From: mhollowa@ic.sunysb.edu (Michael Holloway)
Subject: Re: Science and methodology (was: Homeopathy ... tradition?)
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In article <1993Apr16.155919.28040@cs.rochester.edu> fulk@cs.rochester.edu (Mark Fulk) writes:
>In article <C5Kv7p.JM3@unx.sas.com> sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill) writes:
>>
>>In article <1993Apr15.200344.28013@cs.rochester.edu>, fulk@cs.rochester.edu (Mark Fulk) writes:
>>What is wrong with the above observation is that it explicitly gives the
>>impression (and you may not in fact hold this view) that the common (perhaps
>>even the "correct") approach for a scientist to follow is to sit around
>>having flights of fancy and scheming on the basis of his jealousies and
>>petty hatreds.
>
>Flights of fancy, and other irrational approaches, are common.  The crucial
>thing is not to sit around just having fantasies; they aren't of any use
>unless they make you do some experiments.  I've known a lot of scientists
>whose fantasies lead them on to creative work; usually they won't admit
>out loud what the fantasy was, prior to the consumption of a few beers.

The danger in philosophizing about science is that theory and generalization 
can end up being far removed from the actual day-to-day of the grunt at the
bench.  Yes, its great to be involved in a process were I can walk into the
lab after a heavy night of dreaming and just do something for the hell of it
(as long as my advisor doesn't catch me - which is easy enough to do), but 
stamping out such behavior seems to be the purpose in life of grant review 
committees and the peer review process in general.  In today's world that's 
what determines what science is: what gets funded.  And a damn good thing to.
Flights of fantasy just don't have much chance of producing anything, at 
least not in biomedical research.  The surest way for a graduate student to
ruin their life is to work in a lab where the boss is more concerned with 
fleshing out his/her fantasies than with having the student work on a project
that actually has a good chance of producing some results.  MD's seem to 
be particularly prone to this aberrant behavior.  

>(Simple example: Warren Jelinek noticed an extremely heavy band on a DNA
>electrophoresis gel of human ALU fragments.  He got very excited, hoping that
>he'd seen some essential part of the control mechanism for eukaryotic
>genes.  This fantasy led him to sequence samples of the band and carry out
>binding assays.  The result was a well-conserved, 400 or so bp, sequence
>that occurs about 500,000 times in the human genome.  Unfortunately for
>Warren's fantasy, it turns out to be a transposon that is present in
>so many copies because it replicates itself and copies itself back into
>the genome.  On the other hand, the characteristics of transposons were
>much elucidated; the necessity of a cellular reverse transcriptase was
>recognized; and the standard method of recognizing human DNA was created.
>Other species have different sets of transposons.  Fortunately for me,
>Warren and I used to eat dinner at T.G.I. Fridays all the time.)

I have to agree with Gary Merrill's response to this.  I've read alot of the
Alu and middle repetitive sequence work and it's really very interesting, 
good work with implications for many fields in molecular genetics.  It's 
really an example of how a well reasoned project turned up interesting 
results that were unexpected.

Mike


