In article <9409021837.AA19740 at calvin.jci.tju.edu> P_Norton at CALVIN.JCI.TJU.EDU (Dr. Pamela Norton) writes:
> Another lurker drawn in...
>> The thread on what defining who is or isn't a scientist is
>interesting. I agree with the poster (sorry, forgot the name) who made the
>distinction between thinking like a scientist and being employed as a
>professional scientist. Thus, you refer to yourself as a scientis if you
>"do science".
>> Which brings me to the subject of this post. The lab next door had
>a high school teacher visiting for the summer. As part of the program that
>supported this activity, he had to summarize what he had learned about in
>the lab. He summarized what people were doing based on conversations with
>them. What piqued my interest was that he divided what we all call "doing
>science" into "investigative" versus "methodological" work. So I'll pose to
>all of you the same question that I posed to the people in the lab: Is this
>a fair way to think about what you do? To extend the thought a little
>further, how much time do you spend on each component? Do you think that
>this varies greatly depending the particular branch of science that you do?
>> To answer these questions myself, it seems that we spend a LOT of
>time on developing, refining and trouble-shooting methods. Maybe that's
>because I'm primarily a molecular biologist, and new techniques seem to
>crop up continually. On the other hand, I would rather think about the
>scientific questions that drive all the experimental work (and the grant
>writing that I' procrastinating on right now).
>> So how do you spend your time ? Is one more important than the
>other?
>(or is this feeble attempt at creating a new thread doomed to failure?)
I find that the process is the following:
1. Come up with an interesting question and think of different ways to
nswer it.
This is one investigative part.
2. Try out the different methods devised in step 1, tweak and refine them
until one of the blasted things finally works.
This is obviously the methodology phase, and the phase most likely to
drive you to total distraction ;-)
3. Now that you finally got those blasted tools from h*** to work right,
you go back to investigative mode: assay the samples and get the answer to
step#1.
How much time the methodological phase takes depends on two things:
A. Whether or not the question you posed in step #1 is a real doozey.
You know you did this if you end up putting a sign up by your desk that
says "This job takes brains ... and scrambles them"
B. Your level of experience.
The more research experience you have, the faster you realize when you are
on the wrong track with a particular method.
I am a graduate student who picked a real doozey of a project, so I have
not quite reached warp speed yet. However, I am finally getting closer to
step#3 ;-)
Annette
ah690549 at mbcr.bcm.tmc.edu
>------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Pamela A. Norton, Ph.D. p_norton at lac.jci.tju.edu>Assistant Professor of Medicine
>Thomas Jefferson University
>1020 Locust Street, JAH 365
>Philadelphia, PA 19107
>>
