How experiments really happen

Scientists take to Twitter to reveal the hilarious truth behind their not so scientific methods...

Select a respected journal, open it at any article and marvel at the evidence of careful planning and precision of a research group’s experiment. Scientists are a bunch of super-careful, highly-organised pedants, or so the stereotype goes. Recently however, social media set out to change this convention and pull back the curtain on research. Thousands of researchers took to Twitter to engage in a revealing commentary about what life is really like in the laboratory in a way that a science journalist could never communicate as effectively. #Overlyhonestmethods was the trending hashtag used to convey incidents in experiments that would certainly not be included in a paper’s methods section, with hilarious results.

A neuroscientist called Dr Leigh kicked off the conversation by tweeting an insight into the incubation times she’d listed in the method section of her paper:

incubation lasted three days because this is how long the undergrad forgot the experiment in the fridge #overlyhonestmethods

— dr leigh (@dr_leigh) January 7, 2013

she tweeted. The tag soon went viral and rather more reasons were rapidly given for otherwise inexplicable experimental reaction times:

...the chemicals were combined & stirred by hand for 2 hours by our project students as they were getting on our nerves #overlyhonestmethods

— Simon Leigh (@Simonleighuk) January 8, 2013

@Simonleighuk wryly stated.

Others were brutally honest about why sample sizes may be different between various test groups.

we didn't test as many clams as oysters because we're pretty sure someone found the samples and ate them #overlyhonestmethods

— Amy Freitag (@bgrassbluecrab) January 8, 2013

@bgrassbluecrab sardonically revealed. Some of my favourite tweets revealed the delicious silliness of scientific pursuit:

We wanted to see what would happen if we did X, just for fun. Great explosion! We came up with the hypothesis later. #overlyhonestmethods

— Bora Zivkovic (@BoraZ) January 8, 2013

admitted Bora Zivkovic (@BoraZ) of Scientific American.

There was no plan - we just tried stuff we thought would be interesting until something interesting happened #OverlyHonestMethods

— Russell Garwood (@RussellGarwood) January 9, 2013

@russelgarwood tweeted. While others expressed their frustration at the things they’d had to do to manipulate the peer-review system:

we didn't read half of the papers we cite because they are behind a paywall #overlyhonestmethods #OA

— Sylvain Deville (@devillesylvain) January 8, 2013

@devillesylvain owned up.

There should have been more experiments but our funding ran out but we published it anyway. #overlyhonestmethods

— Mags Lum (@ScientistMags) January 8, 2013

revealed @ScientistMags

So, some would probably call a few of these confessions a little concerning. These disclosures would certainly never be published in peer-reviewed journal articles, but I’d argue that they should be… The hashtag served to illuminate the occasionally inaccessible world of scientific research. It highlighted the fact that scientists are humans, stamping on the notion that one has to be perfect to succeed.

I think people would be more likely to read papers or listen to presentations that include amusing anecdotes. Who doesn’t love a good story? I understand things more readily when they’ve been communicated effectively and memorably and I highly doubt that I am alone in this. I believe humour goes a long way, where appropriate, and there’s no reason some scientists should have to forego the funny and replace it with PowerPoint slides consisting of essays of jargon.

Humanising science is something I wholeheartedly agree with. A previous occupation as a researcher in a pharmaceutical company very nearly put me off the notion of science altogether. With most of my laboratory time being taken up filling in paperwork than actually doing the experiments, I began to feel disenchanted with what I’d assumed would be a creative, innovative process. Instead, I filled in numerous forms and log books for every piece of equipment I’d so much as looked at. Writing down the serial numbers of everything from pipettes to cell media bottles and berated if I so much as stepped into the lab without the correct colour lab coat made me feel almost oppressed. I left that job with significantly lower self-esteem; convinced that science would never be for me, that all laboratories operated in this way and that I was never going to be the perfect scientist specimen the career required.

This is why I think this social media trend became the perfect science communication example. Yes, sometimes science is undertaken somewhat slap dashed and haphazardly and perhaps people make mistakes and cut corners because of the intense pressure to publish papers as often as possible. But this event showed that science is real, funny and creative and showcased the lighter side of a field that can be downright alienating for those that don’t consider themselves scientifically-minded.

Let us not forget that many of the experiments that have led to some of our most successful developments have been those that didn’t turn out, or weren’t performed the way they were planned. Accidental experiments have brought us penicillin, plastic, x-rays and microwaves - to name but a few examples. Imagine how different our world would be if ‘mistakes’ were eliminated from laboratories.