The other group in our University won a grant to implement the technique. Thanks to them, the technique will be available to us. The company reps are providing technical and implementation seminars. I wanted to know what exactly the technique can do, and what we can do with it.
The technique has been around for a few years, so we will not be an innovator. But using the relatively new technique at an appropriate place in our research should be enough to place us as an early adapter (or early majority, depending on how we use it).
New technologies are tools that allow us to do what we couldn't. They can make breakthroughs in science. It is important to keep an eye on them.
Thanks to the seminar series, I get how the technique works, and how to use the kit and equipment. I'll save the technical details, but the technique would allow us to analyze cancer and other cells in as much details as previous techniques, while requiring much fewer cells. It should be useful to our research.
Next important thing is the price. I got to consider some blunt questions like, "How much will it cost to use the technique? How can we use the technique to obtain the information that would solve our research question? Will the payoff justify the cost?"
We may want to romanticize science. But science is an act of human that involves money and price tags after all, and all bottom line thinking apply.
In my observation, people who "just do it" tend to win, though.
Highest regard usually goes to someone who creates something that helps many people. In terms of science, that something can be a new useful substance like a new medicine, a new idea that change our ways of thinking, or a tool that helps well beings of many. I should remind myself of this big picture more often.
