GIGO

What's My Line?

In the quest for scientific knowledge, you find out about some of the wierdest things that people do -- they'd be real stumpers in the old TV game show What's My Line? where you had to guess what people did for a living.

Some of the more outré activities I have come across are:

• stomach flushing penguins to see what they're eating
• collecting infant foreskins as a source of clean, fast-replicating cells for skin grafts
• encouraging spiders to spit up to analyse how effective their digestive enzymes are
• extracting gold from sewage as part of an environmental monitoring programme

All of these produce interesting information in a scientific sense, as well as providing some useful -- and sometimes extremely valuable -- commercial spin-offs. Often that commercial utility is not something recognised at the outset of the study, but is happened upon along the way. Fortunate, indeed, is the researcher who benefits from such serendipity. For others, it is the thrill of the hunt for the knowledge itself that provides the driving force, whether as part of post-grad studies in the run-up to a PhD or as part of an on-going life interest.

In some respects, the pursuit of science is treated as a vocation, rather than as an occupation -- after all, one has to be pretty dedicated to stand around in -15⁰C temperatures holding penguins upended over a bucket. There operates, in a sense, a public service ethic (to use a phrase that now is often regarded as out-dated). Service, in that the search for new knowledge or understanding is undertaken with the intention of sharing that information with others.

While many researchers are fortunate enough to enjoy their work -- whether dealing with sewage or spiders -- it is ironic that they are often trapped by that very enjoyment. It makes them vulnerable to the administrative adage that if you find your work interesting and really want to do it, then you don't really need more money or recognition. Such administrators would do well to remember that a service ethic can be pushed only so far....

Vicki Hyde is the editor of New Zealand Science Monthly.