Experiments

I recently listened to a seminar about data that came from experiments. Big deal, you say. It was interesting to me, however, because my research, although basic, is not amenable to small scale, proper experiments. Responses to treatments take a long time emerge and the really interesting work happens at a scale that cannot be easily captured on a lab bench.

Much of the work in my subfield would be better defined as "studies" instead of experiments. Most of the actual experiments are large, long term affairs that attract investigators from far flung institutions who write their own large grants to fund work on some aspect of the experiment. An advantage of this arrangement is that there is very little duplication of effort, which means there is very little scoop risk since everyone knows what everyone else is doing on a particular experiment. The downside is that you can't set up small, independent projects very easily and it's difficult to get much done without outside collaborators.

During that seminar, I was really envious of the students in that professor's lab. It would be so great to set up an actual controlled, replicated experiment in a lab, let it run for several weeks, and then have data. You'd be seeing the fruits of your work all the time! If something didn't work out, you'd be able to try again with so little investment. I think the pace of research would feel so much faster.

I love the work I do and have no desire to change fields. But damn, sometimes the progress seems downright glacial.