It’s always difficult to explain to non-scientists that what we get paid for is not particularly linear, it’s recursive. So it doesn’t lend itself very well to telling satisfying stories at the dinner table. Part of the difficulty is in the fact that most people don’t care as much for process as they do for results.
But for those who do like process (often engineer-types), T. Ryan Gregory posted a great link recently to Understanding Science.
I won’t re-post the lovely schematic (which is animated if you click on the link), but I am currently trying to think how to tell a story about what I am doing in lab, currently.
It’s really the same problem as any narrator has, in fact. Even if time is seemingly linear, life cycles are not, so what part of the wheel should you describe? The bit ending in someone’s (or your hypothesis’) death? You must pick a point and follow the curve from there.
If I pick a point and describe the path of how I get from a hypothesis to imagining how to test it, gathering data, making more observations, sharing these with my colleagues – well, let’s say that it would really resemble a Spirograph drawing more than anything else. And not necessarily an elegant one like this, but the kind where your pencil skips on the paper.
Hi Heather,
Just found your blog through a comment you left at biochemical soul. Great post (and Ryan’s too with that excellent schematic).
Anyway I’m a neuroscientist and I had my own thoughts on how the scientific process works which I published here: 4 Simple steps to being a scientist
In a nutshell I think it’s:
1. WOW!
2. How does that Work?
3. Hmmm let me see, what I can do with that?
4. Tell everybody.
Cheers
Patrick
And -
5. WOW again! Look what they found; that fits really well with 2…
As you wrote, “The hoary old saying “answering one question raises a hundred more” sums it up nicely. There’s one caveat though. As exciting as that is to me, it’s not as exciting to 99% of people.”
Sometimes I have a hard time relating to that lack of interest from even the people I love. Like they’ve put their curiosity aside, or need to parcel it out because the energy to concentrate is limited. Kids are great for that – they are all naturally curious and are in the middle of an intense process of learning. When I see a demonstration at a science museum and the audience fascination, it makes me feel proud to do what I do again.
I liked the spirograph analogy for scientific progress, especially apposite since it encompasses all those times when the cog slips and gives you a random path!
I am also struck again by the parallel in our thought processes – spooky! – I was planning to mention the Understanding Science site in an upcoming post (tonight if I get my act together..), coming at it from a slightly different direction.