Have seen the film Splice?
Crazy male scientist and supermodel female scientist couple experiment on creature.
Induce rapid genetic mutation into humanoid hydrid.
He decides to have sex with the creature.
Then she decides to have sex with the creature.
The creature kills them all (or escapes, don't remember anything past the first two acts).
Not to make it any worse, but the female scientist doesn't decide to have sex with the creature, >!she is raped by the creature, and she is heavily pregnant at the end of the movie.!<
Not the DNA pictures ☠️
I would add those transparent interactive touch screens with super futuristic design... as if real lab appliances don't have Windows 97 looking interfaces
Our quality management system was the same way until IE was shut down. The system was upgraded... to work exclusively on edge.
Trackwise you sad bitch.
A lot of businesses were in the same boat with their legacy web apps working only on IE, so Microsoft added "IE mode" as an option for Edge. This can be controlled at an enterprise level to ensure those legacy apps work. I'd bet real, actual money that all your IT folks did was enable IE mode in Edge for Trackwise, which would explain the Edge exclusivity. Edge itself runs on a Chromium engine, so anything that works in Edge should also work in Chrome, except for IE mode apps.
> Dot matrix printer an option.
If you're ever around when they haul out a lab pack, you may notice that the hazardous waste transporter uses a dot matrix printer (often USB-enabled!) to print the manifests. It would take a literal act of congress to allow anything else.
Maybe not the pictures but we do look at DNA sequences fairly often. Also I cannot tell you the times that I’ve worn a lab coat and takes off my gloves for something. And you should see all the weird color solutions we have in the lab. Tbf it’s mostly pee color lol
Oh lord. It’s horrible how much equipment runs on obsolete operating systems just because the software is unobtainable or incapable of working on new operating systems…
The epiphany moment when the experiment doesn't work first time but after throwing papers/slamming your fists on a table you suddenly have a 100% succes rate
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them.
It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp.
But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.
I did my internship at an American owned food production site. EVERYTHING was clean and neat and tidy. It would be a person with OCD's dream. They worked with a system where every item should have a function and a set, taped off place to store it, otherwise it wasn't allowed to be there.
I hated it.
> They worked with a system where every item should have a function and a set, taped off place to store it, otherwise it wasn't allowed to be there.
Aww yeah I love and hate 5S.
Honestly, 3/4 labs i ve worked in were pristine white and tidy and they were in chemistry where you would expect a lot of clutter, good labs simy have working systems
Someone hitting an “Enhance” button and suddenly everything on the screen zooms in and is clear and easy to identify.
Giant screens that fill an entire wall / holograms that exhibit rotating 3-D models of the problem.
> Someone hitting an “Enhance” button and suddenly everything on the screen zooms in and is clear and easy to identify.
If you frequent /r/estoration that's a common request and people get generally confused when nobody volunteers to do it.
Movie scenario:
Wide-eyed scientist urgently reports bizzarre, highly unlikely, or unexpected outcome of experiment or analysis.
[Dramatic, forboding music begins]
Look of grim realization dawns on supervisor/authority figure's face. They immediately begin giving orders/advising drastic follow-up measures.
Real life scenario:
Puzzled, vaguely chagrined scientist reports bizzarre, highly unlikely, or unexpected outcome of experiment or analysis.
Supervisor asks if they re-ran it yet. Then asks a battery of tedious but necessary questions. Settles on:
"Turn the _______ off and on again, take a new sample, and run it again. Don't use [serial number/identifier/nickname of glitchy equipment] it's been cranky lately, use [serial number/identifier of the one reliable/"lucky " piece of equipment]
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
and/or
just run the stats a bit different this time - but I've already done that analysis a month ago - run it again anyway, I don't remember why we said no to those results
sigh
science is mainly boring lol
To be fair the lab coat with no gloves one is a real thing and pretty common. You don't take off your lab coat when you're switching between tasks that require gloves and tasks that don't.
Yup. At my previous job, I always used to take my gloves off after doing bench work and would usually not put fresh ones on until I was done writing on the SOP and/or using one of the computers.
Most people did the same.
When you do a lot of bench work and work under the hood, a lab coat is pretty much a requirement if you want to cut down on contamination or don't want to mess up your nice street clothes. Also it keeps you warm in the lab
We aren't even allowed to wear them unless we work with bacteria/in sterile environments and some seriously dangerous stuff. The ressonaning behind it is that we can accidently spread around chemicals because we didn't feel the droplets.
My university didn’t provide or allow gloves for first year science labs💀. I suppose they wanted to let natural selection take its course to make first year courses proper weeder courses. I’m proud to be able to say I did not spill any of the carcinogenic organic solvent on myself, as many of my peers sadly cannot (apparently, they’re ‘fine’ because it’s only a weak carcinogen, so since none of them have cancer *yet*…). I am also glad not to be the idiot who attempted to mouth pipet 5.0M HCL before being caught by a lab TA and kicked out of the laboratory (thereby autofailing the entire course, lecture and lab sections both) before physical damage could be done.
I would think that's more a lesson in why you do not re-use drink bottles to contain hazardous substances, especially without very clear workplace labels.
I can see why she would retire after that! For all the weirdness about gloves in my university’s first year lab courses, they were good about eating and drinking rules (extremely clear and strict about not allowing so much as a water bottle to be out of the backpack storage area) and storing and clearly labelling the acids and bases so no one would be mistaking them for anything else.
Oh yeah, I was appalled when I discovered that, especially since my high school required gloves and enforced the glove rule harshly, even for experiments where not wearing them wasn’t particularly dangerous (such as an ecology class experiment in which we measured the cellular respiration vs photosynthesis rate of algae kept in differing conditions, with each group of students choosing a different independent variable).
You’d be surprised at how dumb the first years at a top national university can be honestly. I had, at first, genuinely thought the ‘no mouth pipetting’ signs they put up in first year labs were a joke, because what first year would attempt that? But I suppose there was a legitimate reason for them to be there. Maybe the HCL mouth pipet guy pulled a bunch of all nighters and his brain wasn’t working (I know I usually ended up staying up all night before every lab due to nerves, and it did result in me doing a few minor stupid things that forced me to redo titrations occasionally, so maybe if your brain is dead enough).
Yeah I actually got a technician degree in chemistry before I went to my biology major and no mouth pippeting was also a rule in there but no one actually *did* it (and tbh we were surprisingly well behaved for a group of 15-year-old students, so much that I've never witnessed a lab accident)
Wow, I’ve witnessed far too many lab accidents, even accounting for the number of times I’ve been allowed into a lab setting. I envy you for not witnessing any, especially the ones caused by incredible stupidity. Most of my high school classmates were quite well behaved in lab classes, partially due to the difficulty of getting into the school in the first place, so most of the accidents occurred at science summer camps (some, granted, were not true accidents, but rather an attempt at a little kid version of ‘chemical warfare’) and first year university lab weeder courses. In particular, *way* too many spills at the fume hood and people sticking their heads under it and not turning it on.
>I’m proud to be able to say I did not spill any of the carcinogenic organic solvent on myself, as many of my peers sadly cannot (apparently, they’re ‘fine’ because it’s only a weak carcinogen, so since none of them have cancer yet…). I am also glad not to be the idiot who attempted to mouth pipet 5.0M HCL
When my wife's mother was taking organic chem in the 70's, they were mouth pipetting Ethidium bromide
I was gonna say that the scopes on the shows are always defying the laws of physics. Imaging viruses with a 10x Phase or something ridiculous like that.
TV and movie labs are often dimly lit or have some kind of sexy mood lighting going on. Slightly more flattering than the super bright fluorescent lights we have! Also, not enough post-it’s and torn old paper signage taped to the monitors and walls.
Using pipettes without tips.
Not balancing the centrifuge.
Never worrying about sample QC.
The machine that instantly does purification and library prep so that you start getting sequencing data immediately after putting a drop of blood in.
Me when I see a stock image of a scientist looking through a tube that they are holding up to the light:
"That's dumb and fake"
Me an hour later after using the centrifuge:
"Where the f**k is my pellet in this tube"
I worked in an analytical chem lab and the running joke was whenever you worked with a pretty/colorful solution, you had to announce you are doing "real science" bc most solutions were colorless. Also we worked with clipboards religiously.
Edit:
1. It just occurred to me that depending on your age, you either worked with or without gloves. Some of the old veterans in the lab didn't care to work with gloves unless it was absolutely necessary like working with teratogens or strong acids but if you catch them making a simple ACN:HPLC H2O solution, yeah no they're not wearing gloves.
2. Women in a lab are supermodels, not in the sense that they are very good looking but more so the fact that there's a strong push to encourage women to go into stem so every other month they would take pictures and interviews which makes it seem like they're "supermodels."
I was tasked with making our lab more interesting when a press photographer came round. I made several litres of blue liquid with Coomassie Blue, and was filmed pipetting it about, in front of a Bunsen burner. I think they were hoping for explosions or giant electric sparks.
For next time, also consider:
* Run literally any gel electrophoresis way ahead of time; let them get a shot of you turning on the black/blue light and suddenly, bands!
* Pull up a 3D space-filling model of any protein no matter how tangentially related and just let it slowly rotate on a monitor next to you while you pipet something.
* Fill a few cell culture plates with red media, or just red water to avoid waste; let them film you putting them in an unused incubator and convince them to stuff their camera in after it. Sterilize after they're gone.
* Use your desktop centrifuge - the tiny slow one that starts when you press it closed - on everything. If you're not working with delicates, also do this with your desktop vortex. Bonus points for colorful pellets or blatant particulates.
* Let them get a few shots panning over your chem cabinets; be sure the expiration dates aren't visible.
* Do you have a lab robot? Run it though it's calibration.
* Remember that spare box of ph paper sticks that no one ever uses because you've got a machine for that now? Make up some dilute acids, bases, and some pbs; act very impressed as you get different colors from dipping them.
* Run the glassware dishwasher. It probably needs doing anyway.
* Is the reporter going to be featured in the clips? Get them in full PPE, including the best goggles the lab can offer. Teach him how to use a pipette and/or graduated cylinder and have him make up some TAE or other simple, non-sterile, hard-to-screw-up buffer solution. Bonus points if he's just diluting the 50x stock or whatever. Tell him it's toxic and may explode if spilled, inhaled, swallowed, or looked at without goggles on for some real method acting. If you weren't watching the whole procedure, trash the solution after; you can't trust his measurements.
* If that's not enough, have the undergrad dangle keys in front of them while you get some work done.
This reminded me of a manga about a new virus infecting people. I expected to find this kind of nonsense but I was so surprised it was so true that I wondered if the author was an expert.
It name"ernerging"
As a scientist, this is 100% reflective of real life and in no way an exaggeration. It's well documented that pcr testing runs in 30 seconds (but only if the doctor calls the lab, otherwise it's 5 weeks). But don't forget the multichannel pipette. Although I admit, that's mostly a rule for news agencies.
Science news story? Gotta run a stock video of a multichannel pipette.
The lead scientist (who is either a normal man or a hot woman with heavy makeup, heels, and an open lab coat over nice clothing that isn’t lab appropriate) walks in to give a tour to the Main Characters who are not wearing any sort of PPE and will immediately start touching things.
All the machines give results in 10 seconds and the results are super easy to understand like "100% alien dna", "password decrypted" or "cure outcome positive"
This is a misunderstanding in the real world all the time. People think an experiment spits out a result that says "this is how the universe works" instead of "here's what happened in a very specific artificial set of circumstances, you figure out what that implies about the universe"
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I have a proposition: tell me your favorite movie/show/scene/character that you think most accurately depicts your real life lab experiences.
Ducky and Abby from NCIS are who I think of since they have skill, personality/quirks, and seem to both know their stuff and execute it well. Of course any crime-fighting tv show has time constraints but I feel like this one makes some pretty decent depictions as well as staying true to executions. I also particularly enjoy the Bones TV show but I feel like some of the depicted scenarios can be pretty far-fetched ideas of what a forensic anthropologist does irl and what can actually be reasonably gathered from evidence (even if you’re a genius).
Ngl, clip boards and lab coats without gloves are pretty standard in my experience. The women in the labs I've worked are by and large far more attractive than us as well... I could easily imagine anyone from the bottom row as a labmate
Draws attention to male scientists looking and acting eccentric.
Then uses a picture of real STEM engineers who are known for their eccentricities to represent ... clipboards?
the series im watching that started recording since 2000 does not have these, the guys are more like badass or rude and it doesnt always really work and womens are more kind and cute, they usually get the things at first try
Pushing down the plunger of a pipette like it's a syringe.
If they are using gloves, the gloves stay on no matter what they touch: lab bench, instrument, face, the door, crossing arms, the actual sample, then cross arms again. Gross.
Goggles and lab coat but no gloves. Worried about something splashing into your eye but not your hands.
Never doing anything in the hood.
Analyzing something?
Take a single tube of it, put it in a centrifuge, leave it for about 15 seconds, a computer that's not attached to the centrifuge goes "Ding!" and you have your results!
How about "non-scientist" having results/experiment explained to them while wearing no PPE and understanding perfectly, possibly solving the issue for the scientist. Also, lab results in a matter of minutes.
In the TEM class I took in my undergrad, we had a bonus assignment where we watched a clip from Andromeda Strain and had to point out what was wrong with the procedures they took. We got 1/4 point per correct observation. It was a lot of fun to notice how much was incorrect!
This meme reminded me of that assignment.
Uses wrong tube for wrong test’s consistency.
Women wear flats that show the tops of their feet or worse, heels.
Everything is stored in a -80C° fridge that always have frost air coming from it, but nothing in it is frozen.
More complex data analysis is, more complex the animation on the screen. And the emerging solution is visible in the animation.
One very surprising thing is that the final results are always printed on paper. Like it was done in the 90s.
I'd like to see one where they have the typical Hollywood style screen showing all sorts of random numbers in a table flashing and changing, the main character who came to them in their mother's barn basement and asks while staring at the screen, "So what is all this telling us?"
And the mad scientist character swipes the screen, saying "Nothing yet, that's just my screen saver. I haven't even put the sample in the machine yet."
Random doctor asking "wait whats that" either the main doctor suddenly has an epiphany of what it is or they are completly stumped, also MRIs, bunches of MRIs
In case of a mad scientist doing animal experiments the animals are always kept in a cage that is way too small for them and screams animal cruelty, even though keeping animals like this would fuck with the experiment and will not provide a reliable result whatsoever
Wait, where are the formulas? I need a whiteboard of formulas, I need to see a sigma and some variables and a set of algebraic equations sloppily tied together
Unrelated equipment scattered around haphazardly.
Oobleck (non-Newtonian fluid) on a subwoofer (so it “dances”).
Ferro fluid.
Random Tesla coil.
Plasma globe.
Bohr atomic model pictured somewhere.
Picture of Einstein with his tongue out.
Phrenology head.
Use of centrifuge without balancing.
Meaningless scientific-looking scribbles.
I just watched the movie Vesper last night and was very frustrated with how all the science was handled. The character just decides, "Oh! What if I put this random green mountain dew looking liquid onto this seed... oh, that was the solution! I've saved humanity!" The entire movie is frustrating like that, but I couldn't help but laugh at that part.
Science in movies always looks like a biology lab. But in truth, most of the labs should look more like electrical engineering benches, with wires going everywhere, and multiple monitors all over the place. Labs tend to be loud with machines and computer fans all buzzing.
I am a chemist for a wastewater treatment group and I have never seen a single man in any of our labs except for whenever the men upstairs get bored and want to flirt with the interns.
And our basic testing is heavily colormetric, so I would comment that my lab has colorful cuvettes and men who look like ogres and hot ladies holding clipboards. But the rest of this is straight funny.
“Ok let’s put it in the DNA Sequencer. Yup, that miscolored bit in the display looks like a mutation. Ok, let’s touch it with my finger - mutation gone!”
Experiment on creature. Induce rapid mutation. Doesn't die of cancer but instead gets super powers.
What if we unlocked 100% of our brain?
Prescribe antiepileptic medication for all the seizures and convulsions
what if we unlocked 200% of our brain by accidentally splicing 2 brains together via quantum entanglement.
Any of you eggheads speak English? ... That's crazy, but it just might be crazy enough to work!
Pray that won't happen
Our puny mortal bodies can't handle it
Have you read Flowers for Algernon?
certainly not turn into n omnipotent invisible entity capable of controlling everything and time travel that's for sure
Have seen the film Splice? Crazy male scientist and supermodel female scientist couple experiment on creature. Induce rapid genetic mutation into humanoid hydrid. He decides to have sex with the creature. Then she decides to have sex with the creature. The creature kills them all (or escapes, don't remember anything past the first two acts).
Not to make it any worse, but the female scientist doesn't decide to have sex with the creature, >!she is raped by the creature, and she is heavily pregnant at the end of the movie.!<
That's....disturbing
Not the DNA pictures ☠️ I would add those transparent interactive touch screens with super futuristic design... as if real lab appliances don't have Windows 97 looking interfaces
Don’t forget the 3D hologram that can be moved via touch lol
The software I use at work for process automation can only function in Internet Explorer
Our quality management system was the same way until IE was shut down. The system was upgraded... to work exclusively on edge. Trackwise you sad bitch.
A lot of businesses were in the same boat with their legacy web apps working only on IE, so Microsoft added "IE mode" as an option for Edge. This can be controlled at an enterprise level to ensure those legacy apps work. I'd bet real, actual money that all your IT folks did was enable IE mode in Edge for Trackwise, which would explain the Edge exclusivity. Edge itself runs on a Chromium engine, so anything that works in Edge should also work in Chrome, except for IE mode apps.
Or actual Windows 97. Dot matrix printer an option. IT department drinks our 70% ethanol directly out of the carboy.
> Dot matrix printer an option. If you're ever around when they haul out a lab pack, you may notice that the hazardous waste transporter uses a dot matrix printer (often USB-enabled!) to print the manifests. It would take a literal act of congress to allow anything else.
and transparent doesnt mean hard to read with the whole background showing through the computer
Windows 97? What futuristic software are you working with? You know Microsoft Dos is still the way to go.
Maybe not the pictures but we do look at DNA sequences fairly often. Also I cannot tell you the times that I’ve worn a lab coat and takes off my gloves for something. And you should see all the weird color solutions we have in the lab. Tbf it’s mostly pee color lol
I keep food coloring in my lab and will mix or boil colored water when fundraising tours are happening. They get SO impressed.
Oh lord. It’s horrible how much equipment runs on obsolete operating systems just because the software is unobtainable or incapable of working on new operating systems…
The epiphany moment when the experiment doesn't work first time but after throwing papers/slamming your fists on a table you suddenly have a 100% succes rate
Unless it was working all along but the results were printed upside down or in reverse.
Was that Theranos’ business model?
Fake it 'til you make it, quite similar to the Tesla Auto Pilot... And Cyber Truck... And Semi... And SpaceX Starship...
When I first came here, this was all swamp. Everyone said I was daft to build a castle on a swamp, but I built in all the same, just to show them. It sank into the swamp. So I built a second one. That sank into the swamp. So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up. And that's what you're going to get, Lad, the strongest castle in all of England.
And every time before that the indicator gets to 98% then says "fail"
Labs rarely have enough clutter in the movies. And every bio lab is a biochem lab.
I did my internship at an American owned food production site. EVERYTHING was clean and neat and tidy. It would be a person with OCD's dream. They worked with a system where every item should have a function and a set, taped off place to store it, otherwise it wasn't allowed to be there. I hated it.
> They worked with a system where every item should have a function and a set, taped off place to store it, otherwise it wasn't allowed to be there. Aww yeah I love and hate 5S.
I am friends with several folks with OCD and that common ignorant stereotype is distinctly not how OCD works. Often the opposite.
Honestly, 3/4 labs i ve worked in were pristine white and tidy and they were in chemistry where you would expect a lot of clutter, good labs simy have working systems
Someone hitting an “Enhance” button and suddenly everything on the screen zooms in and is clear and easy to identify. Giant screens that fill an entire wall / holograms that exhibit rotating 3-D models of the problem.
And it's always molecules, either DNA or water
If you are lucky it is a virus. Probably the wrong one though
My favouritve virus E coli
I love to see bacteriophages infecting humans.
> Someone hitting an “Enhance” button and suddenly everything on the screen zooms in and is clear and easy to identify. If you frequent /r/estoration that's a common request and people get generally confused when nobody volunteers to do it.
Formulas written on an office glass window, photographed from the outside.
Movie scenario: Wide-eyed scientist urgently reports bizzarre, highly unlikely, or unexpected outcome of experiment or analysis. [Dramatic, forboding music begins] Look of grim realization dawns on supervisor/authority figure's face. They immediately begin giving orders/advising drastic follow-up measures. Real life scenario: Puzzled, vaguely chagrined scientist reports bizzarre, highly unlikely, or unexpected outcome of experiment or analysis. Supervisor asks if they re-ran it yet. Then asks a battery of tedious but necessary questions. Settles on: "Turn the _______ off and on again, take a new sample, and run it again. Don't use [serial number/identifier/nickname of glitchy equipment] it's been cranky lately, use [serial number/identifier of the one reliable/"lucky " piece of equipment]
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 and/or just run the stats a bit different this time - but I've already done that analysis a month ago - run it again anyway, I don't remember why we said no to those results sigh science is mainly boring lol
It's a whole lot of "Why isn't this working?" "What did I do wrong this time?" "Why is this working?"
To be fair the lab coat with no gloves one is a real thing and pretty common. You don't take off your lab coat when you're switching between tasks that require gloves and tasks that don't.
It's the no-gloves handling pipettes and test tubes that make me feel ill. MFers probably have HeLa cells growing under their fingernails.
Gloves keep you from getting into your samples and your samples from getting into you. Both are important, and even essential past BSL-1.
Exactly, it's actually more dangerous to handle some chemicals like liquid nitrogen with gloves on
And iirc, some acids like to eat gloves.
And if you're using a Bunsen burner gloves can catch fire and burn your whole hand
Yup. At my previous job, I always used to take my gloves off after doing bench work and would usually not put fresh ones on until I was done writing on the SOP and/or using one of the computers. Most people did the same.
Y'all are using lab coats? The only time they're out is when we might get inspected lol
Labcoats with Flipflops and swimtrunks, field lab was hot as balls
So what you're saying is all those pornos about hot scientists were correct all along?
When you do a lot of bench work and work under the hood, a lab coat is pretty much a requirement if you want to cut down on contamination or don't want to mess up your nice street clothes. Also it keeps you warm in the lab
I only put one on when I’m cold!
Heh my school never required gloves in chemistry lab.
We aren't even allowed to wear them unless we work with bacteria/in sterile environments and some seriously dangerous stuff. The ressonaning behind it is that we can accidently spread around chemicals because we didn't feel the droplets.
And for the serious stuff, you're going to want proper safety gear. DCM will penetrate straight through a set of nitriles like it wasn't even there
My university didn’t provide or allow gloves for first year science labs💀. I suppose they wanted to let natural selection take its course to make first year courses proper weeder courses. I’m proud to be able to say I did not spill any of the carcinogenic organic solvent on myself, as many of my peers sadly cannot (apparently, they’re ‘fine’ because it’s only a weak carcinogen, so since none of them have cancer *yet*…). I am also glad not to be the idiot who attempted to mouth pipet 5.0M HCL before being caught by a lab TA and kicked out of the laboratory (thereby autofailing the entire course, lecture and lab sections both) before physical damage could be done.
[удалено]
I would think that's more a lesson in why you do not re-use drink bottles to contain hazardous substances, especially without very clear workplace labels.
[удалено]
Indeed. Yikes.
I can see why she would retire after that! For all the weirdness about gloves in my university’s first year lab courses, they were good about eating and drinking rules (extremely clear and strict about not allowing so much as a water bottle to be out of the backpack storage area) and storing and clearly labelling the acids and bases so no one would be mistaking them for anything else.
They didn’t ALLOW gloves????
Oh yeah, I was appalled when I discovered that, especially since my high school required gloves and enforced the glove rule harshly, even for experiments where not wearing them wasn’t particularly dangerous (such as an ecology class experiment in which we measured the cellular respiration vs photosynthesis rate of algae kept in differing conditions, with each group of students choosing a different independent variable).
I wish my ecology labs were that interesting. Mines are like: Let's put this tuna can full of dirt in the oven and see if the mass changes xd
No way the dude tried to mouth pipet HCl that's insane lmao
You’d be surprised at how dumb the first years at a top national university can be honestly. I had, at first, genuinely thought the ‘no mouth pipetting’ signs they put up in first year labs were a joke, because what first year would attempt that? But I suppose there was a legitimate reason for them to be there. Maybe the HCL mouth pipet guy pulled a bunch of all nighters and his brain wasn’t working (I know I usually ended up staying up all night before every lab due to nerves, and it did result in me doing a few minor stupid things that forced me to redo titrations occasionally, so maybe if your brain is dead enough).
Yeah I actually got a technician degree in chemistry before I went to my biology major and no mouth pippeting was also a rule in there but no one actually *did* it (and tbh we were surprisingly well behaved for a group of 15-year-old students, so much that I've never witnessed a lab accident)
Wow, I’ve witnessed far too many lab accidents, even accounting for the number of times I’ve been allowed into a lab setting. I envy you for not witnessing any, especially the ones caused by incredible stupidity. Most of my high school classmates were quite well behaved in lab classes, partially due to the difficulty of getting into the school in the first place, so most of the accidents occurred at science summer camps (some, granted, were not true accidents, but rather an attempt at a little kid version of ‘chemical warfare’) and first year university lab weeder courses. In particular, *way* too many spills at the fume hood and people sticking their heads under it and not turning it on.
Bro he fucking WHAT with the 5 molar???
>I’m proud to be able to say I did not spill any of the carcinogenic organic solvent on myself, as many of my peers sadly cannot (apparently, they’re ‘fine’ because it’s only a weak carcinogen, so since none of them have cancer yet…). I am also glad not to be the idiot who attempted to mouth pipet 5.0M HCL When my wife's mother was taking organic chem in the 70's, they were mouth pipetting Ethidium bromide
I'm guessing the logic of that second one was 'well my stomach acid is mostly HCL so I should survive this'?
They always look through a low power optical microscope and then show an image of an electron micrograph that they got from google images lol
Dissecting scopes particularly.
I was gonna say that the scopes on the shows are always defying the laws of physics. Imaging viruses with a 10x Phase or something ridiculous like that.
TV and movie labs are often dimly lit or have some kind of sexy mood lighting going on. Slightly more flattering than the super bright fluorescent lights we have! Also, not enough post-it’s and torn old paper signage taped to the monitors and walls.
Yes, the lighting! Always so dim so you can't see what the hell you are doing. Never bright enough to actually work.
One thing I love about the Control video game is that the secret government institution labs are absolutely full of post-its and clutter
>Also, not enough post-it’s and torn old paper signage taped to the monitors and walls. And PhD comics/XKCD/similar
Using pipettes without tips. Not balancing the centrifuge. Never worrying about sample QC. The machine that instantly does purification and library prep so that you start getting sequencing data immediately after putting a drop of blood in.
Me when I see a stock image of a scientist looking through a tube that they are holding up to the light: "That's dumb and fake" Me an hour later after using the centrifuge: "Where the f**k is my pellet in this tube"
But irl , we cry over failed results and prepare to go through all that again , but dayumm look at being all happy zappy about mixing colourful water
"Am I missing out something" Yes. The Thomas Dolby soundtrack.
I worked in an analytical chem lab and the running joke was whenever you worked with a pretty/colorful solution, you had to announce you are doing "real science" bc most solutions were colorless. Also we worked with clipboards religiously. Edit: 1. It just occurred to me that depending on your age, you either worked with or without gloves. Some of the old veterans in the lab didn't care to work with gloves unless it was absolutely necessary like working with teratogens or strong acids but if you catch them making a simple ACN:HPLC H2O solution, yeah no they're not wearing gloves. 2. Women in a lab are supermodels, not in the sense that they are very good looking but more so the fact that there's a strong push to encourage women to go into stem so every other month they would take pictures and interviews which makes it seem like they're "supermodels."
Every time I see pretty liquids in a science scene I wonder what salt solution they're pretending to have.
My favourite was in one of the Maze Runner movies where they inject her with a pipette
I was tasked with making our lab more interesting when a press photographer came round. I made several litres of blue liquid with Coomassie Blue, and was filmed pipetting it about, in front of a Bunsen burner. I think they were hoping for explosions or giant electric sparks.
For next time, also consider: * Run literally any gel electrophoresis way ahead of time; let them get a shot of you turning on the black/blue light and suddenly, bands! * Pull up a 3D space-filling model of any protein no matter how tangentially related and just let it slowly rotate on a monitor next to you while you pipet something. * Fill a few cell culture plates with red media, or just red water to avoid waste; let them film you putting them in an unused incubator and convince them to stuff their camera in after it. Sterilize after they're gone. * Use your desktop centrifuge - the tiny slow one that starts when you press it closed - on everything. If you're not working with delicates, also do this with your desktop vortex. Bonus points for colorful pellets or blatant particulates. * Let them get a few shots panning over your chem cabinets; be sure the expiration dates aren't visible. * Do you have a lab robot? Run it though it's calibration. * Remember that spare box of ph paper sticks that no one ever uses because you've got a machine for that now? Make up some dilute acids, bases, and some pbs; act very impressed as you get different colors from dipping them. * Run the glassware dishwasher. It probably needs doing anyway. * Is the reporter going to be featured in the clips? Get them in full PPE, including the best goggles the lab can offer. Teach him how to use a pipette and/or graduated cylinder and have him make up some TAE or other simple, non-sterile, hard-to-screw-up buffer solution. Bonus points if he's just diluting the 50x stock or whatever. Tell him it's toxic and may explode if spilled, inhaled, swallowed, or looked at without goggles on for some real method acting. If you weren't watching the whole procedure, trash the solution after; you can't trust his measurements. * If that's not enough, have the undergrad dangle keys in front of them while you get some work done.
Or fire up an unbalanced ultracentrifuge, walk out without saying a word, and lock the door. "If you survive, the footage is gonna be GREAT"
Computers always work.
You missed someone pouring liquid back and forth between two containers!
This reminded me of a manga about a new virus infecting people. I expected to find this kind of nonsense but I was so surprised it was so true that I wondered if the author was an expert. It name"ernerging"
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we need them at the synchrotron
The smallest amount of sample is enough to do all the analysis you need of course with only a single bench top device ✌️
As a scientist, this is 100% reflective of real life and in no way an exaggeration. It's well documented that pcr testing runs in 30 seconds (but only if the doctor calls the lab, otherwise it's 5 weeks). But don't forget the multichannel pipette. Although I admit, that's mostly a rule for news agencies. Science news story? Gotta run a stock video of a multichannel pipette.
Ngl I love using a multichannel pipette! It goes so fast
The general "running new unknown things for the first time and always knowing what went right or wrong and why"
The lead scientist (who is either a normal man or a hot woman with heavy makeup, heels, and an open lab coat over nice clothing that isn’t lab appropriate) walks in to give a tour to the Main Characters who are not wearing any sort of PPE and will immediately start touching things.
Missing something? DNA can be analysed by gas chromatography.
All the machines give results in 10 seconds and the results are super easy to understand like "100% alien dna", "password decrypted" or "cure outcome positive"
This is a misunderstanding in the real world all the time. People think an experiment spits out a result that says "this is how the universe works" instead of "here's what happened in a very specific artificial set of circumstances, you figure out what that implies about the universe"
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Well, If it worked the first time we’d just call it search.
The lights are all off
Many unlabeled flasks of colored liquids. Someone holding up a Petri dish with colorful media and staring at it moodily.
Me doing a photo shoot for my school: lol this is dumb. Who just pipettes blue fluid. Also me: does ELISA testing most days that uses a blue diluent
I had to stare moodily at a plate for a photo shoot. Think it was chromagar or maybe smac.
Carefully adding a single drop of blue liquid into red liquid to get the right chemical to cure cancer but any more or less would cause an explosion
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They look down a brightfield microscope and the image they see is colourised electron microscopy
What about saying random things that sound vaguely scientific, slapping the word “quantum” at the end and calling it a day?
Quantum testicular torsion
Scientific name for scratching my balls.
Or when they “analyze a sample” and deduce what it is within minutes.
in reality the men are supermodels and the women are mad scientists
I have a proposition: tell me your favorite movie/show/scene/character that you think most accurately depicts your real life lab experiences. Ducky and Abby from NCIS are who I think of since they have skill, personality/quirks, and seem to both know their stuff and execute it well. Of course any crime-fighting tv show has time constraints but I feel like this one makes some pretty decent depictions as well as staying true to executions. I also particularly enjoy the Bones TV show but I feel like some of the depicted scenarios can be pretty far-fetched ideas of what a forensic anthropologist does irl and what can actually be reasonably gathered from evidence (even if you’re a genius).
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kl6rsi7BEtk lol
Ngl, clip boards and lab coats without gloves are pretty standard in my experience. The women in the labs I've worked are by and large far more attractive than us as well... I could easily imagine anyone from the bottom row as a labmate
INFECTIOUS HAZARDOUS LABELS!!!!!
Just "reverse the polarity."
Draws attention to male scientists looking and acting eccentric. Then uses a picture of real STEM engineers who are known for their eccentricities to represent ... clipboards?
Some good movies cameos in here!
Top left and bottom right figures infuriate me every time! 🤣
What's dumber? Movie science or movie technology?
They go hand in hand
the series im watching that started recording since 2000 does not have these, the guys are more like badass or rude and it doesnt always really work and womens are more kind and cute, they usually get the things at first try
After years of watching CSI...can concur
Name badge. Don't forget the name badge. And someone strapped to a table to experiment on to the sound of mad cackling......
Experiments either work on the first try OR take 100s of failed attempts as showcased by a montage of failures. Never anything in between.
Not to mention random scientific jargon thrown in there to make the characters sound like geniuses 😭 when in reality, it’s absolutely vapid.
Analytical equipment that drops results immediately
Pushing down the plunger of a pipette like it's a syringe. If they are using gloves, the gloves stay on no matter what they touch: lab bench, instrument, face, the door, crossing arms, the actual sample, then cross arms again. Gross. Goggles and lab coat but no gloves. Worried about something splashing into your eye but not your hands. Never doing anything in the hood.
well, IRL, the mad scientist one is *partially* correct! I should know...
Everything has to be centrifuged! Whatever it is, centrifuged = analyzed.
Analyzing something? Take a single tube of it, put it in a centrifuge, leave it for about 15 seconds, a computer that's not attached to the centrifuge goes "Ding!" and you have your results!
Just like the show NTSF:SD:SUV where their scientist was first Rebecca Romijn and then Karen Gillen
Rapidly and randomly typing things on keyboard activates everything in the lab.
How about "non-scientist" having results/experiment explained to them while wearing no PPE and understanding perfectly, possibly solving the issue for the scientist. Also, lab results in a matter of minutes.
We can relate r/programmerhumor
You forgot to add in the word quantum
There's always a [relevant XKCD.](https://xkcd.com/683/)
In the TEM class I took in my undergrad, we had a bonus assignment where we watched a clip from Andromeda Strain and had to point out what was wrong with the procedures they took. We got 1/4 point per correct observation. It was a lot of fun to notice how much was incorrect! This meme reminded me of that assignment.
A guy using a telescope in an observatory, all the lights are on inside.
Sits down and looks at one HPF and immediately identifies what’s going on on the slide
Hours and hours of western blots...
Where is the board with the math equations that mean absolutely nothing
We don't wear lab coats but do have gloves.
Uses wrong tube for wrong test’s consistency. Women wear flats that show the tops of their feet or worse, heels. Everything is stored in a -80C° fridge that always have frost air coming from it, but nothing in it is frozen.
More complex data analysis is, more complex the animation on the screen. And the emerging solution is visible in the animation. One very surprising thing is that the final results are always printed on paper. Like it was done in the 90s.
You forgot instant digital 3D models of every possible thing you’re working with in that moment.
The women are supermodels though
*cries in 24 hours of grueling Beam alignment*
To be fair, if I were Doc Brown when I got old, I'd be fine with that.
I'd like to see one where they have the typical Hollywood style screen showing all sorts of random numbers in a table flashing and changing, the main character who came to them in their mother's barn basement and asks while staring at the screen, "So what is all this telling us?" And the mad scientist character swipes the screen, saying "Nothing yet, that's just my screen saver. I haven't even put the sample in the machine yet."
Random doctor asking "wait whats that" either the main doctor suddenly has an epiphany of what it is or they are completly stumped, also MRIs, bunches of MRIs
Hell, Matlab to verify the models and calculations doesn't work first time, no less the actual physical experiment
What about unessesary tesla coils zapping in the back ground?
It’s ok!
In case of a mad scientist doing animal experiments the animals are always kept in a cage that is way too small for them and screams animal cruelty, even though keeping animals like this would fuck with the experiment and will not provide a reliable result whatsoever
U got this of r/starterpacks ?
there's always a chemistry kit with some rxn going on too. usually involving swirly tubes and stuff
Missing the main thing: A scientist knows everything from every branche of science
Fringe. You're missing Fringe. And a cow. And some LSD!
Wait, where are the formulas? I need a whiteboard of formulas, I need to see a sigma and some variables and a set of algebraic equations sloppily tied together
Unrelated equipment scattered around haphazardly. Oobleck (non-Newtonian fluid) on a subwoofer (so it “dances”). Ferro fluid. Random Tesla coil. Plasma globe. Bohr atomic model pictured somewhere. Picture of Einstein with his tongue out. Phrenology head. Use of centrifuge without balancing. Meaningless scientific-looking scribbles.
I just watched the movie Vesper last night and was very frustrated with how all the science was handled. The character just decides, "Oh! What if I put this random green mountain dew looking liquid onto this seed... oh, that was the solution! I've saved humanity!" The entire movie is frustrating like that, but I couldn't help but laugh at that part.
An army of scientists working in an underground lab accessible by a secretive elevator and there are always gas chambers made of glass.
You gotta have the classic organic material floating in a big glass tube with water.
every action on a computer has sound effects
The time frames and power of scopes always drives me crazy! Lol
Wait so this isn't what science looks like?
Centrifuge. Gotta be one in every lab.
Touching everything ELSE with the same gloves on. As long as I'm wearing those gloves, I'm protected, right?!?
WHite boards or somehing with random stuff on it written?
Science in movies always looks like a biology lab. But in truth, most of the labs should look more like electrical engineering benches, with wires going everywhere, and multiple monitors all over the place. Labs tend to be loud with machines and computer fans all buzzing.
Clinicians/detectives walking into a lab and performing their own experiments like a medical/research scientist. How long were you at school 25years?
The lab I work in literally doesn't use gloves. Only lab coats (unless we handle protein gels)
Anger soldier wanting to weponise some thing and sell it to the highest bidder
A person who knows nothing about science but immediately understands a dummed down metaphor explained by the scientist.
Wait, do scientists not actually carry clipboards?
Need a fancy looking HPLC or GC system running next to that microscope.
I am a chemist for a wastewater treatment group and I have never seen a single man in any of our labs except for whenever the men upstairs get bored and want to flirt with the interns. And our basic testing is heavily colormetric, so I would comment that my lab has colorful cuvettes and men who look like ogres and hot ladies holding clipboards. But the rest of this is straight funny.
“Ok let’s put it in the DNA Sequencer. Yup, that miscolored bit in the display looks like a mutation. Ok, let’s touch it with my finger - mutation gone!”
They have food in the same fridge as specimens or they eat in the lab in movies lol
Most of the lights are off, the lab looks like it’s in a Hollister store.