Bench Press

The sentiment expressed in the comic above isn’t just common when you’re absorbing your grandparents’ wisdom; but is something you often run across when talking with grizzled research veterans as well. Often times you’ll here reminiscent stories about the good ‘ol days, without complicated equipment and how scientists nowadays are soft and spoiled by kits and electronic pipettes. Today, Derek Lowe has a great post talking about the dangers of romanticizing ancient equipment and techniques.

Derek writes:

If you’re in a resource-limited situation, then, you’ll probably try to carefully pick out problems that can actually be well addressed with what you have. That’s a good strategy, but it’s not always a possible one. Huge areas of research can be marked off-limits by the lack of key pieces of equipment, and by the time you’ve worked out what’s possible, there may not be anything interesting or important left inside your fence. Medawar’s point was that being stuck inside such a perimeter would not only hurt the way that you did your work, but could eventually do damage to the way that you thought.

While learning about old techniques and how they contributed to previous breakthroughs can provide tremendous value by illustrating thought processes and helping to build a solid scientific foundation, Derek accurately points out that clinging to old methods just for the sake of doing it the “old fashioned way” can sometimes be detrimental to not only one’s work, but one’s thought process as well. In the end, make sure you don’t handicap your most precious resource by continuing the tradition of “walking uphill both ways”.

(Image Source – Bobwama’s Wallpaper of the Day)