No, I don’t follow Formula 1 – my husband is the gear head in the family. And no, I’ve never liked Michael Schumacher particularly: he is just too much of a ‘nice guy’. I will not comment on what was going on between him and Barichello.
I am, however, in the camp of people who firmly believe that one of the big reasons (besides not being too bad of a driver) Schumacher did so well for so many years was his technical know-how. This made it possible for him to come back after a drive and, instead of saying “dunno, the car didn’t run so well today”, give pretty good instructions to the engineers on what he thought needed tweaking. So the ‘doing’ and the development went hand in hand = the ‘Michael Schumacher effect’.
The same thing exists in science: the biggest discoveries happen at the intersection of science and technology, where boundaries are pushed further, making those who understand both invaluable for driving progress in any field of research. I’ve observed this many times while working for the US Antarctic Program: there was hardly any funded Principal Investigator who didn’t have his or her ‘sidekick’ who was in charge of technical issues, logistics, and keeping all of the equipment happy and running smoothly during a research cruise. These sidekicks were always extremely wickedly smart people. (I would even go as far as saying that some of them were smarter than the PIs themselves… but that would be rude.)
There are many scientists who use very sophisticated equipment simply to get data, without a real understanding of what exactly the equipment does. I will readily admit that this was also true for me concernning some equipment I used during my PhD research (for example, I could never be bothered never had time to really learn the ins and outs of a gas chromatograph). Thankfully, in these situations there always seems to be a technician who can work miracles explain what to do…
During my current undercover research, I have now learned that this phenomenon may be even more pronounced in physics: there are two different tribes, the ‘Machine Scientists’ and the – well, others. The Machine Scientists do their thing and build wonderfully powerful, complicated machines that they very much love – to the innocent observer, it might even seem as if they’d be just as happy building ever more sophisticated machines, whether or not anyone will be using them for research. Either way, the non-machine-physicists are literally not allowed on ‘the other side’, i.e. behind the radiation protection wall of, for example, a large synchrotron facility.
The funny thing is, they cannot live without each other.
P.S. Thanks to Eva for giving me the idea for the title of this post. And if you happen to read it out loud, do please try to get the ‘ch’ right (it’s not a k!!!).
Field palaeontologists have this in spades. They might very well know their cleithrum from their sternum – but they can also change a truck tyre, in bandit-infested badlands, in complete darkness, as if their lives depended on it – because, of course, they might.
I was more likely to be found standing next to the real-time PCR machine wailing “heeeeeelp!”
For me, lab equipment didn’t have much appeal – I was into stuff like the megacorer (beautiful blog post I just found describing sampling for macrofauna). Kind of like changing a car tire, but more fiddly.
Shouldn’t macrofauna be things like whales? I’m trying to imagine the size of a corer for them.
During my PhD I decided that good technicians are worth their weight in gold, just because they know how to get complicated stuff like PCR working well. I had a hard enough time cutting up leaves and putting them in boxes.
Bob, you don’t need to catch something the size of a whale to find out what they had for dinner…
The sherpas climb without oxygen and without other instruments the K2.
Sure Alejandro, and they are remarkable(!), but they don’t do any science..
As it will not be science, not need drugs.
Hm, and Schumi has helped in the development of nice things for Ferrari road car customers too, like the F430 Scuderia.
Mmmmmm Scuderia.
I see something similar in bioinformaticians – the best ones are the ones who understand the biological nuts and bolts as well as the programming whoozamatoozits. Sorry about the technical language there.
No worries Richard, I think everyone here knows what a whoozamatoozit is. Right?