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This is very cool. I love to see the general trend of bigger and more expensive science being bucked here. In general, though, we're still chasing the long tai
by janardanyri 14y ago
This is very cool. I love to see the general trend of bigger and more expensive science being bucked here.
In general, though, we're still chasing the long tail of knowledge. Nobody's going to build a cutting-edge particle collider, space probe, or Inca ruin in their spare time.
Arguably microbiology is a lot more like computer science than other experimental sciences economically, at least in certain respects; for example, once you've got something interesting, you can probably execute a fairly cheap reproductive process and get a whole bunch more of it. (Well, this is cheap compared to reproducing a particle collider, at least.)
Fun to think about.
- infinite8s 14y agoThat's true, but when you start talking about reproduceable science instead of just tinkering, you need to be very careful about contamination, repeatability, etc. This is very difficult to achieve without expensive lab equipment (although part of that expense is due to economies of scale - if everyone started buying centrifuges and gram scales, maybe they wouldn't cost thousands of dollars).