Word: brito
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June Goodfield, a historian of science, steps inside this process of scientific discovery, inside the struggle known as basic research. She moves into the laboratory of an immunologist. Anna Brito (her real name is not given) for five years, taking notes, recording conversations, and asking questions. She partakes in the late night seances that pass for discussions in labs around the world. She charts the double dialectic of the scientist:the external one between subject and object. and the internal one between ideas and hypotheses. She is, in effect, our tourguide--herding us past centrifuges, culture rooms, refrigerators, through...
Goodfield chooses for her example. Anna Brito an immunologist studying lymphocytes the white corpuscles of the blood. Lymphocytes are the body's soldiers patrolling the blood on the lookout for invaders. They are microsopic warriers: cells that defend us from the bacteria viruses and parasites that constantly attack...
Every scientist has a series of questions they try to answer, and Brito's involves patients with Hodgkin's disease a cancer where these lymphocytic soldiers, are nowhere to be found. They simply disappear from the blood circulation. But no one knows why. Are they destroyed or are they hiding? Are they trapped in some part of the body where they don't belong? If they are hiding, what causes this strange behaviour and is it the reason for the occurrence of Hodgkin...
These questions consume five years of Brito's work (1975-1980) and yet still remain unanswered. Although Brito has publiched papers, given lectures and established a clear picture of her answer, it remains an incomplete picture, subject to criticism and still unproved. This is the stuff of basic research--it is not a simple reading of facts: it is a series of ever interpretations linked to one's findings...
...MANY WAYS, Goodfield's views are colored by those of her subject. Dr. Brito. Thus it is critical to ask if Brito and her lab are typical of today's biology. The answer is probably negative. One has only to note that few scientists would let an observer hang around for five years. even one as thoughtful and optimistic as Ms. Goodfield...