The most tedious part of every science paper is the “Methods” section. It’s typically a few hundred words heavily sprinkled with bizarre verbs (micropipetting, centrifuging) followed by some inscrutable acronyms and obscure chemicals. While the purpose of the section is to allow other scientists to reproduce the exact experimental protocol, the convoluted prose often makes it impossible. It’s like trying to follow a cookbook in a foreign language.
This is where the Journal of Visualized Experiments, or JoVE, comes in. Instead of having scientists describe their techniques in baffling sentences, JoVE allows them to demonstrate the manual labor — to show and tell. Ever wanted to know how to induce egg-laying in frogs, or which kind of eggs are ideal for RNA injections? Or maybe you’re more interested in learning how to dissect the fetal thymus gland? Or how to clean a two-photon microscope? The short videos are unexpectedly riveting. Even if you never expect to cut apart a rat placenta — this is a crucial technique in stem-cell research — it’s still a fascinating process to observe. Last month, the most important search engine in the life sciences, Pubmed, announced that it will start featuring JoVE videos alongside all its other peer-reviewed papers. The scientific process just got a little more transparent.
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