research woes
When I first started doing science research in college, I never understood why science had to proceed at such a slow pace. Many of the studies I read about weren't published until three to five years after they were conducted. Now that I am entering my sixth year of graduate school I understand completely. I have a project that has produced results so new and exciting that my advisor and I have received a substantial grant to expand the work. We first started the project almost two years ago, and yet we still can't publish the results. We have repeated the experiment six times with various modifications to improve our technique or to answer slightly different questions. We have managed to get every possible result in each experiment--the treatment stimulates the process, the treatment inhibits the process, and there is no effect. Moreover, we've gotten this range of results for a variety of variables that we measured. Of course I can come up with reasonable guesses as to why we got so many different results, but dang it, I would love for my soil bacteria to behave.
