Imagine your grandpa. Standing in his garden. With a sickle in one hand and a sampling in another. A sampling that will grow on to become the mango tree which is the lifeblood of your family’s natural sugars intake.
Now imagine that that mango seed was the first in a line of new genetic breeds of mangoes being tested and the goal was to measure the success of the new breed. But there’s one small issue, trees wait a long, long time before gesticulating.
And your grandpa, the contractor, the researcher, and everyone who was aware of the seed’s existence might very well be dead before they ever get to taste the fruits of their labor.
Enter longitudinal studies. Take your research subjects and track. Through years. Or decades. Or centuries.
That’s the beauty of institutions. Religion knew this from long ago. A Hindu might die, but Hinduism will live.
If anything, science was late to the party. But I’ll be damned if they didn’t steal it once it arrived. Longitudinal studies, long live you.
