Humanizing the Scientific/Medical Process:
Science and medicine are profoundly human endeavors, and communicating the human element is a critical part of explaining science to the general public. In this exercise, students will read several examples of a profile or sketch, in which writers describe both the researcher and the science that she or he does. They will then write their own version--not a full-blown profile, but a succinct and well-crafted two-page character sketch. The subject could be a lab chief, an attending physician, a postdoc, an intern, a prominent person in the field, a lab technician, a lab administrator--anyone whose story reveals an important (and perhaps under-appreciated) aspect of the scientific or medical endeavor.
Think of any major scientific discovery. Who are the people that come to mind? Perhaps it’s a brilliant but eccentric professor who conceived the theory, or a graduate student or postdoc who toiled away in the lab for months or years to find this breakthrough. What often gets lost in the headlines is the fact that behind every research laboratory is an enormous support staff who work hard to make scientific discovery possible.
My lab studies the molecular mechanisms that underlie memory formation, using rodents. Over the years, we have identified genes that are activated during and required for learning and long-term memory, brain regions where memories are formed and stored, and roles for different types of brain cells in the memory process. Our lab head, or principal investigator, oversees the projects in the lab and works to obtain the funding necessary to fund the research. We have a lab manager extraordinaire, Gabriella, who has been with our lab for nearly two decades, and with her encyclopedic knowledge of the lab’s history, works tirelessly to keep the lab functioning smoothly. Then of course there is the team of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who do the experiments that seek to understand the brain. When we publish our findings to the world, in Nature or Neuron or other journals, it is our names that are on the author list.
But where would we be without our veterinary and animal care staff? Camille, Priscilla, Carlos, Luis are just a few of the people who work every day to maintain the animal facility that houses the animals we use. While we are the ones conducting the animal experiments, the veterinary staff coordinate the logistics of ordering the animals, and ensure that the animals are healthy, fed, and clean. They train us in the proper techniques to handle the animals, and work with us to design experiments that are ethically sound and minimize animal discomfort.
And what about all the reagents and equipment we need for our experiments? As a graduate student, I submit my reagent requests to an online system, and several days later, that reagent appears on my bench. But for that online request to materialize into a physical item, my request first needs to be submitted to the university purchasing system by Gabriella. Then one of the administrators, Jenna, in the neuroscience department has to approve and submit the order, and handle the payments from our lab’s grants. When the order finally arrives at our building, our receiving department, headed by Frank, has to sort all of the packages that come to our building and deliver them to the appropriate lab in a timely manner - no small feat given that our building is 10 stories high and houses dozens of labs across multiple departments!
Perhaps even less visible, but no less critical, are the facilities staff that keeps the physical lab space operational. From simple tasks like cleaning the common walkways and disposing of garbage, to more challenging tasks like ensuring sufficient power supply to power the massive -80C freezers that store precious samples, or clean purified water used to prepare solutions for experiments, these staff create the environment that makes it possible for scientists to do their work.
Scientists of all training levels work hard to illuminate hidden areas of our world. When they succeed, they are immortalized through publications where their names are linked with their discoveries. It is easy to take for granted the enormous army of people that is mobilized to make the scientist’s work possible. Imagine how much slower scientific discovery would be if scientists themselves had to monitor every research animal, navigate budgetary bureaucracy to order and pick up reagents, and even coordinate with utilities to keep the lights on and the water running.