creativity

Today we did our last experiment using two groups of mice.  We put some inflammation-inducing substance with and without betamethason (an anti-inflammatory drug) on a couple of ears and measured the thickness of each ear every thirty minutes to see the effectiveness of the drug.  This time, we couldn't get the results we wanted, but every time I do an experiment, I'm amazed by the creativity of all the past scientists who came up with all the unique methods and instruments.

Like Pasteur and the flask he made to trap the micro-organisms in the air.  If it hadn't been for his flask, humans still might've believed that living organisms could appear spontaneaously out of no where.  Pasteur boiled some broth in his special flask and proved that it didn't rot (=no organisms appeared from that boiled broth) unless some micro-organisms entered the flask.

And even statistics -- we have all these tests that help us prove if there are significant differences between groups.  Apparently, we're supposed to hypothesize that there are no difference and do these tests to see if that hypothesis is wrong or not according to the data we have.

Coming from the humanities field, it really impresses me that humans could come up with all these ideas.  It sort of reminds me that when I studied the constitution, I was impressed by the idea as much as I'm impressed with the T test now.