most costly mistake you've made

[Lukkie]

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i ordered the wrong friggin antibody! $330 down the drain!

 

[StIGMA]

Edited to training:

Just this week mixed 2 samples (labeled 1117 and 1127, thought were same) that were going to be put through chromatography. Probably blew $2-300 and a few days work. Luckily this only happens once every couple of months.

Ordering mistakes do not happen often in my lab because everything is checked by yourself and then 3x by the PI, who must sign off on everything. Ordering oligos is a PITA because we have to read each oligo while the PI marks each nucleotide of the gene seq with a pen... Sucky when you order 30 oligos!

 

[GWD]

I assume that you are talking about training mistakes...

For me, I think it was ruining a ACC human cell line that cost about $350

That's obviously a big deal for me, as I have to work 3 or 4 days to make that sort of money.

Then I ran into a 5th year PhD candidate, and they just sort of laughed at my lament. "Don't feel bad about that... feel bad when you crack a $25,000 rotor."

I guess the morale is, making mistakes is part of research. It's unavoidable, and the goal is to limit the mistakes you make, learn from the ones you do make, and eliminate repeating them. Ultimately, **** happens.

The trepidaceous reality is, as physician scientist trainees, some day, these mistakes might cost someone their health, or even their lives. This is a mind-boggling responsibility, so your obligation is to learn as much from your err as possible.

Heh.. it reminds me of when I first started treating primates. My PI said to me "I don't care if you accidentally kill a mouse.. they cost $17. But if you kill one of my monkeys, I'm gonna kill YOU!"

So anyway, sorry to hear about your demoralizing event. But don't take it too hard. Just use it as an opportunity to learn and to improve.

 

[Lukkie]

what is an ACC cell line

 

[Ariodant]

"Don't feel bad about that... feel bad when you crack a $25,000 rotor."

That's exactly what I did, although it was more like a $3,000 rotor. The PI didn't even know about it. We just told him we wanted a new rotor, and already bought one. He didn't even ask why.

So the morale of the story...Join a rich lab!

 

[sunshine8i8]

My most costly mistake in lab:

ODing 7 nude mice on anesthetic a little past halfway through an experiment. Not only was data not useable, $$$ for buying the mice, housing them, and imaging them.

Post-doc was so not happy. I can't tell if it was better or worse that it was also the day his daughter was born.

 

[gstrub]

Friend of mine during his PhD a few years back was in charge of filling the dH20 tanks which are large. He left the tank filling in the sink, forgot about it, left for the weekend. Flooded the entire lab and the room beneath the sink, which was the dean's office. Not sure how much it cost but it was A LOT.

 

[CancerKiller007]

Ruining the target preparation for 8 DNA microarray. In my defense it was not my fault. I added the enzyme and the power went off for a few hours. It cost us about 900 bucks plus I had to repeat a week's worth of work to re-isolate RNA 🙁

 

[GWD]

what is an ACC cell line

American Culture Collection. They are a vendor.

I'm gonna have to change my answer though. We recently bought 5 MHC Class II KO mice. I think they were either $170 or $190 each.

I went to isolate MSC from their bone marrow, something I've done probably 20 times before on much less expensive non-transgenic mice and never had a problem. Well, on these, I managed to contaminate the culture on Passage 0, so that is basically $800-1000 down the drain.


gstrub: Our tech used to work in a lab, where one of the grad students was staying late one night to run a gel. He got it going, and then went to the local watering hole to have a beer while it ran. We he came back, there had been a short in the gel-box and the lab had caught on fire. His whole dissertation, the work of all those in his lab, and the collective equipment, data, specimen, and reagent collection of his PIs entire career was literally going up in smoke. I don't think it gets much worse than that *gulp*

And then, this is only quasi-related, but their was a student in my department not too long before I got there who they finally just broke down and told him that he wasn't going to graduate, and he walked away after 9 years as a graduate student with a Master's degree.. heh

 

[Ariodant]

Our tech used to work in a lab, where one of the grad students was staying late one night to run a gel. He got it going, and then went to the local watering hole to have a beer while it ran. We he came back, there had been a short in the gel-box and the lab had caught on fire. His whole dissertation, the work of all those in his lab, and the collective equipment, data, specimen, and reagent collection of his PIs entire career was literally going up in smoke. I don't think it gets much worse than that *gulp*

I wonder what happened to that poor fellow afterwards...?

And then, this is only quasi-related, but their was a student in my department not too long before I got there who they finally just broke down and told him that he wasn't going to graduate, and he walked away after 9 years as a graduate student with a Master's degree.. heh

That doesn't happen very often. I've heard horror stories of people graduating after 10yrs, but at least they graduated.

 

[Lukkie]

American Culture Collection. They are a vendor.

isn't that ATCC, or are they different.

gstrub: Our tech used to work in a lab, where one of the grad students was staying late one night to run a gel. He got it going, and then went to the local watering hole to have a beer while it ran. We he came back, there had been a short in the gel-box and the lab had caught on fire. His whole dissertation, the work of all those in his lab, and the collective equipment, data, specimen, and reagent collection of his PIs entire career was literally going up in smoke. I don't think it gets much worse than that *gulp*

damn... yeah i think that takes the cake. OUCH

 

[david594]

i ordered the wrong friggin antibody! $330 down the drain!

Curiosity, but who did you order the antibody from?

 

[Lukkie]

curiosity, but who did you order the antibody from?

cst

as soon as i got the wrong one, i ordered a new one. i hope no one notices.

 

[xanthines]

Quoted FTW!

For me, a $14,000 rotor and $6000 of centrifuge damage. Not really MY fault, but I was the unlucky winner with a faulty O-ring. Yes, an O-ring did all that!

-X

So the morale of the story...Join a rich lab!

 

[taXi]

Quoted FTW!

For me, a $14,000 rotor and $6000 of centrifuge damage. Not really MY fault, but I was the unlucky winner with a faulty O-ring. Yes, an O-ring did all that!

-X

Could have been worse; an O-ring took out the Challenger.

 

[gstrub]

The MOST costly mistake for me?? Hmm...probably including my parents info on my first FAFSA for my MS degree. That got me classified as out of state, with no way to fix it (after living in the same state for 5 years, working, taxes, voting, license, etc). That cost me at least $50,000, add the interest and well there you go.

 

[Neuronix]

The equipment I use is so expensive. I've blown out $100k (retail price, actual component price more on the order of a few thousand) MRI coils twice (warrantied), one $30k RF amplifier, had mysterious deaths (I didn't do it!) of pigs which all said and done cost on the order of $1,000 each. The imaging tracer I use is about $2,400/L including tank/shipping charges, and I use 2-2.5L per experiment. There's much potential for loss here, but I'm very careful.

I won't even count all the high voltage caps ($20/each) I've blown out when trying to get them onto high Q copper circuits (read, soldering electronic components onto 1/8" copper pipe)... Not to mention all the PIN diodes, capacitors, inductors, and other RF gear I've ordered that turned out to be wrong, I blew up, or I just never used.

 

[sunshine8i8]

The MOST costly mistake for me?? Hmm...probably including my parents info on my first FAFSA for my MS degree. That got me classified as out of state, with no way to fix it (after living in the same state for 5 years, working, taxes, voting, license, etc). That cost me at least $50,000, add the interest and well there you go.

haha, probably not exactly falling into the category we were thinking about, but all the same, still a very costly mistake!

 

[gstrub]

Yeah I've been trying to break enough stuff and do enough siRNA/Microarray experiments to break even ever since.

 

[GWD]

isn't that ATCC, or are they different.

yep.. my bad.


Ariodant: This story actually has a pretty happy ending. The student was obviously decimated by the ordeal, but the PI was shockingly understanding and benevolent. It took them the better part of a year to restore the lab to operating conditions, so the PI just told this individual to take some time away for some introspection. The individual left for the remainder of the semester as well as the entire summer and went camping/hiking/soul searching in the Rocky Mountains, returned to the rebuilt laboratory, actually finished their PhD, and is currently working as a post-doc in the very same laboratory. Imagine that.

 

[GWD]

This tech I am training right now may have made a pretty costly mistake last night.

We've roped in a couple of techs to treat our monkeys, so me and our mudphud don't have to waste our research time passing out meds.

So I'm training (well, supposedly he is trained, I was just more observing him to make sure he is competant to do this on his own) him last night, and following one of the injections, he goes to re-cap the syringe 😱 and ends up running the needle through the cap and into his thumb.

So lucky me, I got to sit in the ER for 3/4 of my night while this guy gets blood drawn and goes through the whole exposure rigamarole. Fortunately, my PI called the attending and got our triage *cough* expedited considerably, or I'd probably still be sitting in that damn emergency room.

 

[gbwillner]

Putting money in the stock market. Ouch.

 

[Ariodant]

You are finally back Willner! Was Baylor evacuated?

 

[gbwillner]

You are finally back Willner! Was Baylor evacuated?

I think it was. I haven't gone anywhere though- I don't live in Texas. I've just been on a really tough rotation. I've been too busy to waste time on this board... and when I get home I just want my 😴