Most of the kits in our lab come with deeailtd scientific discussion, theory and diagrams in their appendices. I’ve never seen a kit booklet without one – are you really finding instructions with no explanation or context? That’s really bad practice by the companies, I’d say. But of course the students would still need to read these appendices.I’m of two minds here. I make a lot of my own solutions, but I also use kits. Yet even when I use solutions I make myself – let’s use RIPA (for the above mentioned immunoprecipitation assay) as an example – it doesn’t necessarily mean I need to know the chemistry behind it. I make it following a recipe that was passed down from post-doc to post-doc over many years. It usually works, but if it didn’t, I’d have to go to the literature to work out why. I know the general idea – what the salt and detergent is for – but I wouldn’t say my knowledge is anything other than superficial. Most of the tried and true recipes are tried and true precisely because they do tend to work under a wide range of conditions. As long as I know HOW to troubleshoot in the event my conditions aren’t in that range, I’m not too fussed about delving too deeply. Perhaps that makes me a lazy scientist – I’m not really sure!