My parents came up to Boston for a rare visit about a year ago. Being the compulsive grad student that I am (ok, was), I had to stop by lab to change media on some cells in the middle of their visit and brought them along. I worked quickly, all the while appearing intent, professional, and highly competent, so as to impress my thoroughly unscientific parents. I thought I did pretty well. Nothing spilled, nothing dropped, no cells met their maker (not before their time, in any case). When I asked my parents what they thought of what they saw (angling for an “Oooh, aaah”), they answered, “Eh. It looks like you are pouring the same liquid from one container to another and then back again.” Thunk. So much for my impressing my parents with my mad lab skills.
Thing is, they have a point. That really is all I do. I transfer exceedingly small volumes of liquid from one container to the next, keeping the faith that the clear liquid contains a submicroscopic plasmid which when mixed with yet another clear liquid and placed on top of cells will induce them to express a protein that I will not be able to visualize without the use of another wildly involved technique (Western blot).
This partially explains why scientists are viewed as a little mad, represented in cartoons and movies standing next to beakers bubbling with intensely colored liquid, full of things that we cannot see. We work in blobs on blots, cells on computer screens and lines on gels – all things highly conceptual, abstract, and intangible. No wonder we look off kilter to the outside world.
I do still want to impress my parents, but I am afraid of what I have to do to accomplish that feat… there may have to be some very unhappy mice.
Yes, this was what struck me when I spent 10 days in a molecular biology lab at MBL in May on a science journalism fellowship. Most of us journalists had little to no experience in a lab and so it was hard for us to remember what we were pipetting, because we could barely see what we were pipetting. We had to take on faith that those microliter amounts of fluid actually contained something interesting, and we prayed that those magical blobs would appear on blots.
So much of science at the molecular level can be really hard to picture for people not trained/steeped in it on a daily basis so I think that’s why it’s rare to see molecular/cell biology stories written up in the general press. There are plenty of stories about planets, animals and dinosaurs, because these things are easy to picture and we’ve been taught and exposed to them since childhood. But DNA? proteins?
Perhaps that’s changing, now that molecular and cell biology is being taught to younger and younger students, although I’m not sure the message is sinking in. Did you see the article today about the more than 25 percent of Massachusetts high school students flunking the standardized (MCAS) science exam? Boston is so strong in science but sadly it’s not trickling down to the high school students.
I have experienced a similar reaction as you did with your parents from my non-scientist husband. He has learned a limited amount of lab vocabulary (Western blot, PCR, tissue culture, ELISA), but I don’t think he really understands how all of that seemingly mundane work can be so interesting to me. I have learned a limited amount of his computer programming lingo, but I don’t really “get it” anymore that he “gets” molecular biology. Maybe we are a little mad to take so much on faith that we can’t see? We do repeat things a million times, even if it isn’t working—isn’t that the very definition of mad? Do something over and over and expecting a different result…
I saw the article with the MCAS pass rates. Although it is disappointing, I am not surprised. It is always a challenge to talk about my work with my family and non-scientist friends. Many people need a definition of the word immunology. Now, I am not a linquist, but I don’t think it is too hard of a word to dissect.
Hi Anna, cool post, it reminds me of some friends that visited me some times at my former lab… they also believed that I was only pouring liquids from one place to another
Diego