Category: Work Safely & Appropriately

 

• Machines may break down for months on end, before a technician finally describes how much it will cost to buy a new machine.
• Software may freeze and you’ll have to repeat days of work redoing your analysis. Or a power cut will end your complicated procedure in the middle, causing everything to be lost.
• Volunteers may cancel their appointment for the 50th time in a row, or they may simply drop out.
• Ethics or safety boards may take months considering whether to give you approval, and then decline it.

 

1. Check the internet to see if other people had the same problem and what solutions they found.
2. Save your work regularly. Don’t wait for your first major loss of data before you take this advice.
3. Don’t assume someone else will fix or order something. Chances are they are thinking the same thing about you.
4. Back up your results either using the university intranet or on several computers

 

1. If a procedure still isn’t working after a few attempts, then don’t simply continue repeating it under the assumption that you did something wrong. Make sure you consciously change one aspect.
2. Don’t leave important data on shared machines. Always copy it to your own personal machines ASAP. It may crash, or other people may delete your files.
3. A primary reason experiments suddenly stop working is because one of the reagents has expired. If the components are cheap it is best to make up new solutions for all of them and try again. Order new stocks if you have to and double check your calculations. If the materials are expensive, try changing one or two at a time.
4. If an experiment has never worked, try new solutions but also change the parameters one at a time.
5. Always be aware of the mechanical impact. There are different ways of following a protocol: It could also be that you are being too gentle with mixing solutions, or too rough with components that can be damaged such as living material.
6. Never assume a rough estimate is ok. When it comes to timing and concentrations, always be as exact as possible. Sometimes this is all it takes to turn a failed experiment into a successful one.

 
You would think it would be easy enough to get 50 people to fill out a questionnaire. Nope. Even once I had ethics approval it was an uphill battle to get people to fill them in.

I got about half way to my target and then suddenly the influx just stopped. I couldn’t get anyone else to save my life. The avenues I’d been using were simply exhausted, so I had to find new avenues.

My advice is not to assume the methods you are using will provide an unlimited supply of people. Think of other ways to attract volunteers.

 
It is universally acknowledged that in wet lab some protocols are more reliable than others. Some people can get the less reliable ones to work and others can’t. I couldn’t. I made up new solutions and tried different parameters, but it never seemed to work.

I was not spending enough time researching the protocol. When I looked at a protocol, I saw a list of stages, but the good researchers understood what each of those stages did.

They had researched the protocol and reagents so they knew what changes to make for it to work, whereas I was making uneducated guesses to alter parameters. I did the experiment more times, but each time they did it they improved it more.

For complicated procedures optimisation can still be a lengthy process, but if you do it right you will get there.

 

1. Don’t make the same mistake twice. Note the error down several times and take steps to ensure it doesn’t happen again.
2. If your mistakes are because you don’t fully understand something, then learn it.
3. Read these guidelines again.

 
There was one step in my cell staining protocol that I always used to forget. After washing them with various chemicals for ten minutes at a time, there was a one minute wash with water, which the first two or three times I left out despite remembering it every time just after it was too late. I highlighted it on the protocol, wrote it out several times and never forgot it again.

 

• Large bottles (or small containers) of dangerous chemicals can spill or smash.
• Lasers and radiation can inflict various degrees of harm
• People or animals could be injured during experimentation

 
It is a mistake to assume that because you don’t use obviously hazardous materials that this guideline does not apply to you. Safety and ethics boards may disagree with your assessment, and even if you think they’re wrong, they can cause you serious problems. Any research that involves other people requires approval.

 

1. If you are still not sure about something, ask. It sounds obvious, but people hate asking. You just have to do it. It isn’t rude or stupid, and if the person takes exception to your question then they are socially defective. Feel sorry for them, and ask someone else.
2. Make sure you have taken all the courses necessary to meet the required safety and ethics standards. If you have somehow slipped through the gaps, this is not an achievement. You are a danger to yourself and others, and a potential liability to the university. They won’t thank you for it.

 

1. If you’ve spilled or broken something dangerous, don’t hide it or rush to clean it up yourself. You may need to tell someone what you did and what you think the best course of action is.
2. When you start working with a new chemical, look at the accompanying data sheets. Make sure you are aware of the associated hazards.

 
I already had ethical approval for my project which involved getting members of the public to fill in a questionnaire about how they viewed politics. What I didn’t realise was that I also needed ethical approval to stick up posters asking people to fill in the questionnaire. This had never struck me as unethical, but the ethics board saw potential problems and wanted me to safeguard the procedure. If I had put this in my original ethical approval I could have potentially saved the months I waited for them to get back to me.

 

1. Make time for people. Family and friends are important and will positively affect your work.
2. Make a list of your obligations and cross each thing off as it gets done.
3. Don’t run too many procedures at once.
4. Even if you are experienced at a certain procedure, don’t just pile the replicates on top of each other without analysing the previous attempt first. Make sure you not only know the outcome of the previous attempt, but understand why any problems occurred before you do it again. Otherwise you will inevitably make the same mistakes, reducing both your productivity and morale.

 

• Don’t think that you have to complete each experiment every day. Know the points where you can stop and continue the next day.

 
At the beginning of my third year, I didn’t have a lot of data. I felt like I had to run procedures faster and faster in order to generate something useful. Before one had finished I was already running it again, and again. But of course this meant I kept making the same mistakes. I never took the time to analyse where the mistakes were, and the protocols kept failing.

The result was that I got increasingly stressed and piled on more replicates, becoming disheartened by their failure. My social and home life both started to suffer, and I stopped enjoying my degree.

If you are stressed by your lack of progress, don’t just pile on more work mindlessly. It’s inefficient, and will only make things worse.