{"id":163,"date":"2008-07-21T00:25:49","date_gmt":"2008-07-21T00:25:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2008\/07\/21\/on_mighty_oaks_and_little_nuts\/"},"modified":"2008-07-21T00:25:49","modified_gmt":"2008-07-21T00:25:49","slug":"on_mighty_oaks_and_little_nuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/2008\/07\/21\/on_mighty_oaks_and_little_nuts\/","title":{"rendered":"On mighty oaks and little nuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was checking over some old emails these morning, looking for a particular nugget of information (which I found, by the way. Thanks for asking), when I came across an email from Jenny<\/a>. We were talking about LabLit<\/a> and how one achieves activation energy to sit down and write something (in this case, how do I turn a notebook full of random scribblings into a coherent novel?).<\/p>\n

\nJenny said <\/p>\n

\nAnother thing might be to start small – say to yourself not that you are Writing a Novel (sounds insurmountable) but that you are really keen to write a great scene (500-1000 words, just like in the webstory<\/a>) towards that novel\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\nand I suddenly thought “That’s just like science!”.<\/p>\n

\nWe all want the big paper in Science<\/em><\/del> Nature<\/em>, but I wonder what drives us on the daily, get up to come into the lab in the morning\/afternoon\/small hours, basis? Do we ever think to ourselves ‘today I will cure cancer’, or is our motivation more ‘today I will get that blasted PCR working’?<\/p>\n

\nAll science is driven by little steps. We find our motivation in those little things (yes, yes \u2014 of course we keep the big picture in mind; if nothing else it’s how we fool the grant agencies into funding us). We chop up the big questions into chewable lumps.<\/p>\n

\nNow, I don’t expect that I’m telling anyone here anything new. But how much is public perception of the way science is actually done is coloured by the big papers, by the Nobel prizes, the PR departments? In what way can the ‘general public’ meaningfully call the shots<\/a> if we don’t talk about how it’s actually done? Is there, in fact, any point<\/em> in doing it?<\/p>\n

\nI’d like to think so. And I’d also like to think that there is some way of taking people like this<\/a>, of encouraging them and holding them up as an exemplar. Those kids get it. And they are the ones who will understand when we say that after 30 years of research we don’t have a cure for cancer (or a vaccine against HIV) because science is complex, it is expensive, and it is hard<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\nLittle steps are all we can take some days. Most days. I suspect most people (outwith the rather rarefied atmosphere of the scientific endeavour itself) do not understand this, and get disappointed and angry when Science cannot answer their questions satisfactorily. We have only ourselves to blame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was checking over some old emails these morning, looking for a particular nugget of information (which I found, by the way. Thanks for asking), when I came across an email from Jenny. We were talking about LabLit and how … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/rpg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}