Laboratory Horror Stories #labhorror

Just in time for Halloween, Jojo Scoble reflects on some horror stories in the lab!

Working in any kind of laboratory comes with it’s horror stories: legends told to the newest member of the lab how a former lab member – who shall remain nameless (often a grad student) – is responsible for that weird stain on the ceiling, the massive hole in the floor behind the -80 freezer, the reason we now do things a certain way. “The centrifuge jumped a foot… two feet… three feet off the bench!” Inevitably, the height increases over the years.

Whether these  characters of laboratories past are shared as a ruse to implement higher levels of safety, or to make sure you’ve paid close attention to your PPE training, every lab has it’s own horrible history and here I share a few of my own experiences and others I’ve found too good not to share – just in case you need to use them on your newest lab member.

“The treatment will kill the parasite just before it kills you”

I did parasite research both as an undergrad and postgrad, but never worked with live specimens, just their DNA extracted by someone else. I complained about not working with live specimens until a PhD student told me of how the invasive stage of a nasty pathogen called Schistosoma mansoni infected him when he lifted a glass container full of them. The liquid sploshed right on the small gap inbetween his latex gloves and the non-elastic sleeve of his lab-coat and onto his exposed skin. “I felt fine”, he says, “until the treatment, since the treatment is supposed to just kill the parasite before it kills you, but so you see, I survived.” He now wears elastic cuffed lab-coats and two pairs of latex gloves when working with cercariae, and I never again wanted to work with live specimens.

Speaking with other parasitologists, I found out that most of those who’ve gone on to study them into graduate-level and beyond usually catch the parasite they study (or another they weren’t researching) from their time in the field. I worked on non-pathogenic organisms for my PhD.

Cleanliness is near to heavenliness and passing out

Once, in a lab long before my PhD days, a “Deep Clean” was due and no sooner had we started the lab manager shouted for everyone to leave the room. It transpired that one person had washed the benches with almost neat bleach and then someone else came along directly behind with 70% ethanol. I am not a chemistry boffin but I never forgot the palava mixing them caused.

“Everybody out, now!”

Learning from your (and others) mistakes

Historical mistakes have also been shared in the lab, like the milliners who went Mad as a Hatter from mercury, but that doesn’t seem to stop a few idiots from playing with mercury whenever a thermometer breaks in a drawer. The most common historical stories are from the dangers of working with radioactive materials: from using the coolant on nuclear submarine boats to make a great cup of tea, to two pioneering scientists, Rosalind Franklin and Marie Curie, who through their dedication to their research likely died from associated radiation sickness.

Whatever horrors you know about, whether first hand, second hand, as lab legend or from history, there are more than enough stories to fill an Annuls of Horrifying Lab Stories this Halloween. Share your stories on #labhorror!

After finishing a BSc at Keele University in Biology with Physical Geography, including a year abroad at the Pasteur Institute in Lille, Jojo stayed with Keele to do her Masters, and travelled to the South of France do the research at the University Montpellier 1, to study Leishmania genetics. After gaining a distinction for her Masters thesis, Jojo spent half year applying for PhD projects and got an interview at Oxford in April 2008 and was offered to start in October 2008. Jojo finished Completed her PhD in June 2013, and viva’d in October, gaining her Doctorate of Philosophy in Zoology for her thesis titled ‘The Diversity of Silica-Scaled Protists’. No sooner had Jojo passed her viva, and Tweeted a picture of herself in her academic examination dress, she was offered a position as a Post-Doctoral fellow at the University of Saskatchewan over Twitter. After negotiations and applications Jojo went to Canada and stayed until the end of October 2014 returning to England, UK, to embark on a writing career. Jojo registered in the UK as self-employed in January of 2015 and writes a blog of her own called the Online Academic, discussing all the aspects of being an academic online and using online tools to better one’s career, especially in research. She also writes scientific blogs and content for an up-and-coming Canadian startup.