THE ART OF SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION 



Referring to the elation he felt after demonstrating the feasibility 

 of protecting people against smallpox by vaccination, Edward 

 Jenner wrote : 



" The joy I felt at the prospect before me of being the instru- 

 ment destined to take away from the world one of its greatest 

 calamities . . . was so excessive that I sometimes found myself 

 in a kind of reverie."^" 



Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard made the following comments 

 on this phenomenon : 



" When you have at last arrived at certainty, your joy is one 

 of the greatest that can be felt by a human soul."^^ 



" The joy of discovery is certainly the liveliest that the mind of 

 man can ever feel."^^ 



The discoverer has an urge to share his joy with his colleagues 

 and usually rushes into a friend's laboratory to recount the event 

 and have him come and see the results. Most people get more fun 

 and enjoyment out of new developments if they are able to share 

 them with colleagues who are working on the same subject or are 

 sufficiently closely related to be genuinely interested. 



The stimulus of a discovery immediately wipes out all the 

 disappointments of past frustrations and the scientist works with 

 a new-found vigour. Furthermore, some stimulus is felt by his 

 colleagues and so one discovery makes the conditions more pro- 

 pitious for further advances. But unfortunately things do not 

 always turn out like this. Only too often our joy is short-Uved 

 and found to be premature. The consequent depression may be 

 deep, and here a colleague can help by showing understanding 

 and encouragement. To "take it" in this way without being 

 beaten is one of the hard lessons the young scientist has to learn. 



Unfortunately research has more frustrations than successes 

 and the scientist is more often up against what appears to be an 

 impenetrable barrier than making progress. Only those who have 

 sought know how rare and hard to find are those little diamonds 

 of truth which, when mined and polished, will endure hard and 

 bright. Lord Kelvin wrote : 



" One word characterises the most strenuous of the efforts for 

 the advancement of science that I have made perseveringly 

 during fifty-five years; that word is failure." 



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