I love lab!!

Stranger: "Are you THE [lab geek's real name] who did the [high impact factor journal] paper?"
Lab Geek: " (pause) ... yes."

Rather unexpected, given the completely non-lab and non-science context (they'd seen my name written down on a rota for something).

Even more unexpectedly, there appeared to be a legend that had built up, about this wonderful student who'd produced a great thesis, written a fantastic paper, and slain a dragon armed only with latex gloves and a pipette. An example for us all to aspire to!

Time to demythologise.

• I set up my critical experiment that led to the "wonderful" paper at around 3am. That wasn't because I was diligent - it's because I'd slacked earlier in the day, over-run badly, and was working with a protein that would have degraded if I went home to sleep.


• I thought this experiment hadn't worked for several months, until I decided to give it one last check. Then found out it had worked after all. Oops.


• I got round this awkward situation in the paper by saying that it had happened "within x months" - with the figure there to give it extra "authority".


• Ah yes, the paper. You don't think the 1st author actually writes that, do you? If it's important, they do the methods section, the introduction is culled from their 1st year report, and the profs write the rest.


• Though I admit, by the time it came to write up my thesis, I did actually understand "my" paper, so I'm not all that bad really.


• When I did computer work, I wrote down what I did each day in my lab book, and used the timestamps to tell the files apart. But when I came to write my thesis there'd been a hard drive fialure on the system and the files had been restored from tape. The datestamps were now the time of restoration. D'oh!


• So when I wrote that bit up for my thesis, I couldn't work out which file was which and had to try all sorts of stuff until I came up with settings that produced the same data as the paper.


• Apart from what ended up in that paper, everything else I tried didn't work.


• That is, with the exception of something I branded an "in silico study" that took me two days from conception to finish and ended up being half a chapter. To this day, I still don't think my absentviser knows it's in there.


• Much to my surpsire, rather than tear it to shreds, one of the examiners thought the "in silico study" was a great idea, and offered expertise and a decent name on the paper if I decided to follow through with it on a larger scale.

So there you have it. Maybe that last bit proves that I am brilliant and wonderful after all. But just not for the reason most peple would think.

Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2005 14:23:35 -0800
From: science-mailer@liontamer.stanford.edu
Subject: Science Table of Contents: Type 2 Diabetes: 307 (5708)

SCIENCE, Volume 307, Issue 5708, Type 2 Diabetes
...
...
...

*DELETED!!*

DOCTOR!

(subject to minor corrections)

Handed in. Yay. Phew.

All I have to do now is to make sure I've actually read my million or so references, rather than just the 'discussion' or 'conclusions' section ...

AKA "My Big Fat Greek Wedding."

I've spent the last ten minutes musing on and off as to what a "small beta Greek cell" is.

You know, musing on and off. Write a sentence here ... check my email ... wonder what a small beta Greek cell is ... check a BBS ... look at a webpage ... look at an abstract ... wonder what a small beta Greek cell is ... wonder where and why my housemate got that Boyzone album ... check my email ... wonder what a small beta Greek cell is ... is that the time?"

I've heard of small cancer cells, I've heard of beta cells in the pancreas, and the context is type 1 diabetes, so it must be something to do with those. Maybe it's a special subtype of pancreatic beta cell.

Take a step back.

It just dawned on me that I came across "small beta Greek cells" in a paper that I am currently reading using lynx (not the aftershave)from a computer with a University IP address to avoid having to pay squillions of groats to look at it when I'm not really all that interested in it and merely want to feel I have perused a reference I want to quote. Now, lynx is a text-only browser. So if the page I was reading has a special symbol somewhere, a letter from another alphabet for example, it would have to be reproduced differently on the screen.

D'oh!

Picture the scene. You spend a few hours working out how to use a new and swanky program that will save you tons of time, and a while longer working out how to apply the effects you want in Paintshop Pro. And you are proud of your fabulous creation and can't wait for someone to come in so you can show them.

Then someone wanders in and as you proudly demonstrate the fruits your hard day's work, they apply some perspective with comments like "What's that?"¹, "What's A62?!"² and (my favourite) "That looks like a really scary roadmap!"

Funnily enough, they're right! Which makes me wonder - if I got OS grid references for all the motorway junctions in the UK, would I be able to feed them into the molecular graphics program and use it to draw a real roadmap?! Suddenly this idea seems a lot more appealing than writing a few thousand more words or doing the rest of the figures ...

¹ A drawing with the protein backbone in various colours including blue.
² Not a road. Amino acid 62 on chain A.

I only just found out today that 1 Dalton = 1 atomic mass unit.

I really should have known this a long long time ago (and quite possibly did)!