Team of Lab Rivals

There's been lots of talk lately about whether Obama is Lincoln-ishly shaping his Cabinet to include a spread of viewpoints, many distinct from his own, in order to avoid the self-reinforcing groupthink that can set in among like-minded people.

How well does such an approach work in the lab? I was thinking about this today when Advisor announced that he wanted to discuss possible plans for a New Fancy Microscope we might get. He wanted advice. (Actually, he only asked for advice from GradStudent and Other New Postdoc, but I elbowed my way into the discussion because I was in charge of acquiring an NFM in GradLab. Neither of the other two male trainees has done such a thing. So hmmmph.)

All three of us could be charitably described as opinionated. And it is the rare day that we are opinionated in the same direction. We get along reasonably well, but none of us would be mistaken for a retiring violet.

Accordingly, lively discussion ensued. We disagreed with each other's "facts," we disagreed with each other's interpretations, and generally hashed it all out at length.

At the end, though, there was a consensus about the steps forward. We all agreed that Advisor should get a quotation from a particular company, should look into the details of another company's product, and should talk with two or three people about their own NFMs.

I'm fairly sure that this debate served to identify some critical choices and to consider all options on the table. I'm equally sure that if any one of us had not been in the room, some of those options would have been discarded much earlier in part due to some people's "facts". So although my labmates sometimes rub me the wrong way, there's something to be said for this team of rivals idea.

If only we could achieve similar agreement over freezer defrosting.