Look, I understand that people can get a little pissed when their observations aren’t corroborated by science right away but that is not the fault of science. Science is a process that takes time. Lots of time. It is remarkably difficult both technically and conceptually and there are many more failures than successes. I can understand the plight felt by the beekeepers, but just because they felt something was wrong doesn’t truly mean there was anything wrong. In this case, yes, there was and science was able to get to the bottom of it (I think…). This is precisely how science works and yet people are blaming science for not figuring it out faster! It’s patently absurd!

You can believe it all you want, but there really isn’t any “other way of knowing” that beats the scientific way of knowing. If there was it would simply be taken over by scientists and would be the “new science.” But this simply isn’t the case and it never will be. “Other ways of knowing” are simply not as reliable as science because they don’t follow reproducible evidence wherever it leads and for that they will always be deeply flawed.

Science wins, get over it.

Apologies to the dozen of you or so who have stopped by in my absence the past monthish. I’ve been in a lot of terrible places due both to personal issues and grad school issues. Both are being taken care of, and at least one of them will be over tomorrow. I have to retake a portion of my qualifying exam tomorrow to determine if I’m allowed to stay in the program. No worries though, I’m much more prepared now than I was the first time around. I worry more about my other friends who also have to retake portions of the exam. I hope they are now as prepared as I am.

Well, off to do some slice staining and talk prep. I’ll be back soon.

Does it matter that I don’t know what CCK stands for in a classification scheme of hippocampal interneurons? Is that so basic that it disqualifies me from being a physiologist? Is it MY problem that YOU can’t seem to understand that the nucleus I circled on the board and mentioned several times is the only one I will be talking about is the only one I’m talking about?

An actual answer to these rhetorical questions will be seen in about a week. One long, drawn out week.

Fuck grad school.

A PI even said I fielded questions on the fly very well, especially considering this project is barely related to my proposed thesis topic.

Can’t wait for this to be over and life to return to normal.

Thankfully, another grad student and I have been talking about a nice future co-venture that, if it works, will end up being a very important part of both our theses. God, I hope it works…

All I do anymore is read textbooks, papers, and everything else I can get my hands on to prep for a single fucking exam. Oh, and what little time I take off I spend thinking about how I can approach my thesis project.

My life is so boring. I need a hobby outside of research.

My disappointment was less about the apparent state of research and more about how research (and researchers) is presented to patients and their families. How and why biological research is conducted is largely a mystery to the vast majority of even the most educated people. What disappointed and distressed me most was how research was perceived by this patient. It was of the “why aren’t you doing this?” mentality that I find is quite pervasive in online patient communities of all diseases I’ve come across. This idea that we researchers are not really interested in certain questions about disease progression and pathology are partially correct but largely misguided, and often perpetuated by the perceived lack of progress in curing the disease in question.

It is true that scientists often halt seemingly promising lines of research much to the dismay of patients suffering from a debilitating disease, but it is not because we do not care. Instead, we do it because it makes sense scientifically and financially. If it doesn’t seem to be a fruitful endeavor then there is no point to keep wasting very valuable time and money pursuing it. There is also a simple reason we do not let patients dictate our research direction: they do not understand the science behind their disease. This is not an insult, but a simple fact. These are very complicated matters that take years of training in order to just begin to understand, and to expect a patient with little knowledge of biology to truly understand the research is unreasonable. That is why we don’t expect them to understand the underlying pathophysiology of their disease. However, patients oftentimes feel they understand more than they do (a little bit of knowledge…) due to their intimate knowledge of their disease. I cannot blame them, but I do wish they would have a little humility and acknowledge that there are plenty of professionals out there who have studied their disease for years in order to understand and, hopefully one day, conquer it.

Though most of us scientists got into research due to simple human curiosity it does not mean we don’t care about the real world implications of our work. We’re working hard not just for ourselves, but also because we know it makes a difference not only in the lives of patients, but also other scientists, and humanity at large.

Overall, I wish the author of the above blog the best in his/her treatment and that this post may help explain a bit of why we do what we do, but I also wish that some of the opinions of the author are changed for the better.

For instance, right now I should be studying for my qualifier. Or looking at my morphology data. Or looking at the physiology data. Or planning new experiments. Or… You get the idea.

Anyway, back to the grind.

How exciting a life I lead

I’m worried about both sections and really have to begin cranking out data and setting aside study time. This means I’ll be spending even less time at home and more time away from my wife which will probably not end well for me… I’m already spending 60-70h/week at the lab and much of my time at home I spend playing with images, reading papers, and all that other grad school junk, so I’m not exactly sure how spending even MORE time away home will work out. I really just want the next few months to be over.

Oh, and I hope to still be in grad school by the end of it.