Student Research at Duke

In response to the article, “An Unwelcome Discovery” that I read and the movie, “And the Band Played On” that we watched, I can only say that I am thoroughly disgusted by the lack of integrity displayed by these head researchers.  The spirit of research lies in the desire to investigate, predict, and deter conditions affecting the human race.  Without such a desire, one might as well turn to mowing lawns as a livelihood.

With this being said, it’s such a shame that investigators like Eric Poehlman and Robert Gallo damage society’s perception of science through plagiarism and fabrication.  It’s bad enough that many misconstrue investigative inquiry as immoral, or believe the intricacies of life incomprehensible to any being less than divine.  In a day that exaggerated media coverage can destroy the reputation of innocent individuals or institutions, the Poehlmans and the Gallos of the scientific community risk the credibility established by researchers over the centuries.                                                                                                                
In reference to Dr. Dave McClay’s lecture, I now comprehend how laziness and carelessness could play a distinguishable role in research quality.  Without the utmost attention to one’s experiment, the smallest of inconsistencies could skew results, and frequent repetitions of such practices could sabotage an entire project.  Although I take every message that has been thrown at us throughout this “ethics week” with all seriousness and deliberation, I will view the latter as the real take-home message.  I just don’t understand how a person could be tempted to invent or steal data with such dishonorable motives and foul implications that will follow otherwise.  Thus, I will focus on performing even the most minor of tasks in the lab with the utmost attention. Now if only that could negate my clumsiness….

Upon interviewing my postdoc mentor, I found that she had taken a straightforward approach to getting where she is.  College with undergrad research, grad school (at UNC, explaining the occasional derogatory Duke remark), and a couple of jobs as a postdoc.  What I was fascinated, and sort of relieved by, was Julie’s explanation that medical school never interested her in the least.                                                                                  Having a father who’s the CEO of my hometown’s small hospital, I hear every night about all of the feuding between doctors and patient complaints about doctors and doctors’ being on call every waking hour for a week.  I understand the huge rewards that can come with being a doctor, but I think laboratory research can have farther-reaching rewards given time and dedication.                                                                                                          Coming into Duke, I thought and hoped that I would find multitudes of scientists, students hoping to pursue the field for the sake of furthering current knowledge.  But instead, I found pre-meds.  I’m taking physics… because it’s a pre-med requirement to struggle through?  No, because it’s an interesting, useful course, believe it or not.  If I tell someone I’m a chemistry major, I’m automatically asked if I’m pre-med.  It seemed that scientist and pre-med were synonomous around here.  Making matters worse, I feel like the underachiever in this situation only because I’m opting not to go to med school.  I feel like I could get accepted somewhere and do moderately well in med school, but I simply don’t won’t to be a medical doctor.  I like school, and hope to continue taking classes as long as I can possibly get away with it, just not with the expectation to end up as an M.D.                                                                                                                      Anyway, hearing that my mentor was never tempted by society’s seemingly high profile career as an M.D. was welcome news to my ears.  I just needed to know that there are others out there who can dedicate their lives to science and feel entirely fulfilled with what they do.

Now that my mentor is back in town and recovering from her back injury, I’ve been a lot busier in the lab.  Since getting to work, I’ve seen a lot of and done a little Western blotting, where we run proteins via electrophoresis and transfer the protein bands to a PVDF membrane.  Once on the membrane, the proteins can be tagged with an antibody, which is in turn identified by a secondary antibody.  This secondary antibody is receptive to a solution called Super Signal that, upon mixing, luminesces and can be captured on an imaging device.  In this way, we can test for specific proteins, seeing if they exist equally in normal human mammory epithelial cells (HMECs) and in various cancerous cell lines.                                                                                                                          So far most of my time has been spent focusing on this particular technique.  First we started with smaller, pre-packaged gels, but now I’m learning how to pour and set my own larger gel.  I’ve also been learning about mixing and preparing all the solutions and samples needed for the procedure.  I’ve also worked on bits and pieces of other experiments that my mentor has underway.  As my research question becomes more well-defined, hopefully I’ll learn more about these various lab techniques.  As for now, I must return to my lab for another day of discovery.

 This is the lab where I’ll be doing most of my work.  And here you can see some of the gels that others in this lab are running:                                                                                                            Unfortunately Julie, my mentor, has hurt her back after returning from a trip, so I’ve only been reading some more articles and watching others at work.  Hopefully I’ll be able to get to work next week!