the actual number of ways to screw up your experiment is infinite. but as i went through the daily grind and also as i discussed a fellow student’s work today, i thought of this list.

1. failing to plan ahead, or planning for things to arrive when they’re supposed to.
you really have to have all your ducks in a row before you even think about running the experiment. have everything ready, all solutions made, staring you in the face on your bench. if you ordered new chemical yesterday, do not assume it will be here today even if you asked for overnight shipping. it will probably not be, that’s murphy’s law and you become intimately familiar with it as a graduate student.

2. cutting corners
if you don’t have time to do it right the first time, how do you find time to do it again? suck it up and do things properly the first time, even if it takes more time and effort. also, it’s stressful when shit doesn’t work. that causes you to screw up other things. get it over with by doing it right and not skipping steps.

3. not paying attention
binding assays are boring as hell, i’ll say it a thousand times. i can crank em out as needed, but even bored out of my mind i have to pay close attention. otherwise i could forget to add something, screw up a dilution, and throw out my entire day’s work (not to mention the sample tissue which is a pain in the ass to collect.) i have a way of keeping track of what steps i have completed, but attention is key.

4. not using a timer
there is a difference between an hour long incubation and an hour and twenty minutes long incubation. if you can’t keep track of time (this is especially common during lunch hour, when conversations get started) then grab a timer. also, in the lab environment, a beeping timer is a socially acceptable reason to leave the conversation immediately.

5. math!
a simple math error is easy to overlook when you just spent a lot of time poring over your equations, inputs and outputs. do the math twice, separately. if the answers match, you’re set. if not, time to start over or consult a colleague. i have never taken issue with someone politely asking for a minute of my time to review a set of calculations- with a bit of advance notice.

6. skipping lunch
i’m guilty of this myself. and the hungrier i get, the worse my pipetting gets. unfortunately for me, i’m usually trying to set up a protein assay around lunchtime. ideally, it’s far more efficient for me to eat during the development period. but some days, i just go eat first because i can’t pipet a good triplicate with shaky hands. it took me ages to figure this out, sadly!

7. overdoing the multitasking
sometimes it seems like maybe you’ve got just a little bit too much downtime in the middle of your day- why not find something else to do? juggling multiple experiments is a great way to get more done with your time- sometimes. but if you try to do too much, you might have a little too much up in the air and drop the ball. which brings me to…

8. not knowing your limits
sometimes it seems like you could just force yourself to keep working all day and all night, and crank out the data like a machine. i’m guilty of it myself, but i know my limits. when i was a younger grad student, i didn’t know them. and i wasted a lot of time, energy, supplies, research funds trying to do what i was not capable of doing. i also got pretty frustrated.

9. hasty experimental design
you know what you want to find out, but is your experiment designed to tell you that answer? do you have proper controls and relevant doses? take some time to review your experimental plans- this is a great discussion to have with your principal investigator. mine loves to talk experimental design, especially if there’s a developed one presented for critique. this is also a common subject in lab meeting.

10. forgetting about small nuances
everything you do has some small nuance associated with it. a particularly good example is the behavioral study- rat behavior is very sensitive to changes in time of day, order of daily routine, experimenter handling, everything. for this type of experiment, wearing a different color lab coat and grabbing a slightly different gauge needle might seem insignificant but may be enough to affect your results. you should set up your work environment to help you do things correctly, which ties back into planning ahead.

i know there are about a billion more ways to screw up an experiment, and these are very general. i can list off about 100 ways i have screwed up western blots alone! mistakes happen. the important thing is to learn from them- that is what grad school is really about.