I am about a million years late to the lab lit party. Better late than never, right?

I just finished reading Allegra Goodman’s Intuition, a novel about science and ethics, set in a fictional Cambridge, Mass lab. Trying to mentally trace the paths the characters took through the city was frustrating and exciting at the same time, as was attempting to identify which research institution served as a model for Intuition’s Philpott Institute (though this comment on Amazon sheds a healthy dose of light). There was something strangely rewarding about recognizing the streets and landmarks mentioned in the novel, something childishly exciting in seeing my city as the foil for an author’s creativity and events in her characters’ lives.

That being said, I will admit that I didn’t love the book. Which isn’t to say that it wasn’t a page turner – I finished it in a matter of hours (Nabokov this was not). I was irked by the lack of an obvious protagonist. I disliked all the characters equally. The other, more nitpicky problem, was that I found a number of inaccuracies in Goodman’s version of life and work in a lab. I have never worked in or seen a lab that is run in the manner she presented (not offering too many details here, for fear of giving away too much of the plot).

In the novel, an entire lab was put to work on one project and post-docs lived in fear of being fired. Fired? Post-docs? Short of murder in the lab – not outside the lab, that could be overlooked – I don’t know what it would take for a post-doc to be fired for performance/personal issues.

I decided that these discrepancies could be accounted for by the fact that the lab in Intuition was headed (in part) by an MD. And that got me to thinking – are there clear differences in the way MDs approach research as opposed to PhDs? After all, they are not raised/trained in the same environment. Their focus and often their goals are entirely different, with perhaps more emphasis placed on applied science as opposed to the basics. Am I off base in this assumption? I have never been in an MD-run lab. Has anyone? Any opinions on the MD vs PhD-lead labs?