These “How and Why” columns are usually descriptions of how things in nature work, such as what gives a flower its scent. Sometimes they explain technology, such as why you can’t run high-speed trains on ordinary track.
This will be a sort of meta-How and Why about how and why the researchers who appear in the column do the work they do. How do they decide which questions to study? How do they know which research methods to apply? Do they have the whole process planned out, or do their findings usually send them in entirely new directions?
There’s no better person to explore these questions than Randy Schekman, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who was among the three scientists awarded this year’s Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their insights into the machinery that regulates the transport and secretion of proteins in our cells.
