• Question: Have you done any experiments, and if so have any gone wrong?

    Asked by anon-193358 to iainstaniland, Heidi, Emma on 5 Nov 2018.
    • Photo: Iain Staniland

      Iain Staniland answered on 5 Nov 2018: last edited 5 Nov 2018 2:04 pm

      The worst failure I had was at school, we were burning peanuts to work out how much energy they had in them. I stupidly choose the biggest peanut I could find. I learnt that peanuts, when you manage to light them, burn quite fiercely. I managed to create a small but significant fire that the teacher had to put out with a fire extinguisher!

    • Photo: Heidi Gardner

      Heidi Gardner answered on 5 Nov 2018:

      Yes, experiments go wrong all the time. Once I had to do the same experiment 12 times before it worked properly.. I was trying to work out how much protein a sample contained and the results just kept saying zero even though we knew there was protein there. About a week later I realised I’d been using the wrong chemicals in the experiment! A lot of the chemicals in science labs look similar – lots of clear liquids meant I got mixed up.

    • Photo: Emma Crawford

      Emma Crawford answered on 5 Nov 2018: last edited 5 Nov 2018 8:14 pm

      So I currently work as a statistician on clinical trials for a company called PAREXEL, and thnkfully none of the trials I have worked on so far have yet gone wrong.
      Clinical trials are are heavily regulated industry, and we have a set of guidelines that we must follow to ensure trials and run in a safe and ethical way for patients called “Good Clinical Practice”. See more here: https://www.hra.nhs.uk/planning-and-improving-research/policies-standards-legislation/good-clinical-practice/
      However, clinical trials did not always have such a strict set of rules to follow as we do today. There is quite a famous example of a clinical trial gone wrong that involves my company and it is now nicknamed “The Elephant Man Trial”. It was a first trial in humans for a particular drug and unfortunately all the healthy volunteers involved experience some very severe reactions – including one case of severe head swelling that lead to the nickname. You can read more here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35766627. The BBC even made a documentary about it! https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08g8np3
      The outcome on this trial lead to further rules being put in place for trials when a drug is tested in humans for the first time. Trial and error is quite a common theme in Science with some of the worlds greatest discoveries have been made by mistake. So as long as we learn from any clinical trials that have gone wrong and improve on them going forward, I consider it an important step in the drug discovery cycle.

Comments

  • Photo: Nathan

    Nathan commented on :

    I was doing a memory recall experiment at open university summer school. partway through one of my participants got stung by a bee! They agreed to carry on, and actually did very well, which raised some questions about the effect of pain on memory recall.

    The bee did not survive…..

  • Photo: Morwenna

    Morwenna commented on :

    Some my experiments I did at university went wrong – but that is how we learn! We learn how to do things better, and sometimes big discoveries are made in science by what doesn’t work