Alon's Theory Lunch

Today I didn't go to the theory lunch due to the busy schedule of my live-imaging experiments, although I still went to our kitchen after it, looking for the left over from the theory lunch.

Today's speaker is Uri Alon, again. I already had two his talks since he came to our department, one from his voluntary given theory lunch, and the other from the retreat in Maine. This is his official theory lunch. I asked people what he talked about, and it seemed to be very similar to his previous talks.

All three Uri's talks focus on one thing - the importance of non-scientific part in science. He has a very unique view. We had all been taught that doing science should be objective. Uri thinks the subjective part is also very important and has been ignored. For instance, to select a project.

People are working on things they think are important (at least, most of the time...) The problem is what I think is important could be totally not important from your view. Here we come the subjective part.

How to select a project? It is a vital question for all of us doing sciences. there is a border between known and unknown, and our goal is to cross the border from known to unknown as deep as possible. The most ideal situation is to dig out most unknown information by easy experiments. This is the dream project for everyone. However, this kind of cases are difficult to find. Usually we end up choosing difficult approaches for having the least unknown.

Why is that? Uri thinks because most of the time we will jump on the first project comes to our mind. And it usually is not a good project (under the "difficult experiment, less information" category) Thus, Uri has a "3-month rule" for people just join his lab. That is any new member in the lab is not allowed to do any experiment for the first three months, only spending their time on generating good projects.

I am impressed on this rule, and discuss it with Dan, a physics postdoc in our lab and a soon-to-be Harvard assistant professor. I asked Dan if he will follow this 3-month rule in his own lab. Dan said not everyone has that kind of luxury to wait 3 months before start doing experiments. Especially under such kind of funding climate, he might be kicked out if he really follow the rule. I agree with him, partly. I think it could still help you in a long term, but understand it could be too difficult to ask a junior faculty doing this.

The only new thing I missed is Uri played guitar and sang a song during this theory lunch... Sounds cool.