Why am I writing a blog?

I dunno.

I went to a talk by Rosie Redfield at the Evolution meeting in Ontario last month where, surprise surprise, she told us all that we should start blogging. I doubt that's the real reason I'm doing this though.

It's probably more that she scared the shit out of me in her talk. I don't want to make the same mistakes that they did. Maybe this will help, maybe it won't. In all likelihood this blog will last the entire week, which I anticipate will total 2 posts and I'll forget all about it.

In any case, her talk was about the arsenic-based life paper that came out a while ago and all the fails that happened in order to get that paper published. She gives a great talk. She pointed out each step in the research that went wrong with great humor and the audience and myself laughed throughout. We laughed at the idiocy of those poor researchers who didn't do good science, we laughed at all the mistakes they made and how they should have known better.

And yet, I found myself thinking- even while laughing- yikes, I would have done that  ...  I would have fallen into the same trap  ...  I would have made that exact same mistake and never realized. Never realized that is, until Rosie herself ridiculed me to the audience at the next Evolution conference.

Honestly though, it wouldn't have been that bad for me, most of the mistakes she told us about I was right on board with - how on earth could someone do whatever-it-was and think it was ok? But then again, there was more than one mistake she described where it could have just as easily been me the one being roasted.

That's what scared me so bad - they were mistakes that I wouldn't even realize I was making.

So why blog?

I think it's because the biggest problem that happened with the arsenic research is that the lead author "fell in love with her hypothesis." What an easy trap to fall into. Rosie explained that in science there are the experiments you do when you think you are right, and the experiments you do when you honestly want to know if you are wrong.

I hope that by writing this out, by making it public, leaving no shadows to hide in, and no excuses to stand behind, I will come to terms with my loving hypotheses. I will do the experiments that will tell me I'm wrong.
And maybe someone will tell me if I'm making an unwitting mistake.