Research Philosophy

It occurs to me that the following post will out me. Not just me, but my classmates as well. Hell, the majority of my field will be outed by this post. Sorry.

What with The Future looming on the horizon, I've spent a lot of time this week touching up the ol' Curriculum Vitae. What's more, I've put together a Research Objectives document, because the powers that be have required it. It's a task I took seriously; it introduces an audience to me as an aspiring professional, and equally as important, it forces into solidity the flurry of ideas swarming about my little brain.

At a conference a few summers back, I had the great honor of sharing a few rounds with some of the invited speakers. It was a momentous night within a truly formative weekend, and I'll never forget the parts of it that I remember. It was the psychologist from UConn who, in a particularly somber moment, advised that "in grad school, you learn how science works, it's someone else's idea... the post-doc is where you find your research niche, create your career trajectory".

And now, wondering about my trajectory, I realize that I am not a humanitarian.

Don't get me wrong, I am a humanitarian. Perhaps even a humanist. Mostly, though, I'm just not the altruist you might've thought me to be.

The best example is also the most recent. There's an amazing paper that deals with the Uncontrolled Manifold Hypothesis and preadolescent gait. Nobody's ever looked at UCM analysis of gait before, as far as the authors or I know. It's kind of groundbreaking, a foray into uncharted territory for a controversial hypothesis. As I've described it thus far, it's cool - and meaningful - enough to stand alone.

There's more to the article, though. Half of the subjects are children with Down Syndrome, and the hypothesis was that the motor control strategy of "Typical Development" children would differ from that of Down Syndrome kids in a way that could be measured by UCM analysis. (For those who are curious, it does)

Of course, UCM in Down Syndrome is very important research! The scientific community absolutely should be trying to help Downs kids, helping all impaired individuals. It is a noble endeavor we undertake when we repair dysfunction.

For me, though, the real headline is UCM. Its application to Down Syndrome is just window dressing.

This is a trend in my field. Once upon a time, we studied motor control for its own sake - blacksmiths and horses and dancers were observed doing what they do best, simply out of curiosity - and impaired subjects added another piece to the puzzle. For example, a lesion that severed the "touch" pathways led to a wealth of knowledge, because with it we could find the patterns to which the body defaults.

Maybe because of scarce funding, maybe because everyone fancies themselves a saint, or maybe just as a field-wide case of "keeping up with the Joneses", motor control research has evolved. Now, the labs that exclusively study healthy control are few and far between. Neurorehabilitation is sexy.

I realize that the house of cards that is my reputation has been set to crumbling. No longer can you have the illusion that I am in the business of Biomedical Engineering for the sake of curing disease or restoring function. With this confession goes my facade of magnanimity.

Know this, though: I am not the only one. Without mentioning him by name, I could tell you about a certain Biomedical Engineering grad student whose efforts in the fight against cancer are little more than a pretense to play with Data Mining and Pattern Recognition. He would likely be as inspired by a Netflix recommendation optimization as by epithelial histopatholgy discrimination.

I ask you, is there something wrong with that? Is he a worse person for it?

It's so odd. How many other fields are laden with the de facto requirement that their projects save the world? Imagine if a thesis about Sir Gawain also needed to discuss the use of the story to combat illiteracy. Preposterous!

If my passion needs to be a means to an end, if Rehabilitative Science progresses because I heart motor control, then so be it. Everybody wins.