Today a tech asked me to look at one of her experiments and give my opinion. It became clear that there was a significant artifact contaminating and obscuring whatever real results might have been present. I explained to the tech how she could recognize that this was an artifact, not an acceptable result.
(For those who are wondering, this is not BlogFodder Tech. He is shambling along in mediocrity and exhibiting zero interest in the intellectual life of the lab.)
I then tried to figure out how this artifact could have occurred. It was quickly apparent that the tech was preparing the samples incorrectly, and that this error likely produced the artifact. However, I only noticed that she was making an error in this step of sample preparation because she was mid-task; due to the nature of the mistake, if I had only looked at the final product, I would not have thought to ask her about the possibility of this error.
The error that she was making was quite egregious and when I was trained in this same technique, I was explicitly warned against committing it. There are two possibilities:
1) The person who trained her warned her about this error, but she forgot or thought it wasn't important.
2) The person who trained her didn't warn her.
If scenario 1 is true, this tech is careless, but her carelessness would not be apparent until a lot of time and effort was spent troubleshooting her problem (there are several other steps that could have caused this particular artifact, and they would be considered more likely sources of error). Eventually, if this sort of thing happened enough, I would conclude that the tech should leave the lab. This would be regrettable, but it happens.
What if it's scenario 2? Though most people who could have trained this tech would have warned her not to make this mistake, it's possible that she was trained by the lab's undergrad, who might not have mentioned it.
This is the sort of thing that worries me about lab management. As a PI, you obviously want to trust your lab members to train each other on basic tasks. At the same time, you need to keep up the quality control, which can be difficult if you see the end result and not the process.
In the best situation, I think, the PI trusts other lab members to train new lab members, but still invests significant time, especially at the beginning, in working one-on-one with new trainees. In fact, this is more or less how my current Advisor operates: he was constantly checking in (up?) on me in my first six months in the lab, but has left me more to my own devices of late, now that he is confident I am performing well. (At least, I hope that's the reason.)
But in my experience, PIs are far less likely to invest this time in techs, for understandable reasons (tech duration in lab is often only 2-3 years; techs may be less scientifically engaged; and of course, the main reason one gets a tech is to deal with stuff that you don't want to have to spend time on!) This is where the quality control issue can really fester.
Perhaps the simplest solution is to have a trusted lab member act as direct supervisor to the tech, but this only works in cases where the tech is primarily helping one person, rather than serving as technical support on a few techniques for many people in the lab. I don't know how to keep high standards in that situation, because relying on eagle-eyed lab members to spot problems in someone else's benchwork seems like a recipe for trouble.
15 years ago
9 comments:
Trainees relying on the technical support of others bear 100% responsibility for ensuring quality control of the technical support they rely upon. I mentor the trainees in my lab in how to supervise technical support staff and how to ensure quality control, but it 100% their responsibility for doing so.
In fact, on a few occasions, trainees have attempted to "blame" technical support staff for avoidable experimental fuck-ups, and I won't even listen to those explanations. It is up to the trainees relying on the technical support to set up and enforce standard operating procedures that ensure that fuck-ups don't occur.
Other than mentoring trainees in how to supervise technical staff, it is not my concern, in exactly the same way that, e.g., a failure of productivity of my lab must be imputed to me and not any trainees in my lab, regardless of the reasons for failure of productivity. If my Chair called me on the carpet for poor productivity and I told her that it was because all of my post-docs are idiots, she would laugh me out of her office, and rightly so.
CC, reading your lab administration plans, I'd be forced to conclude that you were a Repub, even though I know you're not. Why? All your management techniques seem to rely on enforcement, not on regulation. So, in Jekyll's scenario, a tech screws up. She's (potentially) been improperly trained (potentially by an undergraduate scientific supervisor?). So, we hold the undergrad supervisor responsible for the resulting bad data? To me, that sounds pretty ineffective.
Being pro-regulation, as I am, I'd rather see training procedures in place the ensure that the tech has been trained to complete the experiment in the correct way.
(i.e. regulate the banks rather than hope that throwing the CEO's out when the banking systems collapse will be the solution to our woes).
neurolover
She's (potentially) been improperly trained (potentially by an undergraduate scientific supervisor?). So, we hold the undergrad supervisor responsible for the resulting bad data?
Whut? A technician is being supervised by an *undergrad*?? That's not how I read the post, and if so, represents much more severe wackaloonery than I was considering. In my lab, everyone other than post-docs and advanced grad students is being supervised by either a post-doc or advanced grad student.
The point of my system is to provide a strong incentive for post-docs and advanced grad students to provide quality mentoring and supervision to those who provide them technical support. The difference between this and the bank bosses is that the bank bosses were taking home grotesque bonuses as they ran their banks into the groud: they didn't suffer at all for their shitty performance. To the contrary, my grad students and post-docs will directly suffer if they do not supervise/mentor effectively, both by having to deal with unreliable data, and by the knowledge that I hold *them* responsible for the experimental progress that occurs on their projects--including that relying on the assistance of technical support.
Well, it's some of each, but my particular concern is when a tech is training another tech. Now I love good techs and all, but not all of them have the same level of investment in quality, or even the same ability to judge quality. So I'd agree that it's preferable for senior grad students/postdocs to mentor most techs.
But at the same time, you'd think that one person could show another how to, say, mount tissue on slides without a major lacuna, no? And yet...
The "telephone" syndrome can be a real problem. Small details of a procedure get watered down or lost at each transfer of knowledge to a new person. I watched that happen last summer when a tech trained a tech who trained an intern who trained another intern. Not good.
The chain of command idea doesn't always work, either, since some techs may have much more experience in a particular area than a grad student or post doc.
Do you have basic lab techniques written up as SOP's (standard operating procedures)? Seems like that would help cut down on errors. If the trainer had to read through the SOP while training the trainee, they'd be less likely to make mistakes and leave important things out by accident. A training checklist might serve the same purpose.
My lab has SOPs for all major (and many minor) techniques (this is a gov't lab, so it's a requirement).
SOPs help, but they don't ensure quality control (I decided to cut out that step because...insert dumb reason #22). Perhaps using an acronym makes people forget the meaning of the term, "standardized"?
SOPs also tend to cause another problem--"the cookbook syndrome", i.e., treating SOPs like cookbook recipes. The symptoms include loss of ability to reason and a decreased sense of responsibility (blame the SOP, not me!).
I ended up having to write an SOP on how to use SOPs!
Great post.
CPP's comments are right on. I blame the PI for not managing the lab and/or getting rid of inept techtitude if the ineptitude is consistently apparent.
Personally, I subscribe to the notion that labs should have up to date, detailed protocols for any procedures that have ever been done in the lab by anyone. But I don't think most labs actually do this. And there is no substitute for having a person actually show you how to do it (except maybe JoVE?).
One thing I've found difficult is when an inexperienced lab member has an attitude about being trained by other lab members who aren't very much more senior than them. It's difficult to pass on all the details if the less experienced lab member gets annoyed when you remind them of basic procedure that they've decided is unnecessary, ignores what you say, and seems determined to do it the way they want to even though you are telling them the correct technique. There's a couple of people in the lab I'm in that seem to think that if I'm not a postdoc or very senior grad student, then they can be very selective about they pay attention to.
Is it possible that if your undergraduate trained the tech, the tech was selective in what instructions they decided to follow from such a junior lab member.
For example, recently I've reminded a new student several times about wearing safety goggles around the lab. She rolls her eyes and sighs, and forgets again as soon as possible.
Another came to ask if they could borrow my X concentration reagent. I said that they could, but they'd misread the label - it was a half X solution. They didn't seem to mind, and said they'd use it anyway, so I asked what procedure they were planning - turns out it's fairly concentration crucial. I explained that I'd done this protocol several times and concentration could make all the difference between working and not working, and in such situations I normally made up the required solution from scratch. The student sighed and made clear that they thought I was being incredibly fussy and officious.
I don't know if they did make up their own solution or not. I thought that they might not have made up solutions before, so I went over to their bench five minutes or so later to remind them that when they made up the reagent, the solution would get very hot and they might want to cool it. I didn't feel that they welcomed the suggestion.
There are some people that it is very difficult to help.
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