artisanal science

Artisanal science

It's been a busy week. Actually, the first time I wrote that sentence

I mistyped it as a 'busty week'. Things would have been a lot better

if I'd had a busty week, but, no, I had a busy one. Manchester on

friday (about which more later, promise) and London today, to take

part in a meeting to discuss guidelines for UK Research Staff

management. Not my favourite way to spend time, but I think it's a

necessary evil and it was in Tavistock Square, so I got to drop in at

the British Museum on the way to Paddington.

Anyway, one of the benefits of all this travelling is that it's given

me a chance to catch up with my journal reading. I spent the 4 hour

train trip up to London going through the last month of Nature and

came across one of the best letters I've ever read. It's by a lass

called Lisa Alleva and was published in the 21st September issue under

the title 'Taking time to savour the rewards of slow science'. Before

I reproduce the letter in full, I should say that I think the English

is a little disjointed, but from personal experience, that may well be

an over-zealous copy editor, so don't hold it against Lisa. Anyway, at

the risk of massive copyright infringement, here it is:

SIR -

As an older, experienced, part-time postdoctoral fellow, I have

observed a

trend amongst my younger, more vigorous colleagues to experiment

themselves into oblivion. Following the lead of the 'slow food'

movement, I suggest we

adopt a philosophy of 'slow science' to address this issue, which I

believe is

damaging the very basis of scientific enquiry.

My personal choice has been to accept the here and now - I am here,

making history, so why not enjoy this journey? I may not be here in

six months, twelve months, two years, but I am not going to work

100 hours a week to try to attain the elusive goals of my own

grant, my own lab, perhaps even tenure.

In shedding the ambitions of my peers, I have discovered a secret:

science, slow science, is perhaps the most rewarding and

pleasurable pastime one could ever hope for. My supervisor's lab is

small - two postdocs only, with no teaching responsibilities. We

are free to read the literature, formulate ideas and carefully plan

our experiments so as to execute thoughtful strategies. We do not

plough through genomes hoping to discover something interesting; we

formulate a theory, and the we go in and test it.

Perhaps we are old-fashioned, but I feel my education as a

scientist has benefited far more from my five years of slow science

than the preceding five years of fast science. What's more, we are

on the brink of something big, exciting and wonderful, that spurs

my slow science forever onwards.

What a fantastic idea! I love the idea of artisanal science and think

that, in biology, at least, scientists have a habit of forcing

questions on biology. I'm currently writing grant proposals and am

twisting and turning words around to make an argument for looking at a

particular system. How much better would it be to just sit back and

let biology reveal questions to you? And could I just propose John