CoMo Science

Things to know for research

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Each research lab has a unique set of skills that are needed to understand what the research is about and how it is done. But there is a common set of skills that are needed to participate in the research of almost any lab.

Below is a summary of that common set of skills. You do not need to know all of these in order to start in a research lab; you will be taught many of these skills as part of your work. But the more you know, the more quickly you will be able to become a contributing member of the team and the faster you will be given increased responsibilities.

Vocabulary and Concepts

Each field of research has its own specialized vocabulary. There is an important relationship between the words that are used and the concepts that are behind them.

At times, simple concepts that you are familiar with can be obscured by use of words that you are not familiar with. For example, you may not understand a conversation because you do not know what a leukocyte is, but if you knew that it was the same as a white blood cell, the conversation would have made complete sense.

On the other hand, it is possible for you to use words without truly understanding the concepts behind them. For example, you may be able to use “voltage” in a sentence without having a full understanding of what you are talking about.

It is important to gain a working knowledge of the vocabulary and concepts that are used in the research. It is often a simple task (if you put some effort into it) to translate vocabulary into words and concepts that you understand. It can be trickier to realize that you do not truly understand the concepts behind some of the words that you thought you knew.

Basic Theory of Doing Research

The scientific method

The scientific method is used in most types of research (although it can take different forms). The basic process of the scientific method is:

Observations or previous research

Scientists consider prior observations and read about other scientists’ work to come up with new questions.

Question

Scientists develop new questions about why previous observations are the way they are.

Hypothesis

Scientists come up with an idea that they think will explain previous observations; this idea is called the “hypothesis”.

Experiment

Scientists design and then carry out an experiment to test whether their hypothesis is supported or not.

Reporting

Scientists report the results of their experiment for other scientists to learn from and then expand on their work.

Basic Experimental Design

The goal of an experiment is to determine how changing one condition (called the “independent variable”) affects one or more other conditions (called the “dependent variables”). It is important to make sure all other conditions of the experiment are the same (these are called the “control variables”), so that the effect can be attributed to the one variable that is being changed.

In physics, chemistry and engineering experiments, experiments are often performed under “laboratory conditions”. This allows for control over all known variables, so that only one variable is changed at a time. This leads to a very good understanding of how the system behaves under laboratory conditions, but it may not reflect the real world situation.

In biological experiments involving living organisms, and especially in experiments involving people, it is not possible to control all variables. Because of this, the subjects are often divided into groups at random. This randomization process makes it likely that uncontrollable variables are represented equally in all groups and reduces the effects of those uncontrollable variables.

Types of studies

There are several different types of studies or experiments that can be conducted. The optimal design is a randomized controlled trial (RCT), although because these can be expensive and time-consuming, there are other studies that can be quicker and cheaper.

  • phase I, II, and III trials
  • organic chemistry
  • inorganic chemistry
  • physics
  • biology
  • mathematics
    • statistics
    • algebra
    • geometry
    • trigonometry
    • calculus

Measuring

Length

  • calipers

Mass

  • laboratory scale

Time

  • watch

Temperature

  • thermometer
  • infrared thermometer

  • NMR

Basic Techniques

  • Fume Hood
  • Water bath
  • PCR
  • Centrifuge
  • Hot plate
  • Microscope
    • Recognizing different types of microscopy images
  • Pipettes
  • Blotting
  • Gel electrophoresis
  • Cell culture
  • Spectroscopy
  • Chromatography
  • Flow Cytometry

Software

  • Word processor
  • Spreadsheet
  • LaTex

Analyzing Data

Reading Literature

  • types of articles – review articles, introductory articles, editorials, guidelines, commentaries, 
  • understanding citations

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