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I love the topsy-turviness of science, sometimes. I'm greatly amused and entertained and enlightened by watching the hypotheses and interpretations swing back and forth as we (speaking royally as a scientist) plan experiments and get back data, until we get a very good idea of what's going on.
Except when I receive a pile of data that inverts my hypothesis again just five days before my departmental work-in-progress talk.
(Oh, oh, yes, she did...)
A good deal of my work involves histology data. For those of you not familiar with it, histology at its core is direct microscopic analysis of the structure of tissue, through the use of various stains and dyes that highlight different aspects of the cells and mucus and structures. Given that I work on 'the ulcer bug', I'm working with a lot of stomach tissue.
Although I have experience with histology and reading slides, my boss is the trained pathologist who is 'qualified' to examine and 'score' slides for certain parameters like "inflammation" and "tissue structure derangement". She's the one who reads all the slides of all the tissues that I work with, and as she's one of two trained veterinary pathologists on campus (there is a HUGE pile of animal research on campus), she gets rather busy doing a lot of servicework on behalf of her department. She tries to prioritize her own lab's material to be first, but it's hard sometimes. This last week she managed to finally get through a backlog and get to some of my latest, hottest stuff.
In an e-mail sent late last night, my boss sent her latest summary of the histology data. Which turned my latest hypothesis on it's head, again.
Daughterofa...
So, where was my ticket for that roller-coaster, again?
Except when I receive a pile of data that inverts my hypothesis again just five days before my departmental work-in-progress talk.
(Oh, oh, yes, she did...)
A good deal of my work involves histology data. For those of you not familiar with it, histology at its core is direct microscopic analysis of the structure of tissue, through the use of various stains and dyes that highlight different aspects of the cells and mucus and structures. Given that I work on 'the ulcer bug', I'm working with a lot of stomach tissue.
Although I have experience with histology and reading slides, my boss is the trained pathologist who is 'qualified' to examine and 'score' slides for certain parameters like "inflammation" and "tissue structure derangement". She's the one who reads all the slides of all the tissues that I work with, and as she's one of two trained veterinary pathologists on campus (there is a HUGE pile of animal research on campus), she gets rather busy doing a lot of servicework on behalf of her department. She tries to prioritize her own lab's material to be first, but it's hard sometimes. This last week she managed to finally get through a backlog and get to some of my latest, hottest stuff.
In an e-mail sent late last night, my boss sent her latest summary of the histology data. Which turned my latest hypothesis on it's head, again.
Daughterofa...
So, where was my ticket for that roller-coaster, again?
