Increasingly, scientists have come to rely on the convenience of prepared products and contract services. It began gradually with the commercial availability of items such as premade buffers, precast gels, and competent cells. These products not only provided significant time savings and consistency between experiments, but also decreased the need to train new workers for routine tasks. Companies that offer custom services have become so adept at performing certain specialized functions such as gene sequencing or RFLP analysis that it is certainly less time consuming and may actually be more cost effective to allot these duties to outside laboratories. However, the thought of allocating a significant portion of one's research to a contractor tends to fly in the face of tradition.
Scientists like to watch over their experiments.
They also tend to divide tasks among colleagues and draw the combined expertise of scientists from a range of specialties through multidisciplinary efforts. This trend has enhanced the scope of biological research by bringing together professionals such as chemists, physicists, anatomists, and molecular biologists. Some scientists argue strenuously against outsourcing or succumbing to the temptations of kits and prefab reagents. They believe that scientists are forged in the flames of Bunsen burners and baptized in formaldehyde spills and that mundane lab tasks serve as a rite of passage for graduate students who must pay their dues. From our school days we are imbued with the notion that good, rigorous science is based upon observations.