On Handling the Data | Page 2

always obtained. Always. And by everyone. The initial confusions--that some honest students perpetuate--are easily brushed aside as errors due to inexperience, sloppiness, lack of initiative, stupidity of congenital sort, et cetera, et cetera.
Since being a teaching fellow, even simple cook-book experiments don't seem as cook-bookish. Some pretty weird things have happened when I tried out an exercise prior to the class. Fortunately, I was taught to keep data--in duplicate: indelible purple Hexostick original and carbon copy. These, vide infra, are a few of such happenings.
Elementary General Physiology Laboratory:
1. Initial maximal vagal stimulation:
Expected results: inhibition of heart beat.
Obtained results: one series of increased heart beats. (Possible explanation: I missed the vagus nerve)????
2. Frog nerve-muscle preparation:
Expected results: a single muscle twitch.
Obtained results: a beautiful nerve twitch.
(Explanation: Eyesight? How can nerves twitch?)??
3. Hypotonic hemolysis:
Expected results: red blood cell destruction.
Obtained results: crenation.
(Explanation: switched salt solutions unconsciously)?????
4. Curarized muscle preparation:
Expected results: a synaptic block with no response of nerve when stimulated.
Observed results: a typical strychnine response, violent tetanus, et cetera.
(Explanation: again, I switched bottles)????
5. I shall avoid the obvious mention of mishaps with mechanical or electrical pieces of equipment. I assure you there were similar deviations in initial attempts.
Since I realize that you are preparing a paper on Memory Registers: Stimulation Criteria, for the VIth Annual International Meeting of the Society of Theoretical Biomathematicians in London, and are short of time, I shall avoid going into the same kind of detail as the above for other Biology Labs, and get into the real heart of the thing ... the research problem. (After all that is what both of us are interested in.) By the way, please send me a reprint of the paper when it comes out.
I guess I am really hepped up on this, because I've just got to point out for emphasis other incidences usually of a type that involved missing a whole organ in dissections or a tissue structure in histology only on the first study, and then re-reading the assignment--after knowing what to look for--and subsequently finding it exactly where it is said to be. (Ever hunt for an unknown quality--or quantity?) So it was there all the time, sloppy technique? Or is this branching at a control point? cf. LC: C. vs. B. p. 251.
To get back to my thesis research, the pieces of equipment that I have been using in the research are fairly standard in physiological research: a Beckman spectrophotometer, a Coleman photometer, a van Slyke amino nitrogen apparatus, a Warburg respirometer, pH meters, Kjeldahls, Thunbergs, et cetera. Mostly, I'm in the process of getting used to them. Also there is a high voltage X-ray generator, U. V. source and other equipment for irradiation purposes. We also have an A. E. C. license so that we can get at least microcurie amounts of the usual isotopes for radioautographic work.
Now the literature in my area is pretty controversial. (You can appreciate that, especially since Bergbottom at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute bombarded you with criticisms of your theories.) Different and actually contradictory results have been obtained for the same substance in the same organism, e. g. alkaline phosphatase in the frog liver cell (Monnenblick, '55, Tripp, '56, and Stone, '57). To give an example, when I start a run for respiration effects using a Warburg I don't know what results to expect. Whenever this has been the case, my results have been confusing ... to say the least.
On nitrogen-mustard treated cells, in some instances the controls respired significantly more--even with a statistical analysis of variance--in some instances the experimentals respired significantly more; and in other cases the respiration for both was exactly the same--even closer than the expected deviations that should be found in any random population. One run, the blank run, containing no cells ... and grease-free ... consumed the greatest amount of oxygen. To cut this letter short, the same inconstancies apply to other trials that I have made. Whenever I didn't know what to expect, and particularly where the literature was controversial, my results have been completely haywire.
Needless to say, I was not happy with this so I discussed it with other graduate students. They have all encountered the same thing! But most professors won't admit this to be true and merely tell me that my technique is lousy. If anything, I am an overly careful worker. Why is it when I know what results are expected, I get comparable results even on the first trial?
Remember, I obtained the expected results when the literature wasn't confused or when my sponsor--a most important man in my life--gave me a clue as to what kind of results to expect. Only then.
Now this is the heart of the matter.... The obvious explanation is the lack of experience. But, and this is what haunts me ... what if those so-called contradictory