• Question: What happens if an experiment goes wrong?

    Asked by anon-255705 to Roberta, Katie, Giulia on 1 Jun 2020.
    • Photo: Giulia Paci

      Giulia Paci answered on 1 Jun 2020:

      Hi Areeba, it can happen very often that an experiment “fails” – for different reasons. Sometimes there are just technical problems, and it can be repeated making some changes that could make it work. Other times, there could be bigger problems with the hypothesis we’re working with or the experimental setup we want to use: in these cases we always try to learn from failed experiments and design new ones to study our scientific question

    • Photo: Roberta Migale

      Roberta Migale answered on 1 Jun 2020:

      Hi AreebaM.
      In my case, if an experiment goes wrong, firstly this happens: 🙁 🙁 🙁 :O x( 🙁
      It’s obviously a sad moment in my lab-life! But it’s part of the deal and one thing that I really love about being a scientist is that getting used to failed experiments gives me a really big lesson on how to be patient, methodical and it teaches me to never give up. This is a life skill that as scientist and as person I really treasure. You must be a bit stubborn and very much determined to be a good scientist!
      —–
      Having said that, my approach to experiments gone wrong is the following:
      1) review every single step of the protocol, I have a lab book where I take notes of every step I make. This is to check I have not forgotten some steps or done something technically wrong;

      2) talk with my colleagues, this really helps to get an external point of view. People around me may see clearly something I may be missing just because I am too focused on my task;

      3) repeat the experiment with additional controls, that is a condition which has worked before and we are sure technically it has worked before so must work again if I am doing everything technically correct.

      If the point 3 does not work then I may need to think about another experiment to prove my hypothesis.

      I hope this was interesting 😀
      Roberta

Comments

  • Photo: Gabriela

    Gabriela commented on :

    We look at why the experiment went wrong. If it is due to a technical reason then we try to modify the experimental set up so that we don’t make the same technical mistake. If there is nothing wrong with the methodology, then it may be that the experiment is not wrong but that our initial prediction was wrong. We will then consider what factors would have contributed to the wrong prediction, and design new experiments to follow up on this new and unexpected finding.

  • Photo: Olga

    Olga commented on :

    Experiments go wrong all the time! 🙂 Figuring out what went wrong is a very big part of doing science. Experiments can go wrong for two reasons so I will explain them separately.

    Usually, experiments don’t work because we made a mistake in the protocol or we didn’t create optimal experimental conditions. In that case we correct a mistake or try different conditions and reagents. For example, you were trying to synthesise a DNA fragment but you didn’t get any product. There can be several technical reasons why your reaction failed. For example, you could try a different incubation temperature or try a different DNA synthesising enzyme.

    Sometimes experiments can “fail” because our hypothesis was incorrect. In this case I wouldn’t call it a failure, it just means that we were wrong and there must be another explanation. For example, you think that a certain drug can enter the cell when a cell has a receptor “X” on its surface. To test it you delete a receptor “X” but the drug still comes inside the cell. You didn’t fail! You just learned that there must be another receptor which can let a drug inside the cell. While you showed that your hypothesis was wrong you still got a very important and useful result.

    Dealing with failure and learning from it is a very useful skill which can help you become a better scientist.

  • Photo: Lisa

    Lisa commented on :

    My gosh! When I was first starting out in the lab I made a lot of mistakes – which meant the experiments wouldn’t work. I’m quite clumsy and my dyslexia means I get words a bit muddled sometimes. So when I started making molecules (as possible anti-cancer drugs) on a student placement, I once added the wrong starting materials. It’s a bit like adding cinnamon instead of cumin seeds to a curry: you don’t end up with the same product at the end – yuk! (this also happens for me at home, last year I made a nutmeg pea soup, it was not a good invention). However, unlike cooking, when dealing with certain chemicals, it is really important you use the right materials, because you need to consider the health and safety of what you’re working with. Fortunetely, the chemicals I mixed up had similar properties, so this wasn’t a problem, and I was working in a ‘fumehood’ which makes it a lot safer in case mistakes happen. In fact, we wear lab coats, goggles and gloves, which gives us a lot of protection too. After I made this mistake, my boss gave me more support with reading and picking out the chemicals, to make sure it didn’t happen again. Mistakes are all part of the learning process, and when you’re starting out, there are a lot of more experienced staff around.