StorytimeVille
And, no, I'm not talking about that now defunct band of thrash metal grandpas.
Instead, I'm talking about something the great British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, in the pages of Nature way back in 1870:
Of course, particularly on the dispassionate level of the work itself, a slaying such as this is just as it should be given that it forces you to revise your hypothesis, or even come up with a brand new one, so that you can move forward with the next set of experiments.
But on the personal level, especially for young trainees, an hypothesis slain can be difficult to deal with.
Our most recent experience with hypothesis slaying came yesterday afternoon, just before our pre-holiday get together was about to start.
This is always a big time of year for students as they rush to finish their last set of experiments before they head home, go on trips and/or gather with friends for a bit of a break.
Plus, this year was the first time we have all gotten together, live, for a party since December of 2019.
So, as you can imagine, I was a little giddy, what with the rush to put up the decorations, get the music hooked up, and put out the food, when this really sharp young trainee who has worked really hard over the last year to generate a complex data set that led her to formulate a truly beautiful, and completely novel, hypothesis, arrived. Her eyes were open wide but, unfortunately, not with joy.
As you have probably already guessed, the trainee's latest results contained a very ugly fact.
Which led to a whole lot of commiserating as other folks nearby heard the news.
And, no, I'm not talking about that now defunct band of thrash metal grandpas.
Instead, I'm talking about something the great British biologist Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, in the pages of Nature way back in 1870:
"The great tragedy of science...the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact."
Of course, particularly on the dispassionate level of the work itself, a slaying such as this is just as it should be given that it forces you to revise your hypothesis, or even come up with a brand new one, so that you can move forward with the next set of experiments.
But on the personal level, especially for young trainees, an hypothesis slain can be difficult to deal with.
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Our most recent experience with hypothesis slaying came yesterday afternoon, just before our pre-holiday get together was about to start.
This is always a big time of year for students as they rush to finish their last set of experiments before they head home, go on trips and/or gather with friends for a bit of a break.
Plus, this year was the first time we have all gotten together, live, for a party since December of 2019.
So, as you can imagine, I was a little giddy, what with the rush to put up the decorations, get the music hooked up, and put out the food, when this really sharp young trainee who has worked really hard over the last year to generate a complex data set that led her to formulate a truly beautiful, and completely novel, hypothesis, arrived. Her eyes were open wide but, unfortunately, not with joy.
As you have probably already guessed, the trainee's latest results contained a very ugly fact.
Which led to a whole lot of commiserating as other folks nearby heard the news.
Of course, we will figure out how to regroup and move forward.
But it's not going to be an easy road for that young trainee, at least in the short term, given that she was all ready to send out her paper early in the New Year.
I guess I'm trying to say that it can be a tough road in discovery-based science because, while the highs are really fantastic, there are a whole lot of low, sometimes deep valleys.
Put another way, even making small dents in the universe can be really, really hard.
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The great thing about the latest result is that it looks like there might be an off-ramp based on the knockout phenotype...We're going to talk about that early next week once the trainee has all the data together.
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But it's not going to be an easy road for that young trainee, at least in the short term, given that she was all ready to send out her paper early in the New Year.
I guess I'm trying to say that it can be a tough road in discovery-based science because, while the highs are really fantastic, there are a whole lot of low, sometimes deep valleys.
Put another way, even making small dents in the universe can be really, really hard.
______
The great thing about the latest result is that it looks like there might be an off-ramp based on the knockout phenotype...We're going to talk about that early next week once the trainee has all the data together.
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5 comments:
This is where having rigorous, but supportive mentoring is so critical, especially if the off-ramp materializes, as we don't want to be jettisoning the pueris with the piddle, nor to be discouraging further efforts from sharp trainees.
At the time I retired as a scientist 3 years ago, there was an increasing call amongst researchers to encourage journals to publish negative results more often. Maybe your colleague can give it a shot despite her hypothesis being disproved.
Seems to me that on the road to any great discovery, work that weeds out the wrong turns is critical to realization of the goal. The comforting part for laymen like me is that there are young committed researchers in the hunt and senior scientists available to bring them along and encourage them when the inevitable (but necessary) temporary setbacks occur.
Congratulations to you and all your crew.
Danneau--
Absolutely.
Even more important given how driven these young folks are.
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Gordie--
Yours is an excellent suggestion. In our field this most often happens when someone generates a transgenic with little phenotype, at least under the conditions assessed.
In this specific case however we still have an interesting story. The genetic interaction and phenotypic data are strong - it's the hypothesized mechanism of action that took a hit. We will figure out a new path to follow on that front but it will take some time and we may have to develop new reagents (in this case the problem was an antibody that gave us a spurious initial result that dissolved when we did a follow-up control experiment).
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Thanks, as always, for your kind and thoughtful words Lew.
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