Most people, myself included, will tell you science is
successful due to lots and lots of hard work.
For any given question I start by learning everything possible about the
subject (two days of reading the top results from a Google Scholar search should
be good), then I apply that knowledge in field observations or an experiment,
gather data thoroughly and objectively, and finally arrive at answer. What you don’t hear often enough is the role
of luck in getting science done. All the
hard work and preparation in the world still won’t prevent unexpected issues
from coming up. In fact, often graduate
school feels like a succession of unexpected obstacles foiling my best laid
plans. But being in graduate school has
also made me lucky enough to be in contact with people who have better, fresher
perspectives on things I’m struggling with.
It’s really the only way I ever complete anything.
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| Bad luck, Becka. Monitoring well melted by a controlled burn. |
After an unlucky week of field work I’m particularly aware
of how far good luck goes in getting a project successfully completed. In the last few days rain has prevented me
from flying the drone I really needed to get in the air, a fox flushed the
birds I was trying to record with the drone one of the few times I could fly,
and someone burnt down one of my monitoring wells. Plus I lost my favorite ruler running away
from lightning. But I’ve had some good
luck too, and that’s what I’d like to talk about here. My winding journey in life and work has been
a series of fortunate encounters and experiences. There has certainly been an inordinate amount
of tears shed, blood drawn, and stuff lost, but more importantly, I’ve gotten
to meet interesting and inspiring people who have facilitated my work doing
basically whatever I want. Any
breakthrough I’ve had has been 70% toil and 30% luck in talking to the right
person at the right time. As idealistic
and optimistic as all of this sounds, ultimately having to rely on luck is frustrating
because I have no control over it.
However, if graduate school has taught me anything, it’s to celebrate the lucky moments. Below is an example of struggle and luck that
played out this last semester
.
The goal of my PhD research project is to understand the
impact of water management on wetland health and one of the best ways to
measure health is by looking at what plants are present in each wetland. Every summer from July 15 to August 15 you
can find me hunched over looking at plants all over the eastern shore of the
Great Salt Lake. When I find a plant I’m
not sure the identity of, I pull a sample, press it, and identify it later in
my office. Plant identification seems
straightforward on the surface, it involves following dichotomous keys (a series
of choices between two options) that will lead you to the correct plant. However, following a series of decisions is
only doable if important identification features (like flowers or seeds) are
present on the specimen you gather and if you have the appropriate plant
guide. Anyone who tells you plant ID is
easy is lying. Sure, the rules for plant identification are clear, but that does not mean they're easy to follow. And they change all the time.
 |
| Botanizing isn't easy, it requires a special plant identification dictionary almost all the time, two or more floras, and a microscope. Not pictured: Google Images, USDA Plants |
Over the course of my work I’ve gathered more than 300 plant
samples identified to 109 species, but one species in particular, found in one
of my 50 sites, has caused me more grief than all the rest. It’s difficult to tally the amount of time I’ve
wasted just reading through the descriptions of each plant family this species
might belong to, but with no luck.
 |
| Mystery mudflat plant, 2012. |
Here is what I know about the plant:
- small flowers are white to pink with five petals fused at the base
- leaves are oppositely arranged with small glands or salt crystals
- woody at the base of the stem, annual
- found on seasonally exposed mudflats near the airport
With all of that information I should have been able to
identify this plant, but none of the descriptions I read matched. Lucky for me, I complain about plant
identification a lot to anyone who will listen.
One day last year I was talking with Christine, another graduate student
in my lab, about the afternoon I had spent identifying plants and she was
telling me about her afternoon spent tending a seedbank study. We quickly figured out that we might both be
stumped about the same plant, even though neither of us had a good picture of
said plant. We discussed it later while
actually looking at the sample I had pulled from the field and still couldn’t
figure out what it was, but I felt better knowing someone else, someone who is
really bright, was also stumped by that silly plant. The subject came up again in January of this
year and Christine had the idea to read through a new plant ID guide she had. A couple of hours later this email came
through and no other email I received this semester has made me anywhere near
as happy.
How amazing and lucky is that? We both had the same unknown plant, we talked
to each other about it, and then she found it AND let me know about it! After all the times I’ve read through the
plant books I had, I’d still never have identified that plant because Frankenia pulverulenta wasn’t listed in the
book I used most (unlucky for me, it’s listed in an old Utah Flora that I don’t
look at closely). For all of the hard
work on my part, credit for the breakthrough goes to Christine and I just count
myself really lucky to work with her. It
would be easy to blow this off as just a fluke, but moments like that happen
regularly enough that I feel confident in my statement that science is 30%
luck. For example, hiring the most
wonderful technician ever happened because my advisor knew someone who knew
David and he applied for the job. Marsh
llama has been the saving grace of my entire project, and I only saw it because
I was lost. Upwards of 40% of my success
in R has been due to lucky Google searches and someone else having the same
problem.
The flip side of all of this, of course, is that bad luck is
also a major component of science. But
since luck isn’t something you can build into an experiment, I think the lesson
is to avoid fretting as much as possible (because I just can’t control the
weather), work hard, and make sure to say thank you to the people you’re lucky
enough to know. Oh! And ask lots of
questions, other people are nice and know so many things I don’t.
 |
| The ever-lucky Marsh Llama |
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