Vizzini: He didn’t fall? Inconceivable! Inigio: You keep using
that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. -
William Goldman, The Princess Bride Excuse me while I
temporarily interrupt the genome sequencing series to define a
word. Artifacts in the classroom It’s disorienting. You learn a
word in certain context. You’re sure of it’s meaning and then
you end up in a situation where people use the word in a
completely unexpected way and no one else seems bothered by
this! I had this happen once with the word “artifact.” I had
organized a conference and some workshop presenters were talking
about students and protein gels. It was a dark room and there
were on things on mind, which, I confess, began to wander a bit.
At least it did, until the presenter said that students could
use a photocopier and take home artifacts to show their parents.
In molecular biology, an experimental artifact is a bad thing.
It’s something that you see sometimes in experiments and it
isn’t a real, meaningful result. In