Wax On Wax Off

It is assumed, in science, that a true genius comes along once and a while. All of the people in between are just stewards of the collective knowledge given to us by the geniuses. They teach the new generation about the work. As Richard Feynman pointed out in Cargo Cult Science. "That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school—we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation." In the process of learning the thing that was discovered long ago we hope to learn how to think as well. 

What is "what this is"? It is not the fruits of the labor that matter most in science. It is the scientific method that we learn, teach and practice (as scientists) that matters. The journals Cell, Science and Nature all insist that the fruits of the labor defines the level of genius of the scientist. They do not seem to value the labor of thought, experimental design, execution and proper conclusions as much. This leads to the individual scientists focusing on their narrative more than their methodology. 

The Cargo Cult Scientist believes that the method is what matters. The scientific politician focuses on the fruit. Think of it like Ginkgo Bioworks laboratory produced meat. Technologists can produce meat-like substances. They cannot produce the biologically produced meat that evolved over billions of years. Would you prefer cutting into a steak or scooping up the pooding produced by a biotech company?

Think of that disgusting meat the same as the miracle molecules we put into peoples bodies. We find individual proteins the are part of a complex system. We manufacture them because that is within the complicated paradigm of our understanding. Then we take the final product and use it in our simple understanding.

Indeed Ginkgo Bioworks seeks to replace your companies research team. BIOLOGY BY DESIGN! I suppose, unlike nature, Ginkgo will design biology to do what you want it to do. The problem is in the understanding of the scientific method. We don't design biology. We seek to understand it. 

As always, we return to the problem of Simple-Complicated-Complex. Ginkgo Bioworks programs cells to "make everything from food to materials to therapeutics". Programming a cell is complicated. So the biotech or biopharma company hires Ginkgo rather than hiring a research staff. They get the cell line they want. They have the product that comes from a bio-engineered cell. Now what? 

I ran into this problem at every biotech company. One example was producing a library of peptides that could be screened to find that one magical peptide that would deliver RNA to specific cell targets. RNA interference won two scientists the Nobel Prize in 2006. It was all the rage in knocking out gene products in biotechnology. But it didn't work in most situations. Why? It was assumed that the laboratory staff were doing something wrong. When this square peg couldn't be hammered through the round hole people began looking for a peptide or protein to deliver the RNA to the cell target. The narrative was in place. The project failed. We were all let go. The project was turned over to a prestigious professor at a European University. He too produced nothing to support the narrative. The narrative was simply changed. The science was working! Occasional reports were put out via company press releases that the scientist was making progress.

The project was most likely doomed from the start. Yet if, in an alternative universe, we had been allowed to fail we could have learned. Had we been given years of exhaustive research we may have made some valuable discoveries in our failures. We would have advanced our knowledge in the process/methodology. Instead we all went on to the next attempt to maintain employment in biotechnology. Most of us failed to do so. 

The future of Ginkgo Bioworks is no different. They are pursuing the idea that understanding complicated biotechnologies will lead to the kind of discoveries that make science work. There is a disconnect there. Like Mr. Myagi in the Karate Kid taught, wax on, wax off. Why? It was a Hollywood creation based in dubious reality but the concept is real. In science, the method is the thing. Learn how to conduct research and the results will teach you new things. Unfortunately, in business, there is not enough time to wax on and wax off until the time comes to apply the knowledge. People in offices who mostly attend meetings need data. They need charts and claims of near future riches. Ginkgo promises you they can help. In time you will end up with a few fish but no understanding of how to fish.