https://tilldettmering.com/tags/writing/Recent content in Writing on Dr. Till DettmeringHugoen-usThu, 16 Jul 2026 21:37:14 +0000https://tilldettmering.com/posts/van-zants-six-cardinal-questions/Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000https://tilldettmering.com/posts/van-zants-six-cardinal-questions/<p>In 2012 I spent some time at the University Medical Center Groningen, in Rob Coppes&rsquo; lab, and somewhere between the cell culture hoods and the coffee machine there was a poster on the wall that I liked enough to photograph. It was not a pretty poster, just a list of six questions in a plain font under a slightly grand title: &ldquo;Van Zant&rsquo;s Six Cardinal Questions of Scientific Investigation.&rdquo; I took the picture, filed it away, and then proceeded to think about those six questions on and off for the next fourteen years, which is more than I can say for most things I photographed that year.</p>