I had a meeting with my boss this morning. I wanted to explain to him an experiment that I had completed on Saturday, and convince him that I was right, and I knew what I was doing. Conversation went like this-
Me: Two months ago, I started this experiment and I have to revamp the protocol based on those results. When I repeated it, I wanted to be able to account for a variety of factors that might affect the readout, so it was very difficult to amass enough samples to perform the experiment. Once I had the experiment started, I used a variety of painstaking methods to validate the readout.
Boss: Well that sounds like overkill.
Me: Yes, but I designed this experiment so I wouldn't have to repeat it. The results I have I am very confident in. See?
Boss: Oh yes, that is really nice. Hm. Yes, I think you are done with this experiment.
Me: slam Notebook on the floor and start singing "We are the Champions" in perfect Freddy Mercury falsetto
It feels pretty awesome to finally finish something. Few things in science don't lead to more questions, but I decided to nip that in the bud this time. I designed the experiment to tell me at least something every time I ran it, and it finally paid off! Now, I am off to spend the rest of the day posing like Mr. Universe.
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4 comments:
Congratulations!!! You REALLY do know what you are doing!!!
Love you,
Mom
So, try as I might, I don't get the reference to Avery. What am I forgetting?? Love Dad
Avery was one of the reoccurring science characters from the Great Influenza. He *never did an experiment that didn't teach him something*, and although he was very slow, he changed our understanding of how a virus gains virulence and the nature of heritable material.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oswald_Avery
Ah, yes!! The fellow who found that deoxy-ribo-stuff was critical to the evolving character of bacteria strains!!! You wonder what ever became of those crack-pot ideas...I recall his character as one of the more admired but unacknowledged ones, still an excellent professional model. Of course, we think you'll be famous, in a good way, too.
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