I'm a Mad Scientist!

Ben Ferguson -- Oof. What a few weeks. I’ve reached the inevitable period in pretty much every researcher’s career where absolutely nothing goes right. Experiments don’t work, data looks either bad or opposite from what you expected (which is sometimes really cool but usually bad), equipment breaks, and the list goes on.

All of these things have happened in the lab recently, and it’s really been testing my patience and my devotion to both this project and this career track. A few weeks ago, half of my pipettes went missing, meaning I couldn’t do most of my experiments for a while. (They all were later returned, thankfully, since they go for several hundred dollars a pop.) Then one of the PCR machines broke, and when we sent one of its parts in for repair, it was sent back repaired but reformatted for a different model, meaning it may as well have been broken still. Then the qPCR machine in the lab wasn’t working properly, and I spent about three weeks straight tinkering with it and optimizing experimental conditions on it without ever getting any reliable data. Then our antibodies, provided by a colleague who has used them successfully to publish a number of papers, didn’t work at all for five weeks until we finally tried a new detection method. Then...

You get the picture.

I’m trying my best to remind myself that this is just a funk, that eventually the skies will clear and I’ll get back into a groove. It really underscores the need in research to be persistent, to keep one’s head up and not get discouraged, and to employ a little creativity when seemingly nothing works. It also underscores the importance of realizing when to keep going and when to simply move on or try something else. Quitting (or at least taking a break) while you’re ahead is often a better solution than getting more and more frustrated with each failed attempt (and each hundred-dollar wad thrown down the drain). I’m sure most advisers funding researchers in their lab would feel similarly!

Here’s a slightly modified mantra I’m starting to live by: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try, try, try again. And get coffee and/or do a crossword or two in between. Then, if you don’t succeed, for God’s sake do it another way!