Scientific research has its ups and downs, its bounteous harvests and dry spells, its joys and frustrations. But how often does it have its poetry?<\/p>\n
\nI started to ponder this issue while I was interviewing<\/a> the singer\/songwriter Billy Bragg for Nature<\/em>. Our hour-long slot was nearly up: we’d reached a natural pause in the animated discussion; the Wellcome staff and playwright Mick Gordon had left us alone for the last few minutes. Sun was slanting through the glass walls of the meeting room, insulating us from the bustle of the Euston Road below. Our tea had gone cold, and there was one final answer that I wanted from him – and it had nothing to do with the new play that had been the central focus of our chat. <\/p>\n \nIt was clear from his previous responses that, like many people, he held a mixed view of scientists and their profession. On the one hand, he was obviously wary of the possible abuses inherent in the study of human genetics, and his references to scientists were often couched in isolating terms: “you lot mess[ing] around in lab coats behind closed doors”, for example. Yet despite these references, and claiming to have failed physics at school, he professed a deep admiration for science and the study of the nature world that seemed sincere to me – especially the science of dark matter, which he said he’d been avidly following in various science documentaries on television.<\/p>\n \nWhy was this?<\/p>\n \n“I’m especially interested in the sorts of science that are inherently ambiguous,” he told me. “I’m interested in dark matter because you have to believe it’s there. I’m not a big fan of people like Richard Dawkins who talk only in absolutes with no room for doubt. The fundamental reality of the universe is intangible. It can’t be felt or detected: like the existence of dark matter, you have to take it on faith.”<\/p>\n \nI tried to explain to him that science is absolutely riddled with uncertainty, and any scientist who claims her results are absolute truth won’t get very far in her profession. He thought this was an interesting perspective because it did clash with his conception of scientists. We then decided that science had an image problem, and I asked him what he thought we could do to better it.<\/p>\n \n“Science needs more poetry,” he said immediately. “E=mc², now that was poetry – but it’s a rare example. Think about Dawkins versus William Blake. Dawkins says, “If you believe in God, you’re stupid.” And Blake says: ‘And did those feet in ancient time\/Walk upon England’s mountains green?\/And was the holy Lamb of God\/ On England’s pleasant pastures seen?’ Blake was asking a question, not spouting absolutes. It’s no wonder that his words are still with us.”<\/p>\n \nLater when I was walking back to the lab, I kept going over this idea. Was E=mc² really poetic, or just a snappy sound-byte that people could remember, hooked into a larger concept that captured the popular imagination? Would people look upon us more favorably if we had more pithy equations, more moldy Petri dishes, more moon landings, more double helices – more accessible and memorable symbols or metaphors for significant findings that everyone could recognize as having value?<\/p>\n \nOn balance, I think true poetry in science is probably a very rare thing. I have never had my own E=mc² moment, and most scientists never will. Indeed, the moments that contain the most beauty for me would probably be inscrutable to your average non-scientist. <\/p>\n \nTake my most memorable lab incident, about eight or nine years ago now, when I was researching in the Netherlands. I had been working tirelessly for months, trying to find definitive proof that the virus protein I was studying was phosphorylated not only in a test tube, but in actual living cells. The experiments were gruesome, involving millicuries of radioactive phosphorus, carried out behind Perspex screens in an isolation room; the heavy protective gear made you sticky with sweat, the Geiger counter was constantly screaming off the scale and, no matter how careful you were, the mucky lysis and immunoprecipitation steps with that much radiation invariably led to contaminated benches, trays, racks and centrifuges, all of which had to be completely decontaminated before leaving the room. The result of all this fuss was a tiny, blazing-hot gel dried down onto a piece of Whatman paper and exposed in the freezer to X-ray film for a few hours, in hopes of seeing that telltale black band of phosphorylated protein.<\/p>\n \nOne day my nail-biting wait time for film exposure happened to coincide with a leaving party on the third floor. Such “borrels”, as they’re known in Dutch, are frequent and absence is frowned upon, so I made an appearance upstairs on my way to the dark room. Now, these radioactive labelling experiments were not only tiring, but were also timed in such a way that I almost always missed lunch. So it was perhaps no surprised that that the first biertje<\/em> hit me rather hard, and the handful of spicy borrelnoten<\/em> was not enough to stave off an acute attack of tipsiness.<\/p>\n \nWhen my timer went off, I staggered down to the darkroom, fumbled my film into the machine and fretted in the red twilight for the result to come out the other end. When it did, I could immediately see two things: first, that I’d fed the film in at a drunken 45-degree angle and half of the gel had not been exposed.<\/p>\n \nBut before I could get too angry at my carelessness, I noticed the second thing: that the region of the gel I’d managed to expose showed the first definite proof that my theory was correct. I ran back up to the party to wave the film at my boss, and after dancing around in glee, he dubbed the wonky film the “borrel gel”. I re-exposed the film properly, of course, and replicated the experiment several more times – and the rest is history<\/a>. I doubt anyone else would see the poetry in that amazing moment except for those for whom this became a piece of much laughed-over lab lore. But for me, I will never be able to separate the finding – in its own way beautiful – from the unconventional, rosy-tinted and cockeyed moment in which it was revealed to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Scientific research has its ups and downs, its bounteous harvests and dry spells, its joys and frustrations. But how often does it have its poetry? I started to ponder this issue while I was interviewing the singer\/songwriter Billy Bragg for … Continue reading