Are we having fun yet?

Hey there! Yes, it's your old pal, Mole (emphasis on the old). It's a cold and blustery day, and I'm taking a little time off to have this chat with you, because, well, it's been a while. I hope you're having a good day. And if not, hey, it's not my fault.I've been tearing out what little hair I have, trying to figure out the new format for the biosketch that has just been mandated by our national funding agency. I have tried several times, but I keep getting it wrong. And meanwhile, I've been told that there are other changes that I need to be aware of. Maybe I can start tearing out the hair on my arms, of which I seem to have an abundance.This is really nothing new, I guess (new mandated forms, not hair on my arms; the latter has been there for quite a while). I have no real information here, but I imagine that there are a number of people whose only job it is to oversee such things as biosketches and other forms relating to grant submissions. And unless they make regular changes to the format of whatever they oversee, they fear that they will be replaced by AI bots. Come to think of it, it is quite possible that it was an AI bot that wrote the new directives. And that AI bot, being semi-conscious, is worried that it will be replaced by the next AI bot.Filling out forms that are required for my continued participation in this enterprise is what we tend to think of as a ‘necessary evil’, since we have to solicit money (dollars, pounds, euros, semolians, etc) from the agencies that allow us to do the work. But this isn't why I decided to devote my professional life (and 99% of my non-professional life) to this thing we do, this biomedical research thing.When I'm not filling out forms, I'm running the lab (and doing a bunch of other things that are peripheral to this, like reviewing papers and grants, acting as a journal editor, teaching, and serving on committees). ‘Running’ the lab often refers to managing our meager resources, checking the orders, making sure that the machines work, and stuff like that. But when I say ‘running the lab’, I also mean planning experiments, going over data, and staying on track while keeping both eyes out for new developments. Which is to say, I get to participate in the process of science, which as Bill Nye once said, “is the best idea humans have ever had.”I've said it before, and I'll say it again, science is hard. Yes, it's hard to do something nobody has ever done before. It's hard to make discoveries, and when we do happen to make one, it's hard to write about them. And it's very hard to convince anyone else (editors, reviewers) that we have actually discovered something. It's even harder to convince anyone (grant reviewers) that we should continue to work on it. But none of these is the hardest thing. The hardest thing is the simple, irrevocable fact that no matter how brilliant our ideas might be, reality can come to kick us in the face to tell us we're just plain wrong. And we pick ourselves up and start again.So, are we having fun yet?It's an important question. If you are just starting out, and you find that you cannot get any fun out of this, you really should rethink your career choice. Don't do this for the money (there isn't any), fame (ditto), or ‘job security’ (it doesn't exist). It is also rather unlikely (but not impossible) that you will cure a disease (which is not to say you shouldn't try, but if this is why you are doing science, you may end up disappointed and bitter). There are lots of other good jobs out there for a smart person like you. And some of them might be fun.But, if you, like me, have been doing this for a long time, and a career change doesn't seem possible, and you find that there is no more joy in what we do, maybe you need to step back. Are you having any fun at all? If not, (and when I'm filling out arcane forms, it's not), what is the most fun thing about science that you can think of? Come on, there has to be something, or why did you get into this? Wasn't there a time, maybe long ago, when you thought that science is, well, cool. And something you learned about it made you say, ‘I want to do this’. Right?Remember, you're not just a scientist (not that that isn't a great thing). You are an explorer. You're not searching for the source of the Nile or the South Pole (done and done) or the proof of the four-color map problem (also done). You are working to discover something that nobody has ever discovered before. Sure, maybe you are working hard to apply scientific knowledge to a human problem (curing one of the very many diseases). Or maybe you are working on a new way to discover things, like a novel technology. And some of us (I include myself here) are just asking questions we find fundamentally interesting, that maybe nobody else has asked, and then figuring out how to approximate an answer.When someone in our lab makes a new finding, I get a rush. It's likely that there is a neurophysiological basis for this – endorphins or the stimulation of a pleasure center in my brain. In any case, I realized a long time ago that it's addictive. I'm proud of the work we've done in the past, but this doesn't give me the ‘fix’ I need that I get from something new, something that worked and opens up new vistas. And yes, it's fun (this isn't an addiction I want to give up).Paul McCartney wrote “fun is the one thing that money can't buy.” It's in ‘She's leaving home’ (credited to Lennon and McCartney, but George Martin called it ‘pure McCartney’). It was probably based on a newspaper article about a teenage runaway but was also likely based on a weekly TV show called ‘The Wednesday Play’, which may be why she's leaving home on a Wednesday morning (at five o'clock as the day begins). If that last part didn't make any sense, you really have to listen to the song. I'll wait.If money can't buy fun (of course it can if you use it well), money can buy science (it's not just money, of course), and for me, science can definitely ‘buy’ fun. We tend to dismiss the role of fun in science. Indeed, I think we tend to dismiss fun in general. As a great skier once said to me before we launched ourselves off of a snowy cliff, “We are not here for fun.”But I am. I'm in this for the fun of it. I'm in this for the long haul, and I'll put up with silly forms and directives if I can keep doing what we do. I hope that when I talk about our science, either informally or in formal presentations, that comes through. I hope I can inspire others that there is actual fun in doing science. I hope I can inspire you with these little musings. There is wonder in this thing we do. This thing, wonder, so prevalent in the experience of children, is incredibly rare in adult life. And if you think about it, what other ‘job’ can invoke a sense of wonder? I wonder. I wonder. I hope you wonder, too.So, are we having fun yet?