My first instinct is that this scientific writing piece is more like a narrative. It has personality and individuality in its voice. For one thing, this makes it much more enjoyable to read. It’s just a short story about the scientific adventures of Kary Mullis.
Based on what he said about the techniques that were available before, it sounds like PCR makes molecular biology much more accessible. It took weeks, then it took hours. Now, it is something that we can do in our labs, and it takes a couple of hours at most.
Until this point, I had not read a personal account of someones scientific discovery. I really enjoyed getting a peak inside the mind of someone who had come up with something like this. For one thing, there were so many questions that needed to be answered. How do we target the correct sequence? What if deoxynucleotides from the target DNA sample bind to the oligos, preventing them from binding to the correct sequence? I don’t know how his brain was going so fast and covering every possible problem that could come up. It is honestly amazing that he was able to think that far ahead.
Had I not already taken a scientific ethics class (Science, Star Trek, and Ethics – a fantastic class), this would definitely have changed my perspective on people in science. However, I started thinking about the hidden inherent biases in scientific articles a bit ago. The attempt to remove the humanity from scientific research by avoiding personal pronouns and using stiff, formal language is frustrating. In one of my science courses, we used only personal pronouns to emphasize that we were the ones performing the experiment. In most others, it is still something that is frowned upon. I am never sure what to do.
