Edward
I’m a research scientist. I study diatoms - microscopic algae that live in oceans, lakes and more or less any water you can think of. They produce a large share of the world’s oxygen, they move enormous amounts of carbon around the planet, are the major primary producer in marine food webs, and most people have never heard of them.
What I actually work on is the genetics underneath that. Two strains of the same organism can sit in identical conditions and behave completely differently, and I want to know why. Not only “one is more heat tolerant” - that’s where the question starts, not where it finishes. Which genes respond, in what order, controlled by what. Whether two stress responses that look separate are really the same system seen from different angles.
About the name
“Data not shown” is a phrase that turns up in scientific papers. It means,.. we saw this, we’re fairly sure about it, and it didn’t earn a figure. Editors have spent years trying to get rid of it, on the reasonable grounds that a result nobody can inspect isn’t really evidence.
I’ve always had some affection for it, because it points at something true. A paper is a narrow, formal account of what happened. A great deal of what actually happens never fits,.. the observation that went nowhere, the result that made no sense, the thing you noticed at the bench at half past six that isn’t relevant to anything (until it is).
The second meaning is the one that made me choose it. There’s the work, which has its own record, and then there’s everything around the work - the books, the odd facts, the photographs, the things I think about that aren’t publishable and were never going to be,.. and the things which aren’t work at all. That’s what this is. It’s the other half, and it’s deliberately kept separate.
What’s here
Working Hypothesis is the closest to my actual field: research writing, questions I’m trying to answer, and how I got to them.
Ambient Conditions is photographs and journal entries, and whatever was happening around them.
Uncontrolled Variables is everything else. Books I’ve read, songs I’ve learned about, and small facts about language or science that turned out to be much more interesting than they had any right to be))
Getting in touch
If you’ve seen something similar in a completely different organism, had the same experience differently or a different experience similarly,.. or you think I’ve got something wrong, I’d like to hear about it.
Corrections are welcome and disagreement is more welcome.