What’s the biggest disaster you’ve ever had in the lab?
 
I was doing a procedure called an in situ hybridization. With the particular types of samples I was working on, this was maybe a four-day protocol. This time I had changed to using a new type of sample holder for some of the last steps. What I hadn't realized was that the plastic they were made of would be dissolved by one of the solutions I was using. So near the end of the procedure, I put in this solution, and I immediately see the plastic wells dissolving. After four days of work I watched my samples become encased by plastic goop and get completely ruined. I remember telling myself that I'm going to clean this up, and then I'm going to go get myself a candy bar. Of course, sometimes you can learn just as much from failed experiments as you can from successful ones. Sometimes they can be more informative, if you take the time to try and figure out why the experiment failed. I'll admit that there wasn't a lot to learn from the dissolving-plastics incident, but I do pay a lot more attention to "best practice" notes for handling materials now.