LUCY READING - IKKANDA
Every scientist has done an experiment that produced an unexpected result. Sometimes this is a pleasant surprise, and leads to new research projects and discoveries. But most of the time, to a researcher on a quest for reproducibility, the unexpected is unwelcome, leading to wasted time and reagents as the scientist struggles to repeat the experiment yet again. Similarly, many scientists have struggled to reproduce the results of others, often failing because of missing or undocumented, yet essential, steps in protocols. Defining the precise moment where your experiment went wrong (or right) is very tricky. Anecdotes abound: a story is told of a student’s cell cultures regularly dying without apparent reason—until she discovered that the cleaner was swabbing the incubator with bleach once a week.
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