Science Breakthroughs

There’s a billboard near my house advertising a science college. It has a catchy phrase about making breakthroughs. The picture is of a young, bright-eyed college student wearing safety glasses and a white lab coat, holding a beaker—reminiscent of bench science like one would see in a high school chemistry lab. It gives the impression that any college student can make world-changing breakthroughs. And although that is technically true, it’s not even remotely realistic.

The average science student in any discipline doesn’t make any breakthroughs. That’s why they’re called “breakthroughs”, they’re not called “everyday occurrences”. And every now and then, something big does disrupt the science and thinking about a particular topic. But doing really good science is hard. Most experiments cannot be replicated. Most research is never cited.

But it makes a nice story. And a catchy billboard.