nce be reached. As yet, the beginners have no rigid
scientific biases and thus may have sufficient curiosity and flexibility
about the world in which they live to approach experimentation with a
mind devoid of "the hierarchy of memory registers which have programmed
in erroneous data."

What I have to say will not surprise nor shock _you_, or those who are
at present engaged in scientific investigation. In fact, I have read
many science-fiction stories that deal with the same problem. Perhaps
that is the only way that it can be approached, through the medium of a
story? Yet why not present it for what it may be? Let me tell it my own
way, and then, please, let me have your _coldly logical_ opinion.

As to my background, I am a graduate student in the Zoology Department
of a midwestern university working toward a Master's degree, or actually
a doctorate--we can bypass the M.S. if we choose--in the field of
Cellular Physiology. My sponsor is an internationally known man in the
field. The area of research that I have selected is concerned with the
effects of physical and chemical agents on the synthesis of nucleic
acids of the cell. Obviously, this is a big field, and I hope to select
from among the different agents, one or two that will give "positive
results." I have been doing active research for about half a year
testing the different agents. As for the _fundamental_ questions raised,
I am positive that it would make _no_ difference in what field of
science I were to work.

By now I have had enough course work to realize that when performing any
assigned laboratory exercise--they should not be called
experiments--even of a cook-book type, little or even major
discrepancies arise, and _always on the initial trials_, no matter how
carefully one works! As you are probably aware, the teaching assistant
in charge of the lab or the instructor, generally runs through the
exercise before the class does in order to get the "bugs" out of it--I
am deliberately generalizing, since the above holds for all of the
laboratory sciences--so when the student gets confusing or rather
contradictory results, the instructor can deftly point out the error in
the setup or calculations, or _what have you_. He may _even_ indicate
what results may be expected. _The last is critical._ Similarly other
students in the laboratory usually have friends who have had the course
before and know what results are expected--_this technique is frowned
upon