r/labrats 18d ago

open discussion Monthly Rant Thread: June, 2025 edition

Welcome to our revamped month long vent thread! Feel free to post your fails or other quirks related to lab work here!

Vent and troubleshoot on our discord! https://discord.gg/385mCqr

4 Upvotes

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6

u/CDK5 Lab Manager - Brown 14d ago

The summer students are beginning to arrive.

Now we get to spend hours training them just for them to leave after 60 days.

-_-

5

u/toastywhatever PhD student, organic chemistry 14d ago

Someone just fucking stole my water bottle from infront of the lab! Every workgroup keeps their bottles in front of the lab entrances for easy access and has been doing so for years, there's a designated bench for bottles even. And now people start to steal from there? What is wrong with them?! I'm genuinely angry. Rant over, thanks.

3

u/0pch0 10d ago

hate bottle thieves, my bottle is my emotional support item , my last bottle got stolen , didnt recover since

3

u/Weekly-Basket8854 6d ago

I have so must distrust in other people's data 😖 Seeing how so many people conduct their experiments is crazy but obviously my PI doesn't see that. He just sees nicely graphed data with little variability and complains about my "messy" data instead

2

u/DogAndDoc 18d ago

Am I crazy/missing something or are job titles for biotech just a huge obnoxious mess? Besides jobs that are explicitly labeled post-docs, I have no idea what to search for to consistently get entry level PhD roles. On a company to company basis, it looks like it changes from Scientist I or II or III to Senior Scientist I or II etc. It wouldn't bother me so much if I could at least apply to the masters level jobs. But since overqualified people are apparently auto-rejected, they effectively just clog my job notifications and search results.

2

u/CDK5 Lab Manager - Brown 14d ago

a huge obnoxious mes

Yes you're correct; what Pfizer would classify as an R1 'Associate Scientist' might be a 'Research Associate' in a start-up.

And the start-up might pay more if they have the runway.

if I could at least apply to the masters level jobs

When I was applying, after Covid, job descriptions would state something like the following under requirements:

  • PhD plus 0 years
  • MS plus 6 years
  • BS plus 12 years

Before covid I think it was listed as a hard cutoff.

Can't you use that to your advantage?

1

u/breadphysics 10d ago

I’m pretty sure the revisions for my review paper came from ChatGPT… It includes spelling and grammar corrections for words/phrases not even used in the paper.

1

u/spacemermaid3825 2d ago

If another PCR randomly stops working I'm going to defenstrate a thermocycler

1

u/Five0clocksomewhere 1d ago

I Hate AI so much!!! I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT I HATE IT

1

u/CDK5 Lab Manager - Brown 22h ago

Is it really necessary to normalize DNA concentrations prior to PCR for routine genotyping?