I am agonising over designing a study to be done this summer in India with human subjects. I realise how difficult it is to design one of these because you never get a second chance. Its not like you can do the same experiment again if this one fails.

It seems like its the biggest difference between lab research and field research. I remember during my lab years, that I would never trust the results of a single experiment. I had to go back and re-do it to make sure I was absolutely correct. Well, I can’t do that with human subjects and its freaking me out.

This of course, isn’t entirely true. If you work with Non-human primates, they are even more precious than humans, so my rant isn’t entirely accurate. Also, if you work with one of those rare genetically modified specially bred species of lab animal then you really don’t want to mess it all up , but by and large mistakes happen and you can repeat the experiment. In fact, its one way in which science distinguishes itself from social science. Repeatability, reproducibility…

I always whined about how if you did work with human cells, subjects your results would always get published even if they were rubbish but with animal work (especially mouse stuff) you really had to find something interesting and new. It always bugged, but I understand now.

anyway, I better get back to the real world and finish deciding what controls to use in my “human experiment”.