One of the most entertaining ideas I’ve learned in graduate school has been the idea of the rabbit hole. This term stems from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” where Alice takes a trip into a rabbit hole and encounters all of the surreal fantastical experiences of the novel. In a scientific context the “rabbit hole” has come to describe the intellectual process of taking a deep dive into some concept or field of knowledge. The scientific process is full of these sorts of trips. Very often in the lab some hint of a connection between phenomena comes up and I find myself several hours later with 50 new journal articles to read, a head full of questions, deep in a rabbit hole trying to find a subterranean path to my own work. Diving down the rabbit hole has come to encompass any headlong, curiosity driven information binge.
I recently had a severe burn on my hand and in an effort to understand why my skin appeared to be melting off, I dove straight into the wonderland of phytophotodermatitis. This post is a departure from the style usually featured here. I’ll be covering a scientific adventure for a change.
Continue reading “Diving down the rabbit hole: Phytophotodermatitis”
Andrew Bondesson 