The podcast of This American life that aired this past weekend offered an interesting glimpse into the world of cancer research. A pair of researchers, one a professor at Thomas Jefferson University and the other a music teacher, were studying whether pulsing sound waves could selectively kill cancer cells. The collaboration started off great but things started to go down hill.
One of the things that was interesting to see was how beginning researchers often get excited by preliminary data and think they’ve hit the jackpot. They don’t realize how critical the controls are. Nor do they realize how much effort it takes to reproduce and validate the experimental results. I have to admit the tedious work involved in validating results is part of what drove me out of the lab.