Work Frustration

This summer, my work partner and I redesigned, set up, tested, and then piloted a series of new (teaching) labs. They are not perfect, but they are better than they were.  (These are for, essentially, lab for humanities majors. No, we can't cancel the lab part.) Things change colors! Students get to pick a few variables! They're actually interesting to teach! And so on. I've been teaching this class for years and I am an actual goddamn expert on biochemistry.

The teaching staff is divided about evenly between 'this is great' and 'this is terrible because change is bad and also it might not work perfectly the first time.' I have already spent entire days editing, doing demos, setting things up, going through protocols, and managing people's feelings. (To their credit, my boss's position is These Are The Labs Now, Deal.)

I am tired of this. Labs can't stay the same forever! It is bad pedagogy! We got a grant which obligates us to do this! The whole department is on board! The Dean approved it! I am running out of things to say to people. The competent scientists are all fine with the new labs. The people lacking a basic foundation in science are panicking because they don't understand any of the science. I'm going to go on cheerfully and thank everyone for helping us revise the labs and for being such GREAT sports and generally treat them as if they were super keen but really? I have to treat my colleagues like toddlers?

(If anyone has useful anti-whiner strategy, let me know....)

"I Know What This Is!"

When I was an undergrad, my advisor was once cleaning out a lab.  Like all labs, there were, of course, some unlabelled bottles full of clear liquids. 

(It is an invariant rule, in labs of all persuasions, that unlabelled anything should go for hazardous disposal by experts.  Because really, you don't know what it is.  Nobody actually does this because usually it's TBE or salt water or something lame.  My father, who is a safety consultant, then makes a fortune cleaning up after their disasters.)

She opened one such one-liter bottle of a clear liquid, sniffed it delicately, and declared, "I know what this is!", thinking it was hydrochloric acid.  (HCl has a very distinctive smell.)  So she turned the cold water on full blast and poured it slowly down the sink....

... and then they had to evacuate the building.  Because it was concentrated ammonium chloride, which smells just like HCl, but releases ammonia when it hits water.


When I was in grad school, I was once cleaning out the hood.  I opened a Falcon tube full of a clear liquid, thought "I know what this is!" and dumped it down the sink.  It was also ammonium chloride. 


Last month, my dear spouse was washing the dishes and cleaning the kitchen as he does every night.  He saw a big pot full of a yellowish liquid and said, "I know what this is!", thinking it was water from boiling something.  So he dumped it down the sink....

... it was 83 ounces of oils for soapmaking. 


(I will get back to you with the eventual plumbing bill.)

Leaving Academia

After reading Dr. Dad's post about industry, I was reminded of the whole agonizing will-I-be-an-academic struggle.  Just like so many other bitter and disillusioned grad students who have been hit in the face with the Big Wet Dead Reality Fish.  I'm sure I wrote about it at great length.  However, at a distance of several years' worth of graduatin', industry-workin', and baby-wranglin', here's my summary:

The Five Stages Of Academic Disillusionment

1. Relentless Optimism.  I will get an academic, tenure-track job when I graduate!  I am smart enough, I am good enough, and everyone will love me!  I'll be such a good teacher!
2. Great Expectations. Everyone else who didn't get an academic job just wasn't working hard enough!  I  will graduate in four years because I'm better than all of them. (Note: People who are not jerks tend to skip this stage in favor of clinical depression.)
3. Reality Fish. Damn, I finally read the NSF statistics.  I'm never going to get an academic job.  I'm never going to graduate.  I'm not sure I'm ever leaving this damn lab.  Shoot me now.  Also, what the fuck does doing research have to do with a SLAC teaching job?  Bastards.
4. Solipsistic Agony.  Is there any good outside of academia?  Will I be a miserable, useless failure if I cannot live up to my own ideals? 
5. Money Money Money. Hey!  Real jobs pay.... real money.  Suddenly this looks much more attractive  See you later, academia.  Don't let the door hit you...

Ethical Issues

Your postdoc advisor informs you that all three completely new projects that you came up with, developed, and started publishing in said advisor's lab are off-limits to take with you.  Even though the advisor knows nothing (no, really) about two of the three.  Do you:

A) Decide that your advisor is having a psychotic break and have him/her forcibly committed?
B) Take this as further evidence that your advisor is a passive-aggressive jerk?
C) Lie down, roll over, and accept being completely screwed?
D) Start working on a fourth project, and don't tell your advisor?  Or, as a friend of mine put it, "Listen up, kids... two wrongs do make a right!"

 -More later.

Lab Accidents

In the wake of a tragic accident at UCLA, I was thinking about biology labs.  (The particular situation in the UCLA accident is not under discussion here.)

(Note: these things are only funny because nobody got hurt.  Otherwise it would be really, really sad.)

Now, I used to work in a synthetic organic lab.  The two (fortunately, small, no injuries) lab fires that happened while I was there both involved lithium compounds: my boss set the base bath on fire.  Twice.  Yes, he did know better.  He also had an imploded, melted round-bottom flask with molecular sieves embedded in it, fused into a torn-apart heating mantle, entitled "Dumbass Of The Year Award, 1992."  (Lots of heat plus melted glass plus vacuum... you can imagine how that would end badly.)  And there was that one time with the aqua regia... well, turns out you really, really should add the acetone slowly; picture a small, REALLY corrosive volcano emitting metal-rusting fumes. Let's just say, it's a good thing the fume hood clamped down.  Anyhow.

Biologists, on the other hand... I've seen them do a lot of really stupid things.  Strong bases stored in glass!  (They etch glass.)  Oxidizers and reducers stored together, right next to flammable solvents!  (Because then, if they break and mix, it would go whoosh and KABOOM.)  Our idiot tech touching unpolymerized acrylamide with her bare hands!!!  (Neurotoxin.)  Amanitin without gloves!  (Death cap mushroom toxin!)  Phenol everywhere!  (Flammable, toxic, also causes burns, liver failure, and DEATH.)  And don't even get me started on things that get put down the sink,  to say nothing of the Ground Chicken Incident in my former lab.  The plumbers probably burned effigies of us. 

Seriously.  If biology required more than microliters of most of this stuff, biologists would blow themselves up all the time.

Lab Report

I was reading about Miss MSE's lab-teaching joys and it reminded me of when I was TAing

Bear in mind that Snooty U, as an institution, doesn't care about the science TAs and generally ignores them.  There is no training, there are no standards, and mileage varies widely.  (The grad school has some opportunities for individuals, but it's caveat magister.  Or possibly caveat discipulus.)

So I TA'd for a lab course that was, apparently, organized by monkeys.  We were given the labs, but no syllabus, no guidelines, and no outline of the accompanying lecture.  (Possibly because the lab bore it no resemblance.)  This is going to sound really mean, but I took the opportunity to rigorously enforce Good Science Writing.  I wrote my students a syllabus with the following criteria:

1) Your first lab report will be marked and returned.  I will grade the second version. 
2) After the first lab report, you will lose a point for each spelling or grammatical error.
3) You can write as much as you want (in Times 12 point with one-inch margins), but I will stop reading after five pages. 
4) Plagiarism will get you a failing grade.

After the first batch of lab reports, which were, with two exceptions, truly appalling, I got nice, concise, five-page, well-organized reports.  After the second batch, which lost a lot of points for grammatical errors, they were much better-written.  And after a couple weeks of me writing the most appalling errors up on the board(without attribution; however, in genetics, "compliment" and "complement" are very different)... they started proofreading, too.

Low grades are an amazing motivational tool.

Scientists

I used to work in a tall-ish building with hot, dim, smelly stairs, entirely filled with labs and scientists. (Everyone took the elevator.) So Dr. S and I have a long-running not-quite-joke: A scientist is someone who, seeing N people standing in front of the elevator, will still go push the "up" button.* Independent observations are key!

The other day Dr. S and a colleague went to a seminar. Two guys were standing outside. "It's locked," one said.

The colleague walked up and tried the door handle. It opened.** Dr. S laughed, and the other guys looked miffed.

A scientist is totally someone who will push the button again. Just in case.


*To be fair, the light was broken. But also, if ten people were waiting for the elevator, the 11th person would still push the button.
**Turns out they remotely unlock the doors right before the seminars. Anyhow.

Various Lab Stupidities

Or, Lessons Learned in Flammability, Hazard, and Bad Smells

• Chloroform dissolves floor wax.
  
• But it is not flammable.
  
• Stupid techs are stupid in so, so many ways.
• To wit: Do not put your bare finger in the acrylamide.
  
• A skull-and-crossbones is not informative enough for some people. Including stupid techs.
• Never store the TCA sideways.
• Is that smell beta-mercaptoethanol or a skunk? (AKA: Use the damn hood already.)
  
• Aqua regia with too much acetone... makes metal-corroding fumes. And is very dangerous.
  
• Never wash the LiH syringe in the isopropanol/NaOH bath.
• Especially never do it twice.*
• Never let biologists** organize the fume hood. Because ethanol plus nitric acid goes BOOM.
• Never clean out the radiation room. You will, inevitably, not like what you find.
• Chicken Incidents always smell really, really, really bad.

*True story. Why yes, it did catch fire! Both times!
**e.g.: my lab. Unless said biologists know that strong acid plus volatile solvent is BAD, of course.

In Which I Have a Bright Idea

A couple months ago, I had an inspiration. 'I am short on time,' I thought, 'and I am never going to finish.'

You may remember that I work on bricks. I have, let's say, a particular blend of clay that changes bricks' resilience. However, I don't know what it does to the structure, and I am very slow at examining structural details.

But! There is a grad student in my lab who is very good with structural examination. I've done a few, but he's done hundreds. Hence the bright idea. 'He could do it!' I thought. 'That would be faster.' So I went to him and said, if you do these five experiments, you're second author. (It's pretty good, in biology, to get a second-author paper after 3 years in grad school.) Everybody wins!

Last week I handed him a diagram of Figure 2. 'You're it,' I said.

Collaboration. It's wonderful.

(P.S. Still pregnant; 6 weeks. Still really dizzy. Doctor's appointment in 2 weeks; 'Call us if you feel really dizzy or really nauseous,' they said. Um... like ALL THE TIME? Right. Aargh.)

(P.P.S. Yes, I know their stupid little list is trying to convey, if you have ruptured-ectopic symptoms, call us right away, but seriously. How useless can you get?)

MY BRAIN IT HURTS

Reason 1: Our electrical outlets are dead. All of them except the one the fridge is on. No electricity, I can live with, but no FANS? Hot. Hot and cranky as all hell.
Update: It was a blown power strip. All better now. Yay.
Just kidding! Still no power! Electricians not until Monday.

Reason 2: I have begun pounding away at the Thesulation. Actually, I pounded last December and then left it incubate for six months. But suddenly, I feel intensely motivated by that whole 'homeless’ thing. (Also I promised myself treats for working on it every day: Netflix! Books!) At this rate I’ll be done next week. So here we are.

The introduction was mostly done by yesterday, because.... seriously, who are we kidding? Who’s going to read this anyways? Fortunately the boss doesn't care, so it’s short and to the point. Here, let me render it for you:

There are bricks. People make them from baked clay. Bricks are good for lots of things and are made in lots of different ways and are found in buildings all over the world. However, they crumble with time. Some people think it’s alien rays, but others favor rainfall. I wanted to look at whether high-voltage electrical lines make bricks crumble. They don’t. Rain does. We don’t know why. The end.

Just wait ‘til I tell you about the data chapters! All two of them. Oh, the excitement.

When Companies Ignore Users, Or, Why Your Science Equipment Sucks

The phone rang. It was the BD rep. 'Hi! Our local sales person said you have some feedback on our petri dishes,' she said.

'Well,' I said, 'we kind of hate them. I heard they were redesigned. In any case, we got a new box. And now our plates have furry things all over them. '

'We've gotten a lot of complaints lately; I guess they dry out too,' she said.

'Our tech never had trouble before,' I explained. 'She's been doing it for ten years now. Nothing else changed.'

'I'm sure you're right. They're doing a redesign. Actually they're changing it back to how they used to be.'

'Somehow, I'm not surprised,' I said.

So here's your PSA: BD Falcon petri dishes 351029. Don't use them, because they now suck. I am told that sometime in October they will be better again.

Here's the thing, though: they were perfectly good like they were! Why did the company change them? Apparently they thought more ventilation would be good. For your anaerobic bacteria and whatnot. Hey, company design people: we have plates like that. They're called CELL CULTURE DISHES.

This, my friends, is why equipment sucks: it appears to be designed by people who never will use it and never have. I see a niche market! Anyone want to start a consulting company with me? Wealth, power, and fame could be ours!

Useless Superpowers I've Learned In Lab

• Lifts heavy rotors with a single hand!

• Opens cold room doors with only her littlest fingers!

• Can hear centrifuges spinning down from three rooms away!

• Catches speeding bottles only moments before they hit the floor!

• Judges cell growth by eye!

• Has a spectacular memory for things people said 3 years ago in lab meeting!

• Quotes reams of science trivia!

• Can do experiments in her sleep!

What are your superpowers? Scientific or not. :)

OOPS.

Yesterday I found some 3H-labelled [cellular assay drug] in our freezer.

We don't have a radiation license. Oh, and the half life? 12.3 YEARS.

So.... how am I going to deal with this, without getting the lab in serious trouble?

I am going to put it in the back of the freezer and graduate before anyone notices.

**********

A couple years ago, another lab- which does have a radiation license- moved to Snooty U. They packed up the freezer contents in styrofoam boxes with dry ice, loaded it all onto the truck, and then unloaded it all immediately into the -80.

When safety came by to inspect, they found two packages of hot dogs in with the 32-P.

Someone was not paying attention while packing.

Safety was very upset.

Seminar Titles We Never See

"Shit We Tried That Didn't Work, Sometimes Repeatedly."
-Dr. Jekyll

"Things Do Things To Other Things."
-My dad's version of every slide title

"Things Do Things."
-Our joke about bad seminars

"I Don't Believe It Either, But It Got Me a Nature Paper."

"Spot the Faked Figure!"

"Unpublished Results That Contradict Our Hypothesis."

"Nou Viff Acksents aaand Typografffikal Erorrs."

"Incomprehensible Verbose Pretentious Old Guy Science: Fall Asleep Now."

"Using the Same Obsolete Technique Since 1983!" (corollary)

"Towards a Model of Bad Job Talks: Crystallography Strikes Back."

Research On The Cheap 3: Playing Nice With Others

How To Run A Lab (As) Cheaply (As Possible)

I encourage commentary; additional suggestions will be appended.

Part 1: Recycling and Repair
Part 2: DIY Lab Supplies

6. Shop around and negotiate.

• A lot of things can be bought elsewhere for less, and this place sells the weirdest stuff.
  
• Used equipment! (See here, e.g.) Really old things, especially, are worth it: they are unlikely to a) have circuit boards or b) break irreparably.
  
• Common household things- like tupperware containers- are useful. See also: Hardware stores.
  
• Ask for a samples, demos, and trials on equipment/ materials.
  
• Big companies (Sigma, IDT) will cut rates up to 25%. Negotiate long-term written agreements on consumables and services if possible, including sequencing/ analytical chemistry/ computer time. There is a lot of competition. If your college has any kind of support staff, try to negotiate for the college, and publicize: the more people will use it, the better deal you'll get. (Our stockroom gets 20% off, for example, and Dr. S's old lab negotiated a 3-for-price-of-2 deal with Qiagen. Of all places.)
• Ask for an academic price on equipment. Get two quotes and play them off each other; Sigma won't starve if you pay $500 less, and salespeople usually work on commission.
  
• Think hard about service contracts and how much the thingum breaks. Often, not worth it. (Except for: see #9.)
  

7. Share.

• Some places are set up so that large equipment can be used in common: centrifuges, -80 freezers, autoclaves, etc. Ask if anyone else has one, and offer to pay part of the service contract.
  
• There are grants for large equipment if it'll be used in common. (Though often not for maintenance.)
  
• Collaborate with someone who'll do your expensive experiment for an authorship!
  

8. No, really, avoid equipment with electronic parts. My lab has a Beckman ultra, bought seven years ago. It breaks every 3 months. Dr. S's lab has the very same ultra, bought 35 years ago. It has never broken. Old equipment that's still running.... works better. Beckman's parts used to be made by GE. Now they're made in China.

9. Know when it's dead. That centrifuge tube with a hairline crack? Toss it, it's dead. Don't push your equipment beyond its tolerances or you'll spend a lot of time fixing it.

10. Think twice and order once. I can't tell you how many wrong primers I've ordered, and I have a whole drawer of prematurely ordered things I can't use. It doesn't matter to my lab, but very important for the limited budget!

11. Try not to be depressed by how much everything costs. Yes, we're being ripped off. Oh well.

Sad Commentary

Yesterday I did the Timecourse From Hell. Then I left a cart by my bench, full of dirty specialized glassware. This afternoon I ran into it. Oh, I thought, I should wash that now, since I'm taking a three-day weekend.......

No.... wait, I'm taking a two-day weekend.

Sigh.

Research On The Cheap 2: DIY Lab Supplies

How To Run A Lab (As) Cheaply (As Possible)

I encourage commentary; additional suggestions will be appended. (Please only comment on the things listed in this post; more to follow.)

Part 1: Recycling and Repair

4. Learn to make things.

• If you've not bought many things for labs, you'll be amazed how much they cost. Gel tanks: $350 and up. A lot of equipment can be cobbled together, with creativity. It's worth it to make some things yourself, but do a cost/time analysis first. Check and see how complicated basic [thing] is before you buy or make one.
• Newark Electronics sells everything.
  
• Horizontal gel boxes: jigsaw, plexiglass, epoxy, some Pt wire, some long wires, a couple connectors, electrical tape. (Disassembled lamps and so on provide excellent recyclable wires and plugs. Scrap plexiglass can sometimes be had free from companies or the shop.)
  
• Miniprep columns: plastic spin filters (Sigma et al.) and a little silica gel (about $80 for 500 g; but a kit for 250 preps runs about $300).
• Find a machine shop and a glassblower if possible (some do work by mail). The machine shop can make you gel plates and the glassblower will repair that $200 flask for $20. Most expensive glassware is worth repairing.
• You can make your own gel-picture box with a cheap UV emitter, a cheap digital camera, a large box-like object, and ImageJ.
  
• If you feel really cheap, a hot plate, a pan, and some sand make a fine constant-temp 'heat block'. (But only one temperature at a time.)
  
• Someone in my lab made a plasma-cleaner from an old microwave, a vacuum pump, and some tubing.
  
• Rotation-only orbital shakers cost thousands of dollars. A few large springs, some flat stuff (plexiglass works well) and a rotary-shaft motor will also do the trick. Ugly... but effective. If you throw in a variable-speed switch in front of the motor, it's adjustable-speed.
  

5. Mixing it yourself is cheaper than a kit.

• Don't use a kit! There's another way, and it's much cheaper. They did it another way before the kit, of course.
• Most things in kits you can make, including silver stain, labeling reagents, and everything from Qiagen.
  
• DNA purification: PCA extraction, then glycogen and ethanol.
  
• Make your own media powders if possible. Not hard.
  
• Pour your own gels; buy dry acrylamide (but only if you have a fume hood!).
• Don't ever buy a protein purification kit. Just don't.
  
• High-processivity proofreading enzyme? 10:1 Pfu/Taq.
• You can make your own Taq. And it's even legal now. The prep is basically 'Boil, spin, run over column.' You can also make: specific proteases, size ladders (buy dry proteins from Sigma), and so on.
  
• Boil your own dialysis tubing.
• Ethidium bromide really is the cheapest option. Sorry.
  
• The quick ligation kits just have PEG (5000, 5%) and regular T4 in them.
• Mutagenize DNA with primers, not a kit.
• For most reagents, you can use much less than the instructions say. Colloidal coomassie: 7 ml/minigel. TOPO: 0.25 uL works too.
• Learn tricks. Like: 0.5 M salt in a blot reduces nonspecific bands dramatically. Or: there's no way to predict which PCR additive will work best, but start with DMSO. ('Additive Q' is 100% betaine. Someone put it through an NMR.) Some specialty journals, including Electrophoresis, have entire papers on tricks.
  

Next and Finally: Think, Then Haggle, Before You Buy

Research On The Cheap 1: Recycling and Repair

A while ago, Flicka Mawa posted about research at small colleges. (I respond to external stimuli with exquisite slowness.) Naturally, I thought back to my small undergrad institution, and also to the various tricks and dodges I've learned to save money. (In biology; I'm not so great at other disciplines, sorry.) Without further ado, I present:

How To Run A Lab (As) Cheaply (As Possible)

I encourage commentary; additional suggestions will be appended. (Please only comment on the things listed in this post; more to follow.)

1. Understand how things work. Because then you'll know what parts you can make yourself/ use less of/ get more cheaply. If you understand what that kit is doing, chances are you can make it yourself. (For biomed labs: Invest in Maniatis; likewise Methods in MolBio is your friend. I assume other fields have similar resources.)

2. Reuse and Recycle.

• You'd be amazed how many things are reusable when washed/ melted down/ sterilized. A selection: agarose from gels, test tubes, 0.22 um filters, disposable columns, miniprep columns, acid washes, even Petri dishes if you're desperate.
  
• Don't get throwaway regents when there's a reusable: not glass beads to spread cells, but a spreader. Use glass pipettes if possible. Glass test tubes can be washed in a base bath. (Glass beads and tips can be washed and re-used; use bleach (see comments); gloves can be re-used.)
  
• Antibodies and coomassie stain can both be re-used.
• Resins can be cleaned. Glutathione-sepharose costs $10/mL, and that's one of the less expensive ones. Clean your resins.
• Universities throw out an awful lot of equipment. Find a building manager or two, or a buddy, at the nearest big school, take them out for coffee, and ask them to let you know when stuff's going to be tossed. Chromatography sheets, microscopes, ancient power sources, vertical gel tanks needing only new gaskets... these are all usable, if you:

3. Learn to fix everything.

• Well-equipped labs need at least: a set of Allen wrenches, a few sizes of screwdriver, a hammer and a mallet, needlenose pliers, adjustable wrenches, regular (large) pliers, WD-40, a soldering iron, a voltmeter, thread tape, a small saw, nails, screws, etc. (Or access; a few labs could go in on these things, or the department could leave a toolbox in the stockroom.) The investment is worth it: repair companies typically charge $100-$200 per hour, plus a drop fee.
• If it's broken and dead, there's no harm in trying to fix it. It can't work any less well, after all.
• If there's a building manager or scientific support staff, they may know a great deal about fixing things.
  
• Basic electrical knowledge will help. If something's broken and out of warranty, it won't hurt to open it up and check the connections. This is where the voltmeter is handy.
  
• Try easy fixes first. I once fixed a -80 by blowing air through its electronics for 15 minutes.
• Call the company and ask for the real tech support people. Keep going until you get someone who doesn't ask 'A what connector?' They may be able to tell you what's wrong.
  
• Epoxy is your friend. Also heat-shrink tubing, electrical tape, thread tape, and duct tape.
  
• Soldering doesn't have to be pretty to work.
• Buy replacement parts for moving bits or whatever you use, and learn to put them in yourself. Incubator doors, for example, are not mechanically complicated but break a lot. A screwdriver, a pliers, and another set of hands usually does it. Vertical gel tanks can be fixed with wire and patience.
  
• If large numbers of screws feature anywhere in your equipment, a screw remover will prevent a lot of pain and swearing.
  
• Small-volume pipettes (you know, like Rainin), you can calibrate yourself with a balance, spare o-rings, and a tool that costs $5.
  
• If parts are cheap enough, it's worth it to replace them even if you don't know if that's the problem.
  
• Newark Electronics will sell you any electronic part you want.
• Circuit boards always die first. They are rarely worth replacing.
• If there's a Graduate Women in Science chapter, they may run a fix-it seminar! Or organize one yourself- there has to be a machine shop somewhere.
  

Coming up: So Make It Yourself; How Not to Play Nice

Falsifying Data II: Hits, Runs, Errors

Or, More Favorites

3. Someone does an experiment five times. It works once. They report it worked.
Problems: Irreproducible. But many, many perfectly valid results are more or less irreproducible, or can only be done under the same exact circumstances. These are what we call 'non-robust' results. Probably more likely to slip through. I personally think cherry-picking is the worst: the person who does it knows that their result is probably not the real one, and maliciously chooses to hide a valid part of their data set. Somehow it seems nastier to cheat than to lie outright. I suppose because it's more devious than baldfaced. Of course, the fact that I spent six months trying to replicate someone's cherrypicked data has nothing to do with it, oh no...

4. Someone makes a mistake and doesn't catch it in time.

These fall into two camps: Honest (also Kind of Honest, Or We Were Really Sloppy), and Not. Good retraction: Oops, we made a mistake; we're sorry that we misinterpreted our data. Thanks to so-and-so for setting us straight. (Although part of the problem is that high-profile papers take shortcuts, but that's another problem.) Bad retraction: Oops, we got caught.

My lab, on the other hand, just discovered that an artefact caused a 10-fold error in a value we reported. Erratum? No way.

Sigh.

Some of you fine readers maintain that outright fakery is worse. And I agree intellectually. But personally, I must say I find the other kinds much more inconvenient.

Falsifying Data I: Some of Our Favorite Fakes

L., a former member of Dr. S's lab, published a paper- several years ago- with un-reproduceable data. She confided to my spousal unit, when he tried to repeat the experiment, that she got the result once and ignored the other ten times.

Somehow, faked data came up in conversation. 'Well, L. falsified data,' I said.

'No she didn't!' protested Dr. S. 'She reported a part of it. But she really got the data.'

'She published a result she knew wasn't true,' I said. 'How is that not falsifying data?'

L. now has a faculty job at Snooty U. Virtue rewarded.

***
Our favorite kinds of fake data:

1. Someone makes up a result out of whole cloth, or Photoshop, as it were. Or republishes with a different caption.

These people often get caught. Some bright-eyed person notices that the cells look disturbingly similar, or that the graph appeared in another paper. In some ways, this is morally the worst- after all, there is no ambiguity: DO NOT MAKE UP DATA. Doubtless a fair bit does get through, especially with less high-profile papers. But it is not a subtle lie. This one bothers me less than subtle faking, somehow.

2. Someone makes up part of a result, or fills in a form that was partly blank- on purpose, knowing it's wrong- and so on.

I imagine this gets through a lot more often. It seems to happen frequently in clinical trials, possibly because their data sets are often re-analyzed by more than one group (and so it gets caught in these circumstances). There was that one breast cancer trial (whoops- apparently a lot of breast cancer trials! Money does lead to corruption!)- at Dartmouth maybe? where a lab member discovered the PI had massaged the data interpretation. The PI was fired.

Partial fakery, I find very objectionable. It seems malicious in a way that outright lying doesn't, although the intent is no different: to report a false result. Perhaps it's squidgier because it may have a lower chance of detection: after all, some of the data is real.

Which one do you think is worse, full-on or partial making-it-up? Any juicy stories to tell?

Next: Mistakes, White Lies, and Retractions