At some point in my last entry I talked about my frustration with technology. It seems as though the technological malfunctioning has passed and I can go back to doing experiments and trusting my data. I have officially been working and collecting data for the past 4 months. I have tons of numbers that we call “data.” But they are just numbers! We put the animal in a tube, run it through a machine and the machine spits out numbers. Sometimes, I collect blood samples measure it with a Glucometer and I get numbers. I collect RNA run it through qPCR and I get numbers. Numbers, numbers, numbers!! Everywhere there are numbers! At some point, you must ask yourself… what do these numbers mean?
The process of sorting data is very tedious. It takes time, patience and perfection! Once you have these numbers sorted in an “organized” fashion, the next process is to UNDERSTAND what these numbers mean. In the understanding part of the data, numbers get “thrown out.” These numbers that magically disappear some how ends up supporting our hypothesis. Which at this point is a great feeling!
4 months of hard work, and I can be proud to say that I have some meaningful data. But the playing around with numbers, disappearance of numbers… what scientists like to call data manipulation is an interesting concept. We use statistical outliers and various statistical tests to determine if the data is viable. It’s something I have to get used to.
Today at work, another scientist who is retiring soon told me, “you must squeeze the data out from the numbers.” The question is, at what point do you stop manipulating your data? When are you just playing with the data so that it can support your theory? And this manipulation, is it natural (in the sense that would this manipulation occur in the natural way of life)?
Til then… I will continue to “squeeze the data out from my numbers.”
~Cell-ebraTez
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