Editor's Note

Getting together. More than ever, that's what science is all about. If you think being a scientist means being lonely, you're wrong! Researchers spend most of their days working with other people. Biomedical scientists at colleges and universities spend up to half of their time teaching some area of biology or chemistry to undergraduate and graduate students. And scientists continually work with students to help turn neat ideas into testable research projects and to sort through the results of an experiment.

But biomedical researchers also do a lot of talking to other scientists, and not just biologists. As biology research broadens to include new fields like computer science, physics, and engineering, thinking together about how to attack a problem in an unconventional way can be the most fertile ground for discovery.

In assembling the materials for this issue of Findings, the importance of cooperation between scientists became undeniably apparent. Upon asking researchers to review the words about their work, these hard-working women and men insisted on giving credit wherever possible to their students and coworkers — all the people who sit at the benches in their labs and do experiments day in and out. There's never enough space to list every person who helped an experiment get done, but realize that science is indeed a group effort. Our health is all the better for it.

Alison Davis
Editor
davisa@nigms.nih.gov
http://www.nigms.nih.gov/findings/