title justification

I started this blog in January, and I’m not sure that I’ve ever written a post that was actually about biology. (That’s probably been a good decision because most of you would be about as bored as Rosie O’Donnell at a photo shoot for the next NYPD: Men in Uniform calendar.) However, in order to justify my blog title, I’ll try to sporadically talk a little science for you.

On to our topic…

Most notable discoveries have come after long periods of failure (e.g. Thomas Edison and his thousands of failed filaments). Trials and errors are facts of life in the scientific community, but this is not as bad as it sounds because we can often learn more from a failed experiment than we can from a successful one. (I’ll explain that another time.) Then there are the times when you think you’ve reached a pinnacle moment, but the scientific method has a way of pulling an air horn out of his long white beard, surreptitiously aiming it at the most vulnerable part of your mountain, and toppling your masterpiece while guiding the ensuing avalanche directly into your face. This is usually when you feel like joining the French Foreign Legion and changing your name to Jean-Claude.

Conversely, there are those few times when things work out and your hypothesis proves to be testable, observable, demonstratable, and repeatable. These are momentous occasions and usually excite me just enough to get me through another round of trial and error.

In short, my relationship to science has a lot in common with my relationship to golf: after a day full of slices and missed putts, that one perfect drive down the fairway makes the game enjoyable enough to justify going at least once more. That, plus, if things aren’t working out, I just hit something with a stick.