Research Articles

I think that the article, How to Succeed In Science, is very accurate and portrays science in a correct manner. An outsider of science who is reading this article may be surprised or claim that the article is written in a harsh way. I thought one of the comments regarding small schools in the first article (Part I) was very true and I could even relate to it for the undergraduate level college decision. I, personally, wanted to attend a large university after high school and my mother thought that was a bad idea. I have come to learn that pursuing a science degree from a small school is beneficial to students in that opportunities really do exist because of the close professor to student ratio. Students are able to access professors easily and when interested in research, students can engage in a project that brings interest to them.

I do agree with the idea of very few people, “an elite crowd” being able to become principle investigators. It is competitive to become a principle investigator and also incredibly demanding and stressful. For the past three years of my college career I have worked in the cath lab at my hometown hospital doing cardiac research. I have primarily worked on a left-main drug eluting stent study in which patient outcomes are compared to those patients who undergo CABG. The cardiologist who is our principle investigator chose to perform this study because he is the doctor who performs most of the left main stenting in the cath lab compared to the other cardiologists who are not as experienced with that type of stenting procedure. He Is always telling me that the best studies are the studies that not only include all accurate information, large sample sizes, cover a broad range of time, but also include extra components to them. My work has been completed since July of this year and while I work on a new study, and my principle investigator works on our written paper, a new cardiologist was hired through grant money to perform angiograms on all of our subject files. I did not understand why we needed this extra step, but now I know why having all components in a paper help to make the study more creditable.

I am also able to relate to how studies are constantly being updated and new categories are being added. I was not very happy when I had to add 6 more categories onto my database, but as times goes by; I now know the importance of covering all aspects of patient recovery.

I still feel that after reading this article, the best researcher is one who studies a couple different things, but studies them thoroughly and in-depth. Some researchers focus solely on one project and invest their time and energy into making it work, but are not satisfied when negative results or unwanted results occur. In my research, I could analyze data in several different ways and Dr. Schnee and I have engaged in thoughtful conversation on how many different aspects I could look at when preparing my results and writing about it. I think that not all research can do that, but if possible, it is important. This adds to the study and helps other scientists to critically analyze how they may be able to perform multiple t-tests or make multiple graphs that could cover different aspects all within the same research project.

This article has not really impacted my decision on my future career. It raised some issues that I had not really thought about such as: school size and choosing the right mentor. I was aware of these key components of a good research program, but I have not thoroughly invested much time thinking about all the different factors of a science research program. I feel that the earlier a person is exposed to research as an undergraduate or even as a master’s student, the better the student will be in making a choice that fits that student academically, mentally, socially, and personally.

I leave you with a quote hanging in one of my mentor’s offices at the hospital, “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research.” ~ Albert Einstein