The wave II

Yay!!!! I’m at a basketball game, sitting in the ‘nosebleed’ section, where the players are smaller than what I can see on my iPhone (in simulcast!). We’re doing the ‘wave’. Wait, here it comes again. Yay In case you’ve never attended a sporting event, the wave is not a bunch of people saying “hi.” (Do they do waves at soccer matches? No wait, you just have riots at those, right? No, I bet you do. Not at cricket matches, though, you’d have to put down the book you’re reading.) Anyway, the wave is something called ‘metachronal rhythm’which I think means, ‘raising both hands in the air when the person next to you does, and then bringing them down.’Apparently the first wave was invented by Krazy George Henderson, who saw it happen accidently at an Edmonton Oilers hockey game, and then managed to lead the first documented wave at an Oakland A’s game on October 15, 1981. Okay, why did someone attend a hockey game in the Frozen North and then go see baseball in California? History doesn’t say, but then, his moniker was ‘Krazy George.’ Sorry, here it comes again. Ya Earlier today, I heard a seminar from a scientist, Prof. Cheetah who apparently does a lot of TV appearances, talking about viral outbreaks and howwe hunt the culprits down and treat them (or plan to). I have to say, it was terrific. At the end, I thought we were going to do the wave, we were clapping so much. But there were no questions, and I got to thinking about why. Which got me thinking about biomedical research, which is something I tend to do a lot. Many seminars I attend may lack Cheetah’s style (which, I reiterate, was terrific), but as they conclude, the hands go up and questions abound. The questions lead to more questions. And when the moderator calls a halt, half a dozen folks head for the podium to engage the speaker. I think it is a sort of wave, in action. Each of us can see how what we had just learned might impact our own work, and the problems we’re confronting. And as the discussion ensues, we pick up additional ideas, fueling the intellectual curiosity. We want to be part of the exploration, and by asking our questions, and considering the answers, we actually make progress. My little notebook is full of ideas that I’ve gotten from such public interactions (and yes, very often they lead to new experiments and results). So when I think about Cheetah’s great talk, I realize that he didn’t provide anything that might initiate such a discussion. He told us about some cool tech, and regaled us with stories about odd diseases and his quest to find out their causes, but in the end, the new ideas were lacking. He didn’t start a wave. Which is fine, of course, but this leads to some other thoughts. Last time, for those who might just be joining us, we talked about a problem that may exist in what we do, this biomedical research