Elizabeth Blackburn and the Story of Telomeres: Deciphering the Ends of DNA

by Catherine Brady

And if a lab is like a business, it also has much in common with a medieval craft guild: the value of the work is collectively determined by guild members, who rise through the ranks in a series of steps designed to demonstrate mastery. Those who become masters are obligated to teach their trade, but graduate students and postdocs, the underpaid apprentices of research science, are vulnerable to exploitation and at the same time eager to claim individual credit for their work. Conducting scientific research requires the same odd combination of repetitive work and inspired creative effort once demanded of an apprentice medieval craftsperson whose assigned rote task might ultimately constitute a component of a work of art. The same graduate student who must dump out a box of toothpicks before sterilization and sort them in a jar with their broader tips down (so that he won’t poke holes in the soft plate when streaking yeast cells) must also be capable of making sound inferences based on the data the experiment nets. Like members of a medieval craft guild, lab members are motivated by altruism as well as ego: ambition coexists with a collective investment in discovering answers to questions that will expand scientific knowledge.