sadly, I think most people don't realize how little they know.

Fraudulence: This is by far the worst. Oh, it won't kill you like Recklessness might, but at least if you die it's your own damned fault. Nothing gets me angrier than when I spend months developing some innovation of my invention only to have my boss take all the credit, or when some beautiful image of mine gets the cover of a science journal but some other scientist gets their name listed (or there is no name at all). Both have happened to me. Science if rife with lab P.I.'s (principal investigators) who get authorship on papers but fail to give co-authorship to the technicians who actually did the work. I keep waiting for a news report of a lab rising up and lynching their P.I. for this. Watch out, you frauds out there: rope isn't very common in the lab, but there's plenty of tubing.

So there you go. If you avoid these seven deadly sins, you lab rats will go straight to Science Heaven, where Saint Darwin will issue you your golden pipettor and open the gates to that great lab bench in the sky.

I Know Everything About Nothing

"Philosophers are people who know less and less about more and more, until they know nothing about everything. Scientists are people who know more and more about less and less, until they know everything about nothing." -- (Konrad Lorenz? Web sources vary, so I gave up looking).

Lately I've been asked to talk to some high school sophomores about career choices in science, using myself as a model. Oh, how the little devil in me wants to warp their impressionable young minds! The possibilities are endless! Now is my chance to set them spiraling down that path to become the next Dr. Frankenstein. Or, worse yet, my old P.I. Mwa ha ha ha ha!

I've worked in academic, government, private biotech, and public biotech settings, and I've sampled several fields of study as part of them, at least within biology. Does that make me some sort of an expert worth their time? Maybe they will think so, but my feeling about myself is that I am so much of a generalist lab rat that I specialize in nothing. I've made dozens of products, worked on countless projects, and put out some research papers, but the areas these address range from neuroscience to agricultural science, cell biology to ecology. It's not exactly the usual career path.

Every month in the vast realm of science there is exponentially more information about an ever-increasing number of fields such that one could get dizzy trying to comprehend it all. "The more you learn the less you know." The other day I was looking at a poster that showed a signaling pathway in cells and it occurred to me that every one of the thirty or so interacting proteins noted on the poster had surely been the subject of numerous published papers, and perhaps some doctoral theses, too. How many long nights did all those scientists, grad students, and work studies slave away to get to that point? Understanding even that one pathway in great detail would surely require me to burn the midnight oil for weeks and read many dozens of research papers. And that's just one of many diverse projects I could be working on at a given time. I could only be an "expert" in that area if I forewent anything else in my life, or gave up sleep entirely. I may be a caffeine junky, but not to that extent. And I don't think either my boss or my wife would be terribly thrilled.

So if these impressionable teenagers ask if I'm an expert in anything, I'll just tell them I know more and more about less and less, and that by the time I retire I should know everything about nothing. Then when I'm old and feeble, I'll be able to tell long stories to my grandkids that show off how much I know yet never seem to come to a point.

Do you ever feel this way about your profession?

(Update: the kids were great. But I did apparently warp them, because at one point, as I explained how a DNA dye we were using could be hazardous and mutagenic if handled unsafely, one of them said with a look of fascination, "So I could add it to a human egg and it would mutate the developing fetus somehow?" YES!).