Dear Dora,

Since she has been hired, my fellow research assistant has not showed up for or helped to prepare for a single lab safety inspection or audit.  She is especially sloppy, and always leaves an un-kosher mess which if I do not have time to clean up before inspections, the lab suffers for.  Her standard excuse is “I haven’t been feeling well” or “my memory has been bad lately”, and she has never responded to any of my requests or reminders.  While I do care about her and empathize with her medical struggles, I have my own and even when I am not well it falls on me to pick up her slack, or take the heat when I forget to.  I am leaving the lab in a few months to enter graduate school and am worried about who will pick up after her when I am gone so that my boss doesn’t have to take the heat.  I have spoken to my boss, but he has not done anything.  What more can I do to convince her to improve her habits?

–concerned technician

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The other day I was idly perusing the science and nature section on Netflix, trying to decide between people, animals, or dramatic landscapes. I settled on National Geographic’s Australia’s Deadly Dozen, and less than an hour later was utterly terrified of the continent. There are a gajillion venomous beasties there! Spiders, octopuses, fish, in the water, on land, in the wood shed, in your laundry, everywhere. And these things don’t mess around; their venoms usually kill within hours unless you get your bitten self to the ER in time to receive anti-venom (N.B. not available all colors or sizes).

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Sleep is rarely considered a reagent, but without it few experiments reach a successful conclusion.  In fact, researchers have demonstrated “sleep drunkenness“, where individuals deprived of sleep perform similarly to those who have been drinking.  So while PIs may think a lack of sleep is no big deal, when’s the last time they said “Experiments still not working – have you tried drinking a 6-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon before starting the assay?”

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If I were to ask you- yes, all of you out there- what you thought was the cornerstone method for assessing changes in metabolism, and metabolic regulation as a whole, what would your answer be?

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Maybe it’s the summer heat getting to reporters’ heads.  Or maybe not.  Below I’ve outlined a couple of other recent examples of how the headlines that the popular press shares with the public don’t always match up with what the scientific press actually reports. Or, as in most cases, how the report is twisted in such a way to make for a good “story”.

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I have a vivid memory of one of my more humiliating college experiences, and it involved a pigeon. I was walking home past the law library, not really paying attention as my brain had just be fried to a crisp by a six-hour biochem lab, when a dirty great pigeon flew at my face. I shrieked and ducked and generally made quite a scene. After the evil creature had flown away I took stock of my surroundings and realized I had a sizeable audience. These days I probably would’ve taken a bow, but instead I turned the color of a ripe plum, buried my face in my scarf, and fled.

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In the spirit of Independence Day, we’d love to fire up the BenchFly grill and cook you up a burger, but alas, we’re foiled by the limitations of Internet technology.  Until we figure out a way to eject a perfectly flame-broiled offering out of your disk drive, we’ll have to focus on the other aspect of Independence Day… independence.  In the lab, autonomy is highly valued.  As we progress through our training as students, scientists and professors, we hope to enjoy increased freedom to pursue our interests and set our own agenda.  But like any profession, there are plenty of lines to cut before we are truly liberated.

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Dear Dora,

My advisor assigned me and another grad student a big project. It was implied from the start that we would have equal contributions. I do all the literature reading, planning, designing, and problem solving while actually performing a larger portion of experiments. My lab partner did help me with doing experiments but nothing else. She only does what I tell her to, never takes any initiative and relies on me to solve problems. He’s basically just a lazy labmate. But when we present our work at groups meetings, it looks like we have the same contribution while we do not. What should I do?

– Fed up, Grad student

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Had George Washington been born 200 years later, his famous quote on the necessary virtues of a society would no doubt have read “Religion, morality and elevator etiquette are the essential pillars of civil society.” Few situations are as uncomfortable as when someone violates the unwritten social contract we all have with the moving box.  However, based on thousands of rides in thousands of elevators, it is clear that elevator etiquette is as dead as General Washington.

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Actually the first nematode worm was blasted into space on April 16^th, 1972, aboard Apollo 16. But the most recent celestial trip made by Caenorhabditis elegans was on a mission: To find out if RNA interference (RNAi) works in space.

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