![\"\"](\"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/DrW.jpg\" "\\"DrW\\"")
<\/a>I've seen worse<\/p><\/div>\n
It\u2019s going to be a big job, but I\u2019m determined to do it right. Because it\u2019s no exaggeration to say that most labs harbor a lost treasure-trove of the forgotten. In my travels through the minus-eighty freezers of this world, I\u2019ve seen rack after rack of Eppendorf tubes labelled only with the numbers one through 24; final bleeds from long-dead rabbits who gave their lives to produce an antibody that was never even properly tested; endless seas of constructs that took months to make, their tube markings smudged beyond all recognition. I\u2019ve been bequeathed lab books full of data enough for half a paper, never to be finished by someone else for lack of documentary evidence. I\u2019ve seen kits and arcane equipment gathering dust on shelves because the last person who knew how they worked left the lab years ago.<\/p>\n
This untidy archive \u2013 the dirty, wasteful secret of most labs \u2013 is simply the by-product of human nature. The closer a researcher gets to the end, the less important it all seems in the grand scheme of things \u2013 especially if he won\u2019t benefit from the work in his next stint. And the time it takes to hand everything over is often under-appreciated; you might have good intentions, but in the last mad dash to clear your bench, use up your holidays and move on, succession tasks are often deprioritized out of existence. Our lab has recently implemented a checklist for succession, covering reagents, notebooks and skills, with the recommended start time of one month prior to departure. It\u2019s a great idea, but I\u2019m not sure it will work for everyone. Even highly organized lists that thoughtful people leave behind often don\u2019t make as much sense as you\u2019d like when you actually try to use them to locate a key image or bit of DNA. Ring up that person a few months later, and even she will find herself vague about what she meant at the time. <\/p>\n
We should all do our best to document our passages, but the reality is that most things will get swept away without a trace. The marks we leave on anything in life are fleeting. In a business where the wheel is reinvented on a daily basis, the things that are most important will probably find a way of floating to the surface eventually, with or without our assistance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I like to watch eddies that form underneath waterfalls in a cascade, the ones you see in creeks of glacial run-off rushing down the sides of mountains. The milky-green water, and everything trapped in it, seems desperate to get from … Continue reading