Not sure if this happens a lot in China where your own coworkers try to sabatoge your research. Or maybe it's the competition among other researchers. I am not going to pretend to understand that culture but this is bizarre to me.

Yeah, coworker is bat sh*t crazy. He put a lock on his incubators so no one else can get in when he is not around.

1/27/2012 8:30:01 PM

Sorry for possibly sounding lost, but are you in China now? I read in a thread the other day that you can't post on tww from China. j/w.

1/27/2012 8:32:50 PM

proxy ftmfw?

1/27/2012 8:34:24 PM

guessing he is in the US and has a chinese coworker. english language on the signs in the photo

[Edited on January 27, 2012 at 8:37 PM. Reason : engrish]

1/27/2012 8:37:09 PM

No. Academic research here, in the U.S.

He is a chinese principle investigator( we call them P.I's).

He also has locks on his refrigerators, freezers, and drawers.

1/27/2012 8:37:11 PM

You should set a pair of bolt cutters nearby in plain view, you know, just to screw with his sense of security....

That cable lock does not look too hard to cut through should one REALLY want to break in.

[Edited on January 27, 2012 at 8:39 PM. Reason : .]

1/27/2012 8:39:06 PM

nvm, this is out of my league

[Edited on January 27, 2012 at 8:43 PM. Reason : -]

1/27/2012 8:42:29 PM

None of my Chinese coworkers keep all their shit under lock and key. Maybe your coworker is just regular crazy and not Chinese crazy.

1/27/2012 8:46:50 PM

i think it may just be a scientist crazy rather than chinese crazy

i work with a guy who is american but he is the uber paranoid about everything. he told me he has a fake toothbrush and hides his real one so no one can fuck with it. but he lives alone.


and there was the decoy juice incident.......

1/27/2012 8:52:44 PM

Well I got an explaination from one of his American research tech. And the story is, a year ago he hired an incompetant woman who kept contaminating cell cultures in those incubators. And he automatically assumes it was human error.

So to take the blame off her, she told him that she saw people going in and out of the incubators, either maybe placing other cultures in there or taking his cells out.

1) Ok people taking his cells out is plausible. BUT people are always in that room working. He never brought it up in meetings if it was actually a problem. And I definitely never saw people going in there that wasn't his employees.

2) I can assure you, no one else stores cultures in there. For one thing, notice the sign says, " The cells in this incubator may be contaminated." His cells come directly out of mice. Which means it has never been tested for any microorganisms that could potentially cross-contaminate other dishes.
Other cells we work with have been tested, and we have a designated incubator we call the "clean" one. So no one else in their right mind would jeapordize their project and store cells in his incubator.

3) Idiot for believing the incompetant woman. He did fire her, eventually.

1/27/2012 8:54:37 PM

A friend of mine told me of a professor he had that taught a criminal justice course that carried a spare wallet with a few dollars in it along with fake credit cards and an expired license should he ever be robbed.

[Edited on January 27, 2012 at 8:55 PM. Reason : .]

1/27/2012 8:55:36 PM

I'm liking this thread already

1/27/2012 11:16:34 PM

^^ I do this.

1/27/2012 11:52:40 PM

uggh can't have people take things out when you decide not to show up. no thanks

1/28/2012 12:40:12 AM

I am in academic molecular biology and I have never heard of people fucking with others' samples on our
common equipment.

If anyone ever touched mine, simple and swift beatdown would ensue, I don't care how much I like you. We have grad students here almost 24/7 (Asian evening shift, gotta love em) so it's pretty much impossible in our lab. Plus, I would hear about it.

We run E. coli, yeast, some cell culture, btw.

1/28/2012 1:31:49 AM

it's not crazy, it's just insurance that his samples are not tampered with

some experiments are hard to replicate

1/28/2012 2:07:33 AM

Doesn't seem that crazy unless he's sharing that incubator with someone else. If it's only for his use then securing it seems normal and a good way to prevent tampering, either intentional or accidental.

Sounds like you are the asshole.

1/28/2012 7:15:47 AM

In America academic researchers just blow the competition away.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/02/ff_bishop/all/1

1/28/2012 8:39:42 AM

he could be doing some "Contagion" type shit

1/28/2012 8:55:19 AM

PROTECTING THE INTEGRITY OF HIS DATA FOOLS

1/28/2012 1:18:19 PM