Because it IS, and Because we ARE

At its core, science is about studying the physical and natural world. It’s impossible not to be curious about how the world works. A simple glance at the stars remind us of our childlike wonder. For many scientists, the lifelong commitment to studying our curiosities is simply feeding our inner child that never stopped asking “Why?” and “How?”

The field of research is full of perfectionists; individuals who need absoluteness. When I started my career, it physically hurt me to say the words “I don’t know”. I believed there had to be an answer to every question. And there is, but that doesn’t mean we will know them all or that every answer is absolute. Nothing is perfect and every answer becomes “Well, it depends…”

The Public Perception of Science
Science has this view of being fact or fiction, black and white; very rigid results. This is both true and false. In politics, we see science being used as a tool to say “This is fact and therefore you have to agree with me.” It is so much more than that. I think we’ve forgotten just how awe-inspiring science really is… It’s more than just data and results. It’s a way of seeing the world. 

Just because something is supported by scientific evidence doesn’t mean it dictates what choices people must make. It’s more about appreciating the continued progress of understanding how our world works and how it can then be utilized. Of course, that second part is what gets weaponized. 

You can agree with science and still choose not to act on it. For example, you might acknowledge that vaccines help protect others, yet still decide not to get one. That doesn’t mean the evidence isn’t there… It just means that you value the right to make personal decisions about your own body. 

A Glimpse Into the Scientific Process
Before we continue, let me give an example of exploring a scientific idea.

Let’s keep it simple and say that you are interested in studying the hypothesis that a specific gene affects the ability to discriminate between sweet and not sweet taste.

We can test this in mice by using genetic engineering to delete that gene. We call these transgenic or knockout mice, because we knocked out the gene. We can then breed that mouse to get an entire mouse line with this gene knocked out, making sure to confirm the genetics of each individual mouse. This step alone can take about 1 year to set up. 

We would then start with two groups, 3 knockout mice and 3 control mice. We can put one mouse at a time into a cage with two water spouts; one with sugar water and one with regular water. Then we could measure how often each mouse spends drinking from each water spout. If our hypothesis is correct, the control mice will spend more time at the sugar water spout and the knockout mice will spend time at each spout equally or have too much variation to suggest it prefers one spout over the other. Great! All done! 

If only it were that simple, haha.

I am sure that as you read that, you could think of a handful of caveats that you would want to address. This is where the beauty of science comes to life and why some have dedicated their lives to studying unanswered questions. 

Why Science Rarely has Simple Answers

• Is 3 mice in each group enough to make a claim that should now be stated as fact? 

  • • Absolutely not. You would repeat this experiment several times and with different litters.

• What about males versus females?

• What about different concentrations of sugar water?

• How do you know that this gene is specific to sugar? 

  • • What about other favorable tastes? 

    • Sour taste?

• What if deleting that gene alone just made the mouse wonky and not want to drink water? 

What if we inhibit the gene temporarily instead of deleting it?

We could test the mouse while the gene is inhibited and again later when it is not inhibited, removing the need for our earlier control group. 

Then we could teach them a task where they are presented with either sugar water or regular water; when they taste sugar water, they have to push a button. We can’t do this in a knockout because we’d have to train the animal on the task before implementing genetic inhibition. We have a plethora of techniques available to us, thanks to those that came before us and designed these methods. Each approach tells us something different about the gene and how it works.

Science is a Conversation, Not a Conclusion
These are the types of questions that researchers are trained to ask on a daily basis. What about this? What about that? What if this is what is actually happening? For new scientific findings to be accepted, the researchers must be rigorous and thorough in their work. Of course, this is also why collaboration and discussion are essential. “I did a similar experiment but I found slightly different results. How does this fit with what you found?” 

The goal is then to review a collection of studies having similar thoughts and approaches, with the intention of proposing a collective theory supporting those results. Now that we have a theory, we need to push it even further, “Ok if this is true, then if I do this… this should happen….” And the cycle continues until the end of time. An expert researcher can get far on their own, but with the power of a collective, we can go beyond that to come to a consensus.

We attack the question from any and all angles. We are constructively challenged by our peers. Only then do these accepted scientific findings make it into a textbook or become mainstream “facts”. There are years of hard work before a good idea truly receives its merit. 

Hopefully now you can appreciate the true weight behind those words… “Well, it depends…”

When we test ideas about questions with unknown answers, we are truly touching the edge of knowledge; a fuzzy place to be. With every experiment we do, we avoid saying “always” or “never” because we know we haven’t reached complete understanding and we must leave open that space for continued exploration. The work is never done.

In Defense of Curiosity
Why do you want to know if that gene is associated with sweet taste? You must have a reason; and a good one, or the government won’t fund it. When you write grants or submit a paper, you have to have a bigger picture reason for your research; a reasonable request. But that pressure can kill the spark of why a lot of us got into science. 

We don’t always do research to do anything “useful” but simply to understand how the world works. But that IS useful. I saw a Wired video the other day where Rhett Allain was discussing why the government should fund “useless” science. He talks about how, in 1862, James Clerk Maxwell put together equations to explain the relationship between electric and magnetic fields. He predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves. His prediction was later proven by Heinrich Hertz when he built the radio transmitter. When asked what it was useful for, he said “Nothing. Just Science.” Of course, this technology then brought us the wireless telegraph, the TV, and eventually WiFi. 

Yes we want to solve the problems and cure diseases. But at a much deeper level, we simply just want to understand how the world works and why it works that way. Why? Because it is and because we are. We exist. That’s why.

We can’t lose sight of the stars, or the spark of curiosity that they bring us.