The romance of research beckons a young human mind but the constraints and problems associated with research, pursuit and practice dampen the enthusiasm of many. Going about research is no less agonizing and no less ecstatic than a pilgrim's progress. All research including research in biomedical disciplines is part of the great humanistic enterprise continued for more than two thousand five hundred years. Now we want to learn more about our place in the universe. The concept of progress in science is acceptable if it is conceived as an incremental understanding of our physical universe.
Scientific understanding based on the experimental method has a history of only three hundred years.
Indeed it is the earliest stone age technology that initiated our present degree or mastery over physical events. One of the immortals of the science of human physiology Claude Bernard, the French pioneering physiologist, advocated a reinforcing relationship between basic and applied research and combined in his person, scientific excellence with human concern and grace or humility with candor of limitations. It is part of teaching and administrative responsibilities or is it a basic drive and urge to seek knowledge. Science is ethically neutral. Whatever else the world may need it does not need second rate scientists.