A 500-Year-Long Science Experiment
Good article! I just have one nag: although the science behind it is good, the history is less so...<p>&gt; “Of course, for an experiment to go on like this, I’m assuming that science still looks somewhat like today, in the sense that universities will exist, there will be professors with labs, and so on,” says Lenski. “Yet if one looks not so far into the past, that isn’t how science was done.”<p>I have the highest regards for Lenski as a biologist, but this is pretty wrong (unless he was quoted out of context). Universities have been around for the past millennium, and have not fundamentally changed during that time. Provided civilisation survives, I have no reason to expect they won&#x27;t survive the next 500 years.<p>Also, the issue with how to preserve the instructions is not as big a deal as they make out. There&#x27;s plenty of paper books still legible from 500 years ago. As long as you are careful about storing it, that shouldn&#x27;t be a problem. (Though of course, creating new copies is still prudent.)