September 23, 2003
A: FROM MENTOR JOAN LUSK IN RI

I think a lot of the analytical work is done in laboratories. The
scientists who do go out to the sites bring back ice cores from the
glaciers of Greenland or organic remains from old cooking fires or
jawbones that might or might not be human or bones with scratch marks
that might be from knives or from teeth, or pollen that will reveal
what plants grew and thereby will reveal ancient climate. Other
scientists who stay at home in the lab look at the isotopic
composition to date the samples, or make measurements using
instruments that stay in the lab, and compare with other samples to
interpret the meaning of the samples. The people who like going out
in to the field probably think that their role is more cool, while
the people who stay home in the lab would say that without _their_
part, the field researchers would just be engaged in meaningless
collecting. Science needs both kinds of temperament.