• Question: Did one of your expirements ever went wrong?

    Asked by anon-40224 on 15 Nov 2022.
    • Photo: Vincent Monchal

      Vincent Monchal answered on 15 Nov 2022:

      Yes, there is always things that can go wrong, it’s life (and Murphy’s law). For example, I spend 5 days travelling to Walles going across all the coast, getting a bit too close to soldiers because they were training at the site I wanted to go. Turns out, it was for nothing because at the end I analyse the samples collected there and they were all unusable.

    • Photo: Yuliya Semenova

      Yuliya Semenova answered on 15 Nov 2022:

      Yes, and not just once. It is a part of research process. It can happen in the lab that nothing goes right for days or even weeks. But the result is even more enjoyable when all possible errors or glitches are eliminated and the experiment finally goes to plan!

    • Photo: Jill O'Sullivan

      Jill O'Sullivan answered on 15 Nov 2022:

      Yes unfortunately. Although I don’t run traditional experiments in the lab I have made mistakes that meant I had start everything over. Most of the time my work goes wrong because I’ve made a mistake somewhere in my code. Once I was working on a project where I was trying to create a prediction model based on some microbiome data. I was basically done my analysis when I noticed I had labelled something incorrectly in my code which led to mistakes later on in my analysis and I had to start all over!

    • Photo: Vanessa Rodrigues

      Vanessa Rodrigues answered on 15 Nov 2022:

      It always feels like it is all going terribly wrong until it goes right. These are most of my projects.
      But there was that one…
      I had to make a pattern with a laser on a new hygroscopic (water-attracting) material. It needed a special environment for storage and to be handled. I did the best I could and ran the experiment for almost 48 hours controlling the exposure. Eventually, it still managed to turn cloudy from absorbing moisture and the whole pattern was ruined.

    • Photo: Ciara Buckley

      Ciara Buckley answered on 15 Nov 2022:

      Absolutely, all the time! I spent two years constantly making mistakes while trying to make my project work, that’s how I learned so much! I wouldn’t be where I am now had I not made all of those mistakes.

    • Photo: Ingmar Schoen

      Ingmar Schoen answered on 16 Nov 2022:

      The experiments we do are sometimes quite complicated, so a lot of things can go wrong and sometimes do go wrong. If you expect that everything will (always) work, you will get very frustrated. It is important to accept that failed experiments are an important part of our work.

    • Photo: Anna Desmond

      Anna Desmond answered on 18 Nov 2022:

      Yes sometimes experiments go wrong or it doesn’t work but that’s part of working in a research lab and it can be frustrating when mistakes are made but it is important as a scientist to learn from our mistakes

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