From Lab to Real World: What My Scientific Training Taught Me About Human Performance
When people ask what I do, the simplest answer is that I study human performance.
The more complicated answer is that I spent years inside academia learning how research works, and the rest of my career learning how difficult it is to apply that knowledge in the real world.
My training was as a scientist. My work today still is.
But the environment changed.
For a broader overview of my work and background, you can also read my introduction here.
One of the most important things my academic career taught me is something most people outside universities never see: research and application operate on very different timelines, under very different constraints, and for very different purposes. Understanding that difference has shaped nearly everything I have built since.
How Academic Research Actually Works
Good research is careful by design.
A well-designed study controls variables, limits external factors, and isolates a single measurable outcome. Researchers try to remove as much noise as possible so that a cause-and-effect relationship can be established with confidence. This is necessary. Without control, you do not have science. You have opinion.
But control also creates distance from reality.
Participants follow precise protocols. Environments are standardized. Behaviors are monitored. Conditions are selected specifically because they reduce uncertainty. The goal is not to replicate real life. The goal is to understand a mechanism.
In the laboratory, this works very well.
In everyday life, things are far less controlled.
Athletes travel across time zones. Students sleep inconsistently. Workers experience stress, interruptions, and competing demands. Human performance rarely occurs in stable conditions, and people rarely follow a perfectly designed protocol for long.
The research is valid.
The environment is different.
Why Most Research Rarely Reaches the Real World
The majority of published research is read primarily by other researchers. That is not a failure of the system. It is a function of how knowledge progresses. Scientific fields advance through incremental evidence, careful replication, and peer review.
However, moving knowledge from journals into practice requires a different skill set.
Many research findings are difficult to implement outside controlled settings. Some require expensive monitoring. Others require strict adherence to conditions that are not practical in everyday environments. Sometimes the intervention works only when supervised closely. Sometimes the effect disappears once normal life resumes.
The challenge is not whether the research is correct.
The challenge is translation.
Between discovery and application there is a large middle space. In that space, the question changes from “Does this work under controlled conditions?” to “Will people actually do this consistently in their lives?”
That question is rarely scientific alone. It is behavioral, environmental, and economic.
The Gap I Became Interested In
During my academic career, I began noticing something consistent. The individuals who most needed the benefits of research were often the least able to implement the protocols that produced those results.
Elite athletes were an example. They are disciplined and motivated, but they also live in environments with travel, pressure, fatigue, and constant decision-making. The perfectly controlled intervention from a study often could not be followed exactly during a competitive season.
Students were another example. Research on sleep, recovery, and cognitive performance is clear, yet academic and social structures frequently make the ideal behaviors unrealistic.
The same pattern appeared in business professionals, shift workers, and young founders. The science explained what improved performance. Real life made strict implementation difficult.
That observation changed my direction. I became less interested only in discovering what works and more interested in designing ways people could realistically use what works.
Why I Moved Toward Commercialization
Commercialization is often misunderstood. It is sometimes viewed as simplifying research or reducing complexity. My experience has been the opposite.
To bring research into practice, you must preserve the mechanism while adapting the delivery.
You have to ask practical questions:
Can a person follow this without supervision?
Will they repeat it consistently?
Does it fit into real schedules?
Is it safe outside controlled environments?
Is it affordable enough to scale?
These are not questions that diminish research. They are questions that allow research to matter beyond the laboratory.
Over time, my work shifted toward building systems, programs, and companies that attempted to close that gap. The goal was not to replace research. The goal was to implement it responsibly in everyday settings.
What Science Still Guides Today
Although my daily work now includes mentoring founders, working with athletes, and building organizations, the foundation remains scientific thinking.
Hypotheses are tested.
Outcomes are observed.
Adjustments are made based on evidence.
The difference is that the testing now occurs in real environments rather than controlled ones.
In a lab you ask whether an intervention can work.
In the real world you ask whether people will actually use it, and whether it improves their lives when they do.
Both questions matter. They simply belong to different stages of the same process.
Why This Matters
Universities are extraordinarily good at discovery. Society benefits most when discovery moves beyond publication into practical impact. The connection between those stages does not happen automatically. It requires individuals who understand both research and implementation.
My career has gradually moved into that middle space.
I still believe deeply in careful science. I also believe knowledge achieves its full value only when it improves how people learn, perform, recover, and live.
The laboratory answers important questions.
The real world asks whether we can use the answers.
Bio
Darren Burke is a Halifax-based scientist, entrepreneur, and mentor whose work focuses on human performance, research translation, and the practical application of scientific knowledge in sport, education, and business. Learn more here.