Its time to fight back

The colourful world of mesothermic dinosaurs inspires Russ to send out a rallying call to us all…fight back against ill-conceived management pigeonholing of results Who doesn’t like dinosaurs? I'm pretty sure that, even though no human has ever seen one, most people will acknowledge a vague interest even if only from childhood. I dare say that Lab News readers will be slightly more represented in that sample than the average. Dinosaurs are cool. Recent scientific research, though, shows they may not have been cool at all. Dinosaurs are reptiles, and reptiles are cold-blooded, therefore dinosaurs are cold-blooded, right? Well, maybe not. News out earlier this summer from the University of New Mexico indicates that many larger dinosaurs were neither ectothermic nor endothermic, but mesothermic – a kind of lukewarm-bloodedness. Think of it as Godzilla meets Goldilocks. This is interesting in its own right, but is also an excellent example of a phenomenon we need to see more of. Too much work in the laboratory, and for that matter elsewhere in life, is blinkered by a black-and-white approach to results. The catalyst either works or it doesn’t, the clinical test results are either positive or negative, the protocol is either faster or slower. The real world is, inconveniently, much more complicated than that. That new catalyst might be better in some situations, not so good in others. The threshold score for diagnosing a medical condition may be different at different times and locations, or for different cohorts. The latest protocol could be faster but have other disadvantages like longer clean-up. All of this can be hard to explain to management – especially as they become ever more remote from the lab bench – but sometimes we need to explain that the correct answer is not yes or no, but maybe. I have a strong sense that the black-and-white view of the world has been gaining ground in the modern digital age. Zeroes and ones make no allowance for any intermediate state, and the binary dominance of technology is, I'm sure, seeping into places it has no right to be. I came to this conclusion at a business meeting I was unfortunate enough to be required to attend, not too long ago (I've changed employer a handful of times in the last decade, partly because of people like this). The sharp-suited and ambitious young consultant was pitching for a contract, and produced a steady stream of dynamic initiatives to leverage our synergies and other such psychobabble. In a vain attempt to stop my brain from glazing over, I invited him to critique a competitor's slightly more old-fashioned approach to a similar problem. The arrogance that came back was, I thought, breathtaking. "Analogue man in a digital world" quipped the thrusting young blade, looking far too pleased with himself. The phrase encapsulates everything that is wrong with modern bean-counting management styles, where short-term advantage is the only thing that matters and the pursuit of longer-term goals, like actually curing a disease or creating a company strong enough to survive the turmoils of the modern age, are considered hilarious. This was all about exit strategies and enhancing shareholder value. It was also bullshit, and I'm pleased to say that he was shown the door. The binary view of scientific research is, unfortunately, one that is thrust upon us by a wilfully ignorant public. Haven’t we found a cure for cancer yet? Haven’t we come up with an answer to climate change? For heaven's sake, what are we doing all day? The answers here are yes, and no, and sort of, and maybe, and it depends. None of it is black and white, and it isn't even about shades of grey (the colour, not the infamous novel which I must be the last person on the planet to have not read). It's also about green and yellow and stripey and polka dotted and shiny and matt. Real world answers are not monochrome, or binary, or cut-and-dried. Not often anyway, and I think we need to be better at explaining that. Who doesn’t like dinosaurs? Well, that putative consultant clearly didn't. He probably had the view that they were slow and cold-blooded. Indeed, he probably thought they were monochrome grey. You and I now know that they were fast, efficient, and colourful. That's why we love them. Analogue man in a digital world? Happy to be that. Dinosaur? That'll do. And the best answer to the next yes/no question forced upon us by the self-satisfied wonks? It's not maybe, or sometimes, or even it depends. It is: "we don’t know, and that's why we do science".