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I'm glad you called out biology as a counterexample. In my grad school/postdoc experience, publishing a meaningful paper in the wet lab biosciences often requir
by bonniemuffin 7y ago
I'm glad you called out biology as a counterexample. In my grad school/postdoc experience, publishing a meaningful paper in the wet lab biosciences often requires tens of thousands of dollars in consumable materials, as well as $100k+ of lab hardware. Casual garage researchers have very little opportunity to contribute to the field in meaningful ways.
- xenocyon 7y agoI would say math is the exception, rather than biology. In most fields - even ones that don't require physical experiments - research is aided quite a bit by infrastructure, interaction, and environment.
- ISL 7y agoThe most important ingredient in research is time. Don't count out garage research. There is no substitute for professionalism in research, no matter the venue. Hard work, best practices, collaboration, and expertise are all essential. I am presently in a time of change in my own research career, and a garage laboratory underwritten by an industrial job is beginning to look quite tempting. There are a lot of advantages, but the onus is heavily on the researcher to choose research directions that are compatible with that environment. Barbara McClintock did her most-famous work in a shed with a small adjoining cornfield. I'm happy to wager that there are major discoveries left in biology to be made with similar equipment. The key is being able to eat, sleep, support loved ones, be healthy, and be able to get some research done.
- mygo 7y agoI would love to learn more about how you go about running your own lab! How can I follow?
- ISL 7y agoAt the moment, I work at the University of Washington's CENPA but my departure from academia is likely. Whether I leave academia or not, the best way to follow my scientific work is through my publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=vi-A5dkAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=vi-A5dkAAAAJ...
- mygo 7y agoThanks — btw I’m interested in the garage laboratory you mentioned. The process of how you go about setting up and running an independent lab, etc. If you end up doing that, I’d like to follow that. Would that be on Google Scholar?
- mygo 7y agoI 100% echo this. My biggest gripe about my biology degree was that there wasn’t much research I could do without either access to a lab or being Bruce Wayne. The single best thing that can happen to biology research would be to figure out a way to reduce these barriers tremendously, either via more access or by more affordable technology. So I’m excited about recent developments in synthetic biology.
- asdff 7y agoCasual researchers have a huge opportunity right now to contribute in hugely beneficial ways. There are terabytes of public data out there to be analyzed and not enough people with the dry skills to comb through it. Computational biology needs manpower. Github makes it trivial for anyone to share their projects with the world.
- mikorym 7y agoMathematicians and computer scientists have it easy in some sense. You can always argue that math is more difficult and hence your reward is this freedom from expensive lab work, but I think that argument is disingenuous when you look at the human (and humanitarian) component. (And biology is not simple in anyway.) As much as I like Hardy's statements about pure math, without applied math and biology we are just "clever" statues exhibiting technique and skill, but not directly helping to better the human conditions for living.