• Question: Have you ever done an experiment and lost the data you recorded?

    Asked by Olivia-de-Larratea to Ben, Lizzie, Francis, Max, Sian on 5 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Lizzie Wright

      Lizzie Wright answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      No I haven’t (that I remember) BUT I’ve done a lot of experiments that just didn’t work and had to be repeated a lot. It can be frustrating and you need a lot of patience!

    • Photo: Francis Man

      Francis Man answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      I occasionally have missing data from one or two samples in a whole set (or it wasn’t recorded properly) but I don’t remember losing data for a full experiment. I’m careful to always have several backups.
      It’s really important to write down what you do and why, because often you have to go back to an experiment that you did months ago and there’s no way you could remember everything you were doing at the time.

    • Photo: Ben Mulhearn

      Ben Mulhearn answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      Luckily now that a lot data is recorded and saved in more than one place (such as shared drives or university-managed hard drives) this has never happened to me!

      I have however been unlucky in that I have lost samples because one of the lab machines wasn’t working properly on the day. This is infuriating but just one part of science and can happen.

      For this reason most scientists develop a thick skin, get used to failure, and if something doesn’t work or goes wrong, are always prepared to look at their notes, and repeat experiments if needed (again and again and again…!)

    • Photo: Max Jamilly

      Max Jamilly answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      YES. Last year I had some data on a USB stick which I lost. Fortunately I didn’t lose too much work but it was a bit annoying. Scientists can be clumsy, too – but I learnt my lesson…

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