Warble, Garble

Why am I not working in a lab? Because while I would fit very nicely in a lab, I am ultimately a theorist. I am fine with leaving it up to other people to do the testing required to prove or disprove a theory. I really just want to understand it. That's all I really care about.

It's just like when I was in flight school. I discovered that I didn't want to be a glorified taxi driver; I'll leave that up to all the other people that want to pilot a plane as a day job. I really just wanted to learn how to fly. I wanted to know how flying works and what all those buttons are for. (Admittedly, since I only learned how to fly a little Cessna, seeing a picture of a jet liner's cockpit still has me totally curious regarding ALL THE BUTTONS.)

So, listening to some neuroscientists discussing connectivity and brain mapping is kind of annoying. Why? Because from a theoretical point of view a lot of the things they "don't know" is actually quite horribly simple to explain. However, I understand that they have to view things from a laboratory perspective, which means that while I can give a theoretical explanation, I have no laboratory proof to back my claims. They have to couch everything they say with, "We don't know how X, Y, Z works," because they honestly don't know FOR SURE, and it would be career suicide to present their theories as facts. In the meantime, I'm over here waving my hands in the air saying, "But, OF COURSE, it's A, B, C. How could it possibly not be?"

Ah. Theoretical versus laboratory. So much fun.

GigaScience

And thus, I have learned a new term.