This was going to happen

I attended a talk today by Steven DeVries of Northwestern University, one of the pioneers in figuring out how the retina works. Dr DeVries, an ophthalmologist and an electrophysiologist, was talking about a hot-off-the-press technique he was developing to understand how individual cells in the retina send and receive signals. Without dropping too much jargon, he was using frequency dependent pulse modulation to measure receptor saturation in cells. To most people this means nothing, which is OK, for now. But while listening to his talk, I began to suspect that this was a technique that I had actually seen before. It took me a few minutes to recall where I had encountered it, but when I did, I nearly LOLed out of my rocker.

Let me rewind for a moment. This past spring semester, I was enrolled in a neuropharmacology class, dominated by molecular-biologists-in-training, and taught by a pharmacologist. The final assignment was to write a short research proposal aimed at studying some cells we had been going over in class. Given that my knowledge of molecular biology is scant at best, I decided to use a set of techniques in electrophysiology and boost them with a touch of mathematically rigorous principles in engineering. The instructor had previously announced that, for the sake of time, 4 of the 9 students would be required to defend their research proposals in front of the class. For soon-to-be obvious reasons, I was selected to defend my proposal. I proceeded to map out the series equations and graphs that described my proposal: frequency dependent pulse modulation to measure receptor saturation in cells. Amidst blank stares from my molecular-biology peers, the instructor asked me a few tangential questions that didn't really apply at all to what I was trying to do, to which I offered relevant responses. At the end of the class, the instructor announced that everybody's final grade was ready, except mine, because "he had to mull over it."

After meeting privately with the instructor, I came out with a B+ on that grounds that he, as a molecular-biology-rooted-researcher, couldn't quite wrap his head around what I was trying to propose. Given my less-than-impeccable record on homework grades, a B+ really wasn't that bad. But the fact that the professor really thought that my entire proposal was crap and made his opinion quite evident was a little irksome. Feel free to skim back over the first paragraph for a refresher before continuing reading.

My inner-generator of hilarity went wild when I realized that my in-class research proposal was EXACTLY WHAT STEVEN DEVRIES WAS PRESENTING AS NEW RESEARCH. Reassuring was how Dr DeVries spent a generous portion of time describing his methods, likely due to the many blank faces (along with one laughing one in the back) in the audience.

The fact that I saw someone talking about an idea I recently had is not surprising. This kind of thing happens all of the time in science, so it was kind of cool to see a hotshot researcher presenting and defending this idea. I hardly expect this technique to be as important as calculus, so I'll avoid bringing up a rematch of Newton and Leibniz, particularly because I never touched it after the proposal, but also because Dr DeVries has spent the last few years working on this. He clearly thought of it before me. The issue here resides in the aforementioned research proposal evaluation.

Now I could easily be angry about this whole spiel. I was for quite some time. But I think I've learned an important lesson here. No matter how correct a professor thinks he is, or how wrong he thinks someone else is, his opinion is just as likely to fault as a normal human being (which is pretty high). The next time someone calls bullshit on my newest crazy idea (and trust me, there are plenty), he better have more than just a hunch of disbelief. This might be dangerous, because my I was just starting a theory on overcoming the time dependent nature of human cognition, which is likely to draw criticism from most of civilized society. Keep tuned in for more, and by all means keep telling me how wrong I am. It is doing wonders for me.