In a post I wrote over on the Guardian yesterday, I made the comparison between early-career researchers and unknown musicians:
But how does a younger scientist with a shorter track record, whose “excellence” might not yet be apparent, get his first grant? It must be a lot like getting your first break as a popular musician – except unlike a bloke with a guitar, scientists can’t film themselves on YouTube performing experiments in their bedroom to garner a reputation. Instead, they need grant money to produce the results that get turned into papers, which in turn prove their excellence – but without the grant, they’ll never get off the ground in the first place.
But then I got to thinking: wouldn’t it be totally cool if one could go viral being filmed doing an experiment in one’s bedroom? This is the closest I’ve got to it so far:
Our satellite campus doesn’t have an ultracentrifuge, so I recently had to gatecrash a friend’s lab in the Royal Veterinary College across town to do a plasmid prep. If you’ve ever perched in someone else’s digs, you know it’s always a little bit awkward – you don’t know where everything is, and inevitably you’re using up precious bench space that belongs to one of the resident students or postdocs. Ultimately, you end up feeling underfoot and in the way.
By the end of the prep, after doing the final spin and seeing that lovely white pellet of DNA at the bottom of my tubes, it was approaching 6 PM and the thought of sticking around for the final pellet-dry and resuspension steps seemed tedious. Worse, I wasn’t even sure I could get out of the building after hours without an escort or a pass.
So I took everything home and finished it off in my living room. (Don’t tell Health and Safety about that G&T on the side.) I was only really nervous when I was riding the Tube, wondering how I would explain the contents of my rucksack if I were stopped and searched by the London Transport Police.
“It’s just Green Fluorescent Protein,” I could imagine myself pleading as I was hustled away in cuffs. “GFP in a mammalian expression vector. To turn cells green. So you can see them.”
“Tell that to the judge, lady.”
But seriously. Could one actually film oneself doing an experiment real-time in one’s bedroom in any way that was meaningful, and would anyone be interested?
What do you think, Dear Readers?
What do I think, Dear Author? I think you are awesome. 😀
Once upon a time I did think idly about what it would take to do molecular biology at home. I actually think it might be a lot cheaper than doing it in a real research institute – buying a fridge from the local discount store, for example, rather than the up-priced version from the supplier catalogue.
I suspect that one major challenge would be convincing suppliers that you were legit, and that they should deliver enzymes to a residential address. But that’s probably a minor detail, as long as the credit card holds up. That and the inevitable complaints about the neighbours if they find out.
“By”. “By the neighbours.” Complaints about them come later. 😉
Whenever they play their rubbish music too loud, I could release the beta-mercaptoethanol!
I was at the launch of Nottingham Uni’s Making Science Public research programme in Feb, and someone called for scientists to be more open about their research in exactly the way you’re describing, Jenny. She mentioned YouTube and she mentioned emotion too. The blood, sweat and tears of research in a YouTube video diary. Why the heck not? That’s what I say. Looking forward to watching it.
I love seeing the whites of scientist’s eyes when demonstrating an experiment – RI Science YouTube feed, Naked Scientist’s Kitchen Science and Mark Miodownik on BBC’s Science Club. As Adam says, the emotion and passion is quite inspiring. I like the idea of a video diary to show the frustrations, dedication and highs of lab research – pitch it right and people will follow it like a soap, waiting on tenterhooks to see whether today will be the day the PCR primers work!
Thanks Adam, thanks Matt. I don’t know…a *real* experiment, unlike fun kitchen science stuff, is actually quite tedious for large stretches. The last experiment I did involved a mammoth serial dilution session that took three hours. And I had to do that every day for five days. Even some kitchen science is too boring to show all of. For example, I recently did a show with Greg Foot at the Big Bang Fair, the famous extract-DNA-from-a-kiwi thing – it took almost an hour to peel and mash all those damned kiwis backstage before the show.
But…there are bound to be some experiments amenable to real-time filming – with a good editor, it could be made exciting. But then it wouldn’t be “live”.
Hmmmm.
What? You’re into homeopathy now?
In the 1990s, my Ph.D. advisor had a seeming endless stock of reagents and equipment squirreled away in her little apartment. Agarose-check, gel aparatus (plural)-check, antibodies-in-the-freezer-check. If I had asked about an ultracentrifuge, she might have had that, too. So, sure, why not?
As an aside, as a graduate student I can remember doing immunoblots, and not wanting to hang around the lab collecting various exposures. I took the “cassette” that holds the films home, along with an extra empty cassette, and transfered the films from one cassette to the other in the dark of my closet. Does that qualify?
It’s still not live, but how about this as a snappy way to show a serial dilution: http://youtu.be/gZO9J7dDLU4
Also, I remember one episode of Planet Earth Diaries (the ‘making of’ at the end of the show) that showed one camerman’s efforts in trying to film a bird of paradise. I can’t find a clip online but it definitely got across the long, drawn-out process someone desperate for results goes through!
Other fields may be more amenable too. I used to carry out behavioural assays with fruitfly maggots – maggots running towards or away from odours. Very easy (with no ethical requirements) and you could show some nice results quickly (some specific mutants could not smell certain odours).
OK, I’m going to have a think about this and next time I do an experiment, I might film some of it. Not at home, though!
Jennifer,
Thanks Adam, thanks Matt. I don’t know…a *real* experiment, unlike fun kitchen science stuff, is actually quite tedious for large stretches. The last experiment I did involved a mammoth serial dilution session that took three hours. And I had to do that every day for five days. Even some kitchen science is too boring to show all of.
If it’s any consolation, I can’t see someone showing a computational biologist at work. There’d be these long segments of some nerd staring at a screen typing… Day after day, all day, for weeks on end 😀
(OK, some fancy molecular graphics or whatnot might be visual.)
For example, I recently did a show with Greg Foot at the Big Bang Fair, the famous extract-DNA-from-a-kiwi thing – it took almost an hour to peel and mash all those damned kiwis backstage before the show.
Kiwifruit 😉 Kiwis are either the bird—the national bird at that—or the people.
Yeah, I know, Americans, etc., refer to the fruit as kiwis: sometimes it’s confusing to us Kiwis.
(FWIW, I initially read your paragraph as meaning the bird until I got towards the end of it!)
Have you seen the Periodic Table of Videos: http://www.periodicvideos.com/
The videos are both interesting and exciting (check out Potassium) and, for me, capture some of the thrill of science.
Hi Grant, for better or worse, kiwifruit are marketed and labelled as ‘kiwis’ here in the UK. It’s the default meaning.
Philip, thanks for that link!
Steve, when you were doing your exposures at home, wasn’t it frustrating to get back to work the next day and find out that the perfect exposure was somewhere in the middle of two you’d attempted? I always needed the feedback of the x-omat to know how to optimize.
a mammoth serial dilution session that took three hours
Have you actually seen a mammoth? Close up? I reckon that if it took only three hours you had a very small mammoth.