Co-worker woes

[neurograd]

Every lab has that one person who messes things up, leaves things on/off when they shouldn't, changes protocols without telling anyone, etc. Any good stories anyone's willing to share?

[hedge]

well, i always am against leaving nasty notes just on principle, no matter how annoying someone has been. It just seems so nagging. But there is really cause to become irate when someone uses up the last of some crucial reagent! And this ruins your experiment!

Neurogrqd, I am intrigued by the changes-the-protocol scenario - what sort of change, any good examples?

[wheetabox]

technician from hell, in our lab.
Don't even get me started!

[neurograd]

"Changes protocols" was probably the wrong way to put it. There's someone in my lab who does things "his way," without checking with any of us, or even the PI, if his changes are a good idea. What's worse is he's supposed to be attempting to replicate a previous researcher's experiment, so staying consistent is super-critical. My poor PI keeps thinking she's narrowed down why he might be having trouble replicating the experiments, and then some other crazy change he's made comes to light. He's such a waste of resources and space.

[The Prof]

Welcome to the forums, neurograd.

If someone behaved like that in my lab, he'd be out the door faster than you can say polyacrylamide! I don't want to come across like a whinging oldtimer, but I really feel that younger scientists these days are taking a lot of shortcuts and just generally being sloppy. In my day we used to do an experiment 5 times and still feel nervous about its validity; these days you are lucky if they even repeat it once. What could be contributing to this general slackening of attention to detail? Everyone seems to be in such a blazing hurry.

[neurograd]

It's not exactly that he takes shortcuts, really. I think a couple of things are just holdovers from his last lab, but at the same time when you join a new lab you should adopt that lab's ways of doing things. Or at least, if you feel that your way really is better, then do a couple of experiments "your way," then a couple "the lab's way" and see which is better. But he doesn't get that at all. Plus he gets really defensive if you point out he's doing something different.

And thanks for the welcome!

[wheetabox]

I agree it's important to do things the lab's way when you join a new one. But there is also something for said for new people blowing in, shaking things up, teaching people new tricks. That's one of the best things about the itinerant nature of scientists. Of course it is important for that new person to clearly indicate where she is deviating from the established protocol. But I still think changes are good.

[neurograd]

I agree that change can be good, and prevents labs from getting into a rut.

But in this particular case this guy's job is to try to replicate a previous experiment. "Changes" or doing things "his way" goes completely against his scientific goal.

[Octavia]

Hiya Neurograd. Can we call you Neuro for short? Nice to have some neurobiologists knocking about!

I agree with you completely. The entire point of 'replication' goes completely opposite to the concept of 'innovation'. Innovation is very important when an established protocol, which has been reliably replicated and is considered sound, needs to be varied (one variable at a time!) to achieve a new end - to test a new condition, say. But to start changing more than one thing at a time is daft. You will never know what contributed to the phenomenon in question!

It sounds to me like this person you're talking about hasn't a good grasp of the scientific method. It's the lab head's job to instill this, I reckon.

[neurograd]

Hi Octavia, you're right, he's just overall not a very good scientist. I have to go to bat for my PI, though, it's really not her fault. He's been doing science for long enough that if he hasn't learned these things by now, I think it's pretty clear he never will.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack this thread with my rantings. Just given my experiences with this guy of late I thought it might be nice (and cathartic) to have a forum for people to share their own horror stories.

[Hanneke D]

I did a rotation in a lab which had this really terrible postdoc who used to take huge aliquots of communal stocks and hide them in his freezer. For example, we were doing transgenic mice so we used to do Southern blots to identify founder mice and this would involve digesting tail DNA with very high concentrated restriction enzyme. It's very expensive to buy REs in this form so we only got one at a time. We would order in one tube of super-concentrated stuff and the day it came, late at night when the rest of us went home, this postdoc would sneak in and take half of it and put it in a new tube and hide it. He claimed he did this because no one else could be trusted to order more when the stock got low but what usually ended up happening was the stock got low very quickly because the tech responsible for ordering (who had been there for years) was in this rhythm and knew that usually such a tube would last for a few weeks and wasn't used to it being used up so quickly!

One day when the stock ran out too early some of us went on an early morning raid through his freezer but there were so many unlabeled tubes it was impossible to know for sure which was the BamHI we needed and which was some of his other stash. We thought about mixing up all the unlabeled tubes (because obviously he was keeping track of which was which just by position in the box) but then we thought, the lab needs all the good results it can get and even though he was stupid we couldn't sabotage future lab results.

[neurograd]

Wow Hanneke, that's awful! Did yur PI know what was going on? I'd like to think at least the tech would have said something, since it would make them look bad to always be running out of stuff and not have ordered any backup.

Like you said, it probably wouldn't have been a good idea to mess up his "organization" since then the lab would suffer, but I might have just taken the box from his freezer and put it somewhere else. Luckily in my lab we don't have separate freezers or anything like that.

[Daughter of Darwin]

In the lab where I work, the lab head wouldn't ever get involved in something so petty. We are all meant to sort out our own wee territorial disputes! For better or worse. But that also means we're not constantly being observed on the micro scale when we do our experiments - bonus.

[Octavia]

Yes, it's good not to have them lurking over your shoulder - or worse, flipping through your lab notebook when you're not around! I caught my supervisor doing that once - creepy! I felt VIOLATED!

[neurograd]

It's funny, I guess I wouldn't care at all if my PI went through my lab notebook. I mean, the data's "their's" as much as it's "mine," and the book is going to stay in the lab when I leave, no matter what. But on the other hand I suppose I'd be a little creeped out if she was using my computer without asking, mostly because it'd be really easy to access my email, which contains both work and personal stuff.

Just to update and put an end to the story, the guy I talked about upthread is being shown the door.