2007/11/01 by Maura C. Flannery · 1 citation
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Genetics, Bioinformatics, and Biomedical Research
paper · doi:10.1662/0002-7685(2007)69[561:oob]2.0.co;2
openalex publication_date 2007/11/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
Biology is often referred to as an observational science almost as a slur, with the implication that biologists simply look at the living world without the strong theoretical and mathematic underpinnings of a science like physics. There is the suggestion that observation is easy. Thus biology is viewed as a lightweight science--anyone can do it: just go out and start looking, at birds, at grass, at cells under the microscope. Benjamin Bloom's taxonomy of learning tasks puts observation at the lowest level, with recall of information (http://www.coun.uvic.ca/learn/program/ hndouts/bloom.html). This denigration of observation has long bothered me because I see it as often difficult and complex, a skill that needs to be learned and a talent that is much more developed in some. Barbara McClintock, for example, was a master of observation (Keller, 1983). All her great discoveries, from the behavior of chromosomes in corn to the transposition of genes, were the result of close observation, both of intact organisms and of their cells. George Beadle asked her to visit his lab in California because he was stuck in trying to figure out the behavior of chromosomes in the mold Neurospora. Within a couple of weeks, McClintock solved the puzzle, but only after hours of close observation. However, this isn't the entire story. Nathaniel Comfort (2001) describes how she took a break from her work, went for a walk, and sat down to think about what she had been seeing. That's when the solution came to her. So this is a story about careful observation and deep thinking, which brings me to the argument I want to present here: that observation is not to be belittled, that it is a complex process and can involve profound depths of thought. First there is the question of what will be observed, which brings up a key point: it is difficult to make useful observations without some idea about what you are looking for. Even if you are on vacation and just out to look at the scenery, you have a goal, an idea: You want to see beautiful landscapes. You may drive through miles of forest, but when an open vista appears, you put on the brakes; this is what you've been looking for. It has become commonplace to say that the old formulation of the scientific method--something along the lines of observation, followed by formulation of a hypothesis, then testing and evaluation--doesn't reflect the way science is actually done. In reality, researchers usually begin with an idea, which they use as the basis for their hypotheses and tests. They need ideas to guide their observations. X-Rays Seeing cannot be divorced from thought at any level. Processing visual information is itself complex and involves the cerebral cortex where it is linked to cognition. The eye may be doing something comparable to what a camera does, but seeing that picture requires a great deal of brain function; perception and cognition are inseparable, which means that the brain must learn to see. This occurs at several levels, from learning to invert the images that come in from the eye to learning to attend to particular aspects of a view more than to others. For example, untrained observers have a difficult time reading X-rays. The elements of the image that seem most obvious are usually not those that are of importance to a radiologist who is often looking for faint shadows, slight differences in visual texture. It can take months or even years to become proficient at this, and there is evidence that the more experience in reading X-rays, the better the reader. Jerome Groopman (2007) writes that accuracy depends on a number of factors. A study of diagnostic accuracy confirmed the difficulty of discovering when something is not present. One of the 60 chest X-rays came from a patient with a missing clavicle. Sixty percent of the radiologists missed this anomaly, but that number decreased to 17% when the doctors were told that the X-rays were taken to detect cancer. …