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One of the greatest qualities a scientist must possess, in my opinion, is the ability to see the larger picture of research.  Since experiments are, in general, on a very small scale, thoughts relating to the wider impact of them may be lost in the desire to generate results.  One massively underrated part of science is sharing your work in a public domain; its all very well publishing in journals with the best impact factor to increase your stock when chasing the next round of funding but at the end of the day it is vital that results are communicated clearly and effectively to the general public for it is they who dwell within the natural world we are all investigating.  But science functions best when we can continually ask questions of it, by both laymen and from experts in the field.  Only by constant challenge does science remain relevant and accurate; a sort of Red Queen hypothesis if you will.  Whilst people may not care about the numbers behind the greenhouse effect or how much of our DNA we shared with Neanderthals it should be both interesting and relevant to modern society as most research is but a tiny part of that bigger question “How does the World work?”

My personal research interests are deeply embedded in evolutionary biology, principally why do different species exist and what leads to speciation.  Linked to this I am interested in adaptive traits, particularly behavioural ones and want to know if behaviour can lead to the formation of new species.  Currently I am investigating whether pond snails have a turning preference and whether this is heritable.  Watching snails for several hours a day can be somewhat slow going but by keeping in mind my bigger picture its possible to remain motivated and keep plugging away through the seemingly endless behavioural observations.  By uncovering whether this behaviour is heritable it may be possible to eventually locate the gene, or more likely genes, for it.

Through any genetics linked to handedness it may shed light our own human handedness; have you ever thought why such a large majority of people are right handed?  It boggles the mind why there seems to be a total dominance of right handed people across all societies ever surveyed.  From a biological point of view it begs the question that if handedness is genetic then what sort of advantage do right handers have over south paws?  Since traits that become more common must be better than those that don’t what keeps left handedness in a population, why hasn’t natural selection weeded it out?  There are numerous theories relating to this and I will go into further detail in my next post but simply there is nothing proposed that sheds any conclusive light on the problem.

This may sound quite disheartening, but fear not for problem solving is the very essence of science and as long as there is someone interested there will be research conducted into this most perplexing of topics.

Related posts:

1. Science for Science’s Sake (Part II)

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