This is not the first time this happens. Back in 2009 six people became ill at Harvard after drinking coffee from a communal espresso machine that was contaminated with sodium azide.

Oh and let's not forget the Berkeley cadmium poisoning.

Edit: I'm going to compile other cases I wasn't aware of that you guys mentioned in the comments

• 1970 ascariasis poisoning incident: research parasites added to food - ruled as poisoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970_ascariasis_poisoning_incident

• 1994 Rockefeller University NY: attempted poisoning - coffee https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1994/07/27/779377.html?pageNumber=23

• 1997 UC San Diego: acrylamide in coffee pot https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.278.5344.1704b?referrer=android-app%3A%2F%2Fcom.reddit.frontpage%2F

• 2014 Gustave-Roussy Institute case in France: sodium azide in a coffee kettle https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2014/04/26/la-vengeance-d-un-stagiaire-vire-a-la-tentative-d-empoisonnement_4407857_3224.html

• 2015 Stanford University case: paraformaldehyde in water bottles https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2016/01/16/former-stanford-student-sentenced-in-poisoning-case/

• 2017 Yale University case: sodium azide in an office coffee machine https://yaledailynews.com/articles/police-launch-inquiry-after-toxin-sickens-four

• 2023 Florida chemistry student poisoning family case: hydrocodone and methadone poisoning by pumping the chemicals on the front door of the house https://www.the-independent.com/tv/news/chemistry-student-filmed-poisoning-family-by-injecting-chemicals-into-their-front-door-b2401121.html

• 2026 UW Madison case: chloroform poisoning in a water bottle https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/university-wisconsin-scientist-allegedly-tired-kill-lab-colleague-pois-rcna341216

Original cases I mentioned:

• 2009 Harvard poisoning case: communal coffee spiked with sodium azide https://abcnews.com/amp/US/poisoned-harvard-researcher-spiked-coffee-fatal/story?id=8918291

• 2017 Berkeley case: cadmium poisoning in a water bottle https://abc7news.com/amp/post/bay-area-woman-poisoned-worker-david-xu-speaks-1st-time-felony-conviction-expunged-judge/19933507/

• 2026 University of Wyoming case: acrylamide poisoning in tea https://www.reddit.com/r/labrats/s/q74na4eoXm

How are you fairing the war on science?

Hi, I'm a 1st year master's student rotating in a biology lab that I really like so far, but some of my PI's lab practices seem a little bit too relaxed, and it makes me nervous that I will have to share stuff when I start my project. For context, I have around 3 years of lab experience from undergrad and research internships, so I've seen a lot of variations of the same techniques like cell culture. However, I understand I am still newish to research and he has obviously been doing this a lot longer than me. But here are some things I saw that made me very nervous (with mammalian cells):

- grabbed cell dishes/plates from incubator with no gloves on

- touches everything (reagents, media, pipettes, stuff in fridge) with no gloves until he is ready to actually start working

- took out ~20 different plates from incubator at the same time to image them one by one, which left all the cells out at RT for over an hour

- Sprayed EtOH on media bottle after putting it in the BSC instead of before

- keeps cells he knows have been contaminated with yeast in the same incubator as healthy, uncontaminated cells (he is trying to treat them with an antifungal)

- working with cells he knows are contaminated with yeast in the same BSC that he uses for everything else

Maybe these are little things that don't really matter, but it just seems to go against a lot of what I have been taught over the years. Am I overreacting?

This is after 4 months of running a membrane Bioreactor. Currently broken down and moving from a 2 stage to a larger single stage reactor.

I work in a human genomics lab where I do library prep and sequencing. I don't work with starting materials like blood, plasma, or tissue. It's about time for me to buy new clothes and I kind of want to just start wearing scrubs. I'm a dress and skirt wearer and my work clothes rotate the same 8 or 9 outfits that are lab safe pants that aren't jeans.

There are research fellows in other departments who are MD PhD's and they often wear scrubs, but they also do surgeries where scrubs are needed. There isn't a direct need for me to wear scrubs based on the lab work I do, but I'm just kind of tired of the clothes and outfits that I do have and feel like scrubs might just be easier.

My department is one person (me) so it's not like I'd have a colleague saying I'm wearing the wrong thing. I often go an entire week without someone checking in on my lab so I don't really see the reason of wearing an actual outfit when I could just wear scrubs.

So, I don’t know about you, but here in Brazil, some technical high schools require students to complete a final project. The catch? When you choose this track, you’re enrolled in BOTH regular high school and a technical program.

The program I chose was biotechnology—and I’m not gonna lie, I genuinely love it. Some classes weren’t particularly useful, but others were wonderful and helped me grow as a person. We also get access to the lab and all that cool science stuff.

ANYWAY.

Yesterday, I spent NINE HOURS in the lab. From 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. And what did we accomplish? The centrifuge went haywire (no idea what happened; it started making this ridiculously loud rumbling noise even though it was still spinning, and nobody properly taught us how to use it), we couldn’t get half the things we needed done, and we ended up making some YPD culture,and THE PEPTONE SMELLED LIKE ACTUAL HELL. I SWEAR TO GOD. That smell followed me for the REST OF THE DAY. I was already upset and a shit, this smell just had me shit and stinky.

AND THEN we found out that yeast extract ISN’T THE SAME THING AS YEAST. So we prepared the medium without the yeast extract because we thought, “Hey, if we put the yeast in the autoclave, it’ll die.” And before anyone comes at me for not looking it up beforehand: WE HAVE MORE THAN FIVE ASSIGNMENTS DUE NEXT WEEK. For BOTH regular high school and technical school. TWO OF THEM ARE MASSIVE AND HAVE A MILLION LITTLE DETAILS.

I AM TIRED.

And the worst part is that I genuinely LOVE science. I think it’s fascinating, important, and fun. But holy shit, it’s exhausting. You’re constantly tired, you end up eating like crap because you barely have time for anything, and everyone expects you to deliver increasingly complicated results, like i am fucking Hedy lammar or Marie curie..........I’m not even old enough to drink alcohol yet, and there I am producing 2 generation ethanol with minimal help.

And don’t even get me STARTED on how unfair the workload distribution feels.

The cosmetics groups—which were supposedly going to be harder—don’t even have half the workload we do. Their advisor said they could buy a ready-made mask base and add their extract, without conducting all the tests, because there wouldn’t be enough time. Fine. Whatever. That’s what I tell myself so I don’t start crying in the shower.

BUT THEN WHY CAN’T WE BUY ETHANOL, USE IT IN OUR PROJECT, HUH!? Or dunno....DUMP SUGAR in this shit to the yeast eat like the group of bioethanol last year?

We don’t have an advisor or co-advisor who can help carry out the work for us. Meanwhile, other groups have professors helping with their experiments. The phenolic extract group? A professor ran their DPPH test—or is going to run it, I don’t give a fuck. A lot of them just had to make the extract! And the bioethanol team? Fuck they, let they do a fucking Hydrolysis with cloridric acid alone!

I KNOW SCIENCE IS HARD. I KNOW EXPERIMENTS FAIL. I KNOW RESEARCH TAKES TIME. I’M NOT EXPECTING EVERYTHING TO BE EASY. BUT THERE’S A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LEARNING HOW TO DO RESEARCH AND BEING EXPECTED TO DO THE WORK OF AN ENTIRE LAB WITH A STUDENT’S SCHEDULE, A STUDENT’S RESOURCES, AND BARELY ANY GUIDANCE, i am like, almost saying fuck you to every teacher who give us work to do.

And as if the final project weren’t enough, I ALSO HAVE A RESEARCH PROGRAM PROJECT TO FINISH. I have a submission due for the science fair NEXT WEEK, and we don’t even have half of it ready.

Our coordinator is completely unhelpful, and there are serious allegations about him that we only heard about after our advisor assigned him to us. There’s also a previous project that he allegedly appropriated, and our advisor STILL put us in a position where we have to work with him. And somehow, we’re still expected to include his name on our work.

I AM SO FUCKING DONE WITH THIS SHIT.

The final project is hell. High school is hell. Technical school is a nightmare. The research program is kicking my ass.

And the worst part? I still love science!

I love learning new things. I love the lab. I love discovering how stuff works. I love the feeling of finally understanding something that seemed impossible. But I hate how much pressure they put on students. I hate how little guidance we sometimes get. I hate that we’re expected to produce professional-level results while juggling a ridiculous number of assignments and deadlines.

I’m so exhausted I can barely cry anymore.

I just want this year to be OVER, I want to go back to my mother's womb 👹👹👹

Looking to see how much of this is normal. My PI is incredibly slow to communicate the science of our group. After the final data are collected, it takes about 1-2 years on average of the lead researcher meeting the PI every week while they write together. This ‘writing together’ consists of the lead scientist writing the paper solo, then the PI looking over the work and suggesting things get moved around, arguments get re-framed, etc. Often, this flip flops and goes in cycles, where the PI requests major changes, then further major changes that revert the manuscript back to how it was before. No matter how much writing work the lead scientist does, it always needs to be read over in this way, which takes a year or more. The PI can only carry out this process for at most 2 manuscripts at a time. We have 20+ people in our lab. Consequently, most will never have their lead work published, as PhD/postdoc terms are typically < 4 years in the UK. Once a person leaves, their work will never be published because they can no longer meet regularly with the PI, so if you don’t complete this dance in time, you will not have anything to show for your work. We work in human health-related biotech, so by not publishing our findings, we squander the money given to the lab to work on our particular disease that would certainly be better spent elsewhere.

There is no way around it. It means that if a PhD student reaches 3 years, and is just wrapping up the data collection side of their project, they will not have anything to show for their work by the time of their postdoc applications, and likely ever. It penalizes slow, accurate, bold science, and favors churning out something passable but incremental, then dressing it up as something fantastic over the two years spent writing. My colleagues have understandably taken this route repeatedly, doing good but incremental science that is then publishable during their time in the lab. Others who did not take this approach left empty-handed.

Does anyone have experience with situations like this - how normal is the environment I’ve just described, and does anyone have advice on how to navigate it?

Ordered a small transfection reagent from Sartorius.. why do they need to package this tiny box in a huge box like this? And I have to send this back by courier? They don’t pick it up from where I am…

Has anyone working with marine cyanobacteria successfully introduced self-replicating plasmids via electroporation? If so, what transformation efficiencies have you achieved?
I’m also looking for recommendations for suitable marine cyanobacterial strains, preferably unicellular species, that are highly amenable to electroporation and could be good candidates for plasmid transformation. I’d appreciate any suggestions or insights please?

Hi everyone,

I'm installing an electric furnace inside a glovebox for research experiments. The furnace will operate at temperatures up to 700°C.

I need help selecting the correct wire inside the glovebox, specifically to connect the furnace's electrical terminals to the internal side of a Kurt J. Lesker power feedthrough.

Could anyone recommend what type of wire would be suitable for this setup?

I've also attached some photos for reference.

Thanks in advance!

Hi! Has anyone had this issue with a Sysmex CA-620 using Actin FS? One patient’s APTT keeps showing “Early Reaction Error” and “Range Over – Early Reaction Error”, even after a second blood draw. PT and fibrinogen are fine, and the APTT controls are also OK. Any ideas what could cause this?

please HELP!!!!

I just became a graduate student and I'm currently working on shRNA cloning.

I couldn't get any colony after transformation for months.... and realized my vector digestion is weird.

I used AgeI and EcoRI for digestion to get 7kb + 1.8kb fragments but I'm getting 8kb + 1kb fragments. I tried many different ways of digestion but I always end up getting 1kb for the small fragment...

Has anyone else been in a similar situation with pLKO.1 - TRC mTagBFP2?

I’m a junior studying EE working in an optics lab. I joined over the summer and was very passionate about doing a PhD. The passion I feel for this stuff is still there, I’m eternally grateful for all that I get to work on, but I’m so tired of being the stupidest person in the room 24/7.

I work with a 3rd year PhD student and another undergrad my year who joined the same time as me and who has extensive research experience (first author publication) in a different field than optics. I just feel like I’m barely staying afloat, and that everyone is running intellectual laps around me. My PI also believes that undergrads should have the responsibilities of a full time PhD student, so constant individual contribution is expected. Despite his somewhat toxic nature, I joined the lab so that I can work on something that was very interesting to me and gain extensive research experience (in my school, undergrads are mainly used to do simple data analysis or lab infrastructure development)

I genuinely don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I’m cut out for this thing, if I’m just stuck in a lab that expects too much from me, or if it’s a combination of both. I do my best to show up everyday but during discussions I’m just quiet because I’m trying to process what’s being said last. I really need some help here.

Today I might be having my online PhD interview (which i applied) out of sheer peer pressure or passion at this point i don’t know.

I am doing my Master’s in one of the top research institutes in India and yes I am supposed to do PhD because that's what I had been told but i am so uncertain tbh.

I am also interested in the management side of things too. I am very interested in knowing how the research translates to commercial market and how the whole bio-business comes to play. I really want to work in something related to that field and i am still exploring but all of my peers are applying enthusiastically for PhD positions in India as well as Foreign countries because of how certain they are and this gives me a lot of pressure.

How do i figure out my path? I love science a lot and I am curious about a lot of things but i am not sure if I am ready to invest next 5-6 years chasing a question.

Please help me out.

I‘m trying to learn to differentiate macrophages from peripheral blood monocytes and this is the state of my cell culture after six days of differentiation. From the morphology I can differentiate three types of cells: spindle-like, round large, and small cells. I assume the spindle-like cells are the attached macrophages — and the rest? Are the large round cells detached macrophages? What are the small ones? They’re not moving and the medium is clear. Any input is very much appreciated.

So my boss asked me to hunt for something in the-80 freezer (thermoscientific TSX) , and ofc (since neither of us knew where the samples were) the door was open overall quite a long time (I shut it periodically so it wasn’t alarming but still overall open quite a bit). I was also looking in another freezer, a phcbi VIP ECO. It’s been a few hours and the other freezer is back up to -80 but the thermofisher is stuck at -64. The touchpad says the health is all good etc etc but it’s odd to me it’s taking so much longer than the other freezer… should I be worried? Is it time to call a mechanic? I have heard the TSX freezers are worse, is this a feature of that?

EDIT: checked back in and it’s within the -70 and above range #phew. But good to know about freezer diving techniques— my boss has been out for a few leeks and just told me to find something without much direction (new to lab life) so I definitely didn’t know what I was doing. Also I don’t think this freezer has ever been defrosted….

Hey everyone!

I'm a chemistry student who recently fell into a rabbit hole about archaeometry and I genuinely can't stop thinking about it, it feels like one of the most exciting application of analytical chemistry I've ever come across. But I'm finding it really hard to get a clear picture of what the field actually looks like in practice.

So I wanted to ask people who actually know, is this career worth it or should I specialize in more "classic" sectors?

Y’all, I just wanna graduate, and these BMDMs are making it very difficult for me. Here’s the situation:

I need a non-enzymatic (no trypsin, no Accutase) GENTLE method (so, likely no scraping) to remove BMDMs from a flat-bottom 96-well plate… while the plate is either on ice or at 4 degrees. I have tried non-tissue culture treated plates but my IL-4-polarized (“M2-like”) BMDMs still hang on like it’s their one job.

I have a 10 mM EDTA recipe (see image) that works like a dream at 37 degrees, but for this experiment I can’t have them warmer than 4 degrees. I don’t know how long I can reasonably keep them in the fridge. 1 hour? 2 hours? The longer I leave them in the fridge, the more rounding I see, but I don’t know what is experimentally acceptable. I plan to run flow as my readout.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks Reddit!

I did a DNA extraction and then used a Nanodrop to quantify my product and these results don’t look good. What likely happened? Was it the extraction or the nanodrop?

I was given a minor revision for a paper. Submitted it and it has been under review since this week's Monday. It is now Friday and I've heard nothing.

It was submitted to a Wiley journal. Under review could also mean "with editor" in a sense. Doesn't provide info on if it was sent to reviewers.

Honestly I always felt like minor revisions get accepted quickly, assuming it doesn't get sent back to reviewers. Also feeling nervous as I remember the last time I told a reviewer he was wrong when I submitted a revision to a different journal in the past. He acknowledged that I addressed all comments but then went on a rampage and tried to increase as much red as possible. Even went on to suggest where I should cite my figures and started repeating comments I already addressed.

I hope I get good news soon despite the wait. I hope the fact I havent heard anything doesnt mean it got sent back to reviewers.

I just need to rant. Thanks for reading if you did.