I lived with one of the DIYBio co-founders. He was doing cool stuff, but it was more engineering and less science (see this: http://www.neatorama.com/2009/01/01

I lived with one of the DIYBio co-founders. He was doing cool stuff, but it was more engineering and less science (see this: http://www.neatorama.com/2009/01/01/mad-scientists-are-actually-just-mad-engineers/ http://www.neatorama.com/2009/01/01/mad-scientists-are-actua...). It was more, "let's build something cool" (and often it was) than, "Let's spend the next 3 years rigorously going over data collection, write papers, submit to journals, etc to test a theory". Doing research in biological sciences often involves millions of dollars of funding and just isn't something that can be circumvented. My girlfriend is currently pursuing a PhD in Neuroscience. Studying that brains of hundreds of animals isn't something that I'd want her doing in the kitchen.