FROM: Phillip A. Sharp, Chair of Biology
TO: MIT BUG Journal

Every scientist remembers the moment when they successfully completed their very first experiment testing a hypothesis about the nature of the external world. Not some experiment from a laboratory manual where the challenge is to reproduce someone else's results or a science fair experiment where one explores the fringes of their own knowledge. Rather, this is the experiment of someone who has mastered the knowledge gained by the experiments of others, thought deeply about possible answers to the problem at hand, and then designed an experiment to test whether their hypothesis is correct. A well controlled negative result is informative because it shows that the hypothesis is wrong. A positive result does not prove that the hypothesis is correct, but only suggests that the individual's understanding of the problem is deeper than it was before the experiment. This leads to conversations with colleagues, more thought, and on to the next experiment. In this daily toil is the privileged life of the scientist. It is in the discipline of conception and testing that science truly differs from art. On first glance, the two are very similar. Both are expressions of culture and societal norms. Both depend upon individual creativity but also upon interactions with others for continued advancement. It is as unlikely that an artist could find truth through painting or writing without mentorship and critique, as it is that a scientist could unravel the wonders of nature without similar intercourse. Scientists talk about their experiments and publish their work to gain the benefit of such com-munication. They also hope that someone else will become interested in their research problems and contribute to advances in their knowledge. Both science and art are social activities. But science uses experiments to test the reality of the external world. If the laws of genetics were not a valid description of the inheritance of some traits of peas, Mendelian-type segregation would not have set the stage for the genetic research that followed. By contrast, art is not constrained to the expression of objective facts; it can reflect the validity of an internal and subjective world. In some domains, this freedom renders art a more powerful medium than science because it can speak directly to the soul. In other domains, science is more powerful because it can purposefully modify the physical world. Good science has individual artistic style-for example, the esthetic nature of the figures or graphs that illustrate experimental results. Young scientists frequently underestimate the importance of publishing clear and conclusive results that a reader can appreciate at a glance. An equally important artistic element of science concerns the elegance of the experimental design. There is beauty in a crisp set of experiments that definitively tests a hypothesis. Clarity of thought is reflected in a scientist's papers and, in many cases, this largely determines his or her reputation. Finally, it is an esthetic or artistic sense in science that values the simplest hypothesis that explains the underlying principles of the chaotic phenomena of the physical world. The power of the discovery of the double-strand structure of DNA by Jim Watson and Francis Crick was the simple elegance of its prediction of the chemical nature of inheritance. The basis of genetics was immediately visible to the eye in its exquisite complementary two-stranded structure. In this journal, undergraduate students at MIT experience the joy of publishing their experiments and related thoughts. It is an important step into the community of scholars, inviting a constructive discourse about the nature of a biological system. These young scientists have worked hard to achieve these results and to prepare their papers. They are to be congratulated for their accomplishments. Behind each of these young scholars are mentors and colleagues who have encouraged their development. In the publication of this journal, we also celebrate this special community which celebrates future generations of scientists.