[title page] One surprise is the extent to which the planning process seems to be event driven... most planning in these experiments seems to be short term and in response to unexpected results... Considerable knowledge is used in forming new hypotheses in response to the unexpected. Furthermore, much of the geneticist's behavior seems to be directed toward exploiting serendipity.

p.1 This report explores in depth a series of actual genetics experiments performed in Professor Joshua Lederberg's laboratory [JLJ - The term "plasmid" was first introduced by the American molecular biologist Joshua Lederberg in 1952. Lederberg (b. 1925, d. 2008) was just 33 years old when he won the 1958 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering that bacteria can mate and exchange genes. He shared the prize with Edward L. Tatum and George Beadle who won for their work with genetics. In addition to his contributions to biology, Lederberg did extensive research in artificial intelligence. On a side note Lederberg's wife was also a researcher and he may have benefited from her research efforts, at a time when discrimination was quietly imposed on the accomplishments of female researchers] over a two month period in order to characterize both the experiment design process and the knowledge used to guide the decision making.

 In this study, the geneticist is viewed as having a theory in which various beliefs are held with different degrees of certainty. His theory describes the limitations of his laboratory and his current research goals. Given this theory, he must decide what to do next. He may plan to do certain experiments and perform certain operations, but unexpected measurements and fortunate observations can steer him in different directions.

 Judging only from this single case study, relatively little time is spent evaluating experimental alternatives for a fixed experiment. The art of successful experimentation involves shrewd decisions of what to do next based on recent observations and the state of the theory. A geneticist is an expert at exploiting serendipity and at generating hypotheses to be tested.

p.30 The experiments described here reflect a combination of goal driven and event driven behavior. (The word "experiment" itself suggests that the procedure is somewhat tentative and intended to elucidate an unknown effect or law.) If there were no goals, behavior might seem very erratic and follow no general course. If there is no event driven component to the planning process, then the experimental procedure must admit no feedback or change of plans as a result of the observations. Thus, no advantage will be made of fortunate observations. What is being suggested here is that the planning in this experiment involved far more exploitation of events and changes of plan according to events than the authors had anticipated. The importance of a combination of goal driven and event driven processes in problem solving has been discussed in the artificial intelligence literature*.

*See, for example, [Erman76] or [Englemore77].

p.31 One explanation for some of the event-driven character of the experiment is the fact that planning must take place even though the knowledge is incomplete... planning steps must be proposed tentatively and checked after completion.

p.31 not only is the planning process largely event driven but sometimes steps are taken somewhat outside the plan of the experiment to make a possibly interesting observation... sometimes the observations seem to correspond more to fishing for interesting possibilities.

p.34 Unpredicted observations must be examined for their importance (interestingness, novelty, and impact on genetic theory) before effort is spent to explain them or perhaps even base further research on them... When hypotheses are being verified, an important hypothesis will merit considerable verification even if its plausibility is already quite high. A less important hypothesis of equal certainty will get somewhat weaker confirmation. An unimportant hypothesis of high certainty will probably get little attention... Much needs to be learned about when it is optimal for considerations of these different parameters to enter into the planning process.

p.35 A surprise in working on this set of experiments was the extent to which considerations outside the usual set of hierarchical planning ideas entered into the experimental planning. Far more of the decision making was event driven than had been anticipated and it remains to be seen whether this situation is characteristic of the current molecular genetics domain. In addition, some basic scientific activities -- such as hypothesis formation and testing, which had not previously received much attention in MOLGEN -- now appear to be quite important.

p.35 Finally, more work needs to be done to... [JLJ - redundant. Every research paper needs to conclude with this line. No research is ever finished, no amount of initial funding is ever enough.]