Science Careers donosi èlanak o knjizi "Intuition" spisateljice Allegre Goodman. Knjiga opisuje imaginarni sluèaj znanstvene prijevare i bavi se svakodnevnim ¾ivotom znanstvenika.

U razgovoru za Science Careers, autorica spominje neke svoje opservacije vezane uz moderni znanstveni rad.

"I was interested in the sort of working families that develop in the lab," she said. "These families consist of more than one generation of people; there are the mentors or the PIs and the junior scientists." And like real families, they need to work on trust and loyalty. The lab family also has a real family's "intense personal relationships" that in this case "come from working closely with other people with different backgrounds, from different countries, from different cultures, and different ages. All of this is a very rich subject for fiction, rife with possibilities for conflict and dysfunction."

Another thing that drew Goodman to writing about labs is "the old-fashioned nature of some of these relationships. It's a bit like a medieval guild in which the junior scientists are not kids any more. They're adults in their late 20s, 30s, some of them pushing 40, yet they're journeymen in their field because the training is so long. ... They're really trying to earn membership in their guild by creating a masterpiece so that they can set up their own shop," she said.

"Nowadays," she continued, "people have much more freedom in their personal lives and professional choices than they did when they were sold to an apprenticeship in the old days, and yet, at the same time, they're buying into this almost feudal system in which once you dedicate a certain number of years, you are bound by the amount of time you've spent. There's the sense that sacrificing youth and time and energy and pouring more and more and more time into something that you're hoping will eventually turn around and produce results. ... This drew me to it, the dedication that these people have, the heartaches that can come with that."