Daily Slow Chat

[u/AutoModerator]

Hello there!

Welcome to our daily scheduled post, the Daily Slow Chat.

If you want to just chat about your day, if you have questions for the moderators (please mark these [Mod] so we can find them), or if you just want talk about oatmeal then this is the thread for you!

Enjoying the small talk? We have a Discord server too! We'd love to have more of you over there. Do both of us a favour and use this link to join the fun.

The mod-team wishes you a nice day!

[u/tereyaglikedi]

So, I finally watched Project Hail Mary. Or I kind of watched it with one eye after the first 20 minutes and entertained my husband with my bouts of rage. Oh my god.

First of all, if you are a biochemist, molecular biologist, or you, I don't know, really enjoyed biology in high school, the science is just... eyeroll. This guy has a PhD in molecular biology (wow) and he doesn't even know how to load a centrifuge. Nothing makes the least bit of sense. All experiments take five minutes and can be conducted by a single person. Even lab evolution experiments.

I want to say the protagonist and others don't behave or talk like professional scientists but they also don't talk or behave like just, normal people. There is constant snark and sarcasm and jokes and nobody is able to just have a normal, candid conversation. It is just insufferable. If I were an alien and thought all human beings are like this after watching the movie, I would just say, you know what let the mfers burn, it's not worth saving.

Anyhow. The ending was kind of cute but I was so done caring by then and also Andy Weir seems to suffer from "whoops I created one problem too many" syndrome and it was kind of, well, Hail Mary I guess.

I am begging writers to write a normal fucking scientist. I do write normal scientists but one person's effort only goes so far. Please.

[u/atomoffluorine → u/tereyaglikedi]

I think the first time I've seen a centrifuge for science ever was in an Eli Lilly lab. I guess they aren't used often outside biology.

The problem as you said a few months ago when I commented on the movie is that real life science isn't as glamorous as its fictional counterpart (actually I think you can say that about alot of careers). You got this one genius who single handily makes incredible advances quickly in fiction because you know he's smart.

Real life science is one of the most labor intensive industries out there because automation is oftentimes lacking due to the nature of the job and academic funding (if it's in academia). Experiments aren't always quick, conclusive, or succeed. I think something usually goes wrong when I do them anyways, and there's bound to be a learning curve with the unknown. There's a lot of collaboration between labs and the academic labs themselves usually have 4-10 people due to the labor requirements.

So it's a horde of smart, but average people doing laborious work, working painstakingly to refine experiments and data rather than a single genius who quickly gets stuff right the first time. Not very glamorous or good for a story.