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Working in a laboratory: keeping a lab Notebook. A major component in accusations of malfeasance in the research endeavor comes from accusations of misconduct in the gathering of research data. This can take the form of misreporting the results of experiments through to simply not doing the experiments and creating totally invented results. When accusations of this type of scientific misconduct are made they usually gather momentum because the accused experimentalist can not show evidence to the contrary through exhibition of well documented lab notebooks. Thus a well kept notebook is a guarantee of the repute of the individual researcher, though in practice such a notebook can offer the legitimate scientist a very great deal more, as is discussed below. Certainly in the first experiments that I ever did, which involved trying to make trinitrocellulose and to detonate the same outside my mother's laundry window , I did not keep very good records. Though to be honest I did write some notes on the bench top as to relative amounts of the ingredients, which seemed to work best. But of course these experiments (very much like cooking in fact) were done with my own equipment and my own supplies. The work done within the biomedical enterprise is underwritten by the taxpayer to whom we owe a very great debt indeed. So in addition to the above, why should we keep good records of experiments in the lab notebook? 1. It is now a government requirement. 2. The research endeavor is funded by the taxpayers to whom we owe the debt of performing productive and responsible science. 3. You have a responsibility to science. Confidence in the reproducibility of the results is fundamental to anyone intending to build upon the earlier results of others. Science is built on trust and the trust is most inspired when the original data exist for anyone to review. 4. You have a personal responsibility to the laboratory you are being trained in. Not only to the mentor and your current lab colleagues, but also to those who will follow you and may wish to repeat and build upon your earlier experiments. 5. You have a personal responsibility to yourself, to do good science, to record this to the best of your ability and to provide excellent documentation of the details of your experiments. So we now move to the critical point of this presentation, which is...how does one, keep good records? This means no paper napkins or Kimwipes which happen to be near the spectrophotometer, no post-its and especially no memory component which you draw upon an hour, or a week later, or longer. Lab books: A lab notebook should be sufficiently sturdy to withstand a great deal of use and abuse. It is better to use a bound book rather that a ringbinder. A binder is certainly more convenient to include extra items such as autoradiographs or scans, however the binder is easier to add extraneous material at a later time and the basic intent and results of an experiment recorded in a permanent book fashion is a more reliable assurance against later arguments of malfeasance. Certainly subsidiary materials can, and should, be retained in an accessible manner and a ring binder may work well for this purpose. The idea of course is to create a permanent record of what you did when you did it. Your colleagues who follow you in the lab will use them for experimental details and to check out raw data. You will certainly need use them when you write manuscripts and of course in preparation for your dissertation. So use a bound book with a strong cover, numbered pages, (books which provide carbon copies of each page are a good investment). Use a ballpoint pen (no pencil or water soluble inks). Write clearly. Show all calculations of all solutions, dilutions, and the amounts of reagents you calculate you need...and that you actually use. Headings come in handy so that a year later you know what this or that annotation was referring to. When you start a new experiment, start with a new page. Give the experiment a title and immediately put the title in the index pages at the rear of the book. Before diving in with the experimental details, it is wise to indicate why you plan to do this experiment, what the goal is, why you think this and briefly what you will do. I personally like to write such a narrative on the right hand page and keep the LHS for calculations and other relevant details. As you initiate the experiment the book should be with you so that you can write up as you go along. Any observations made can be added directly to the page...or if it is not convenient to add a scan or autoradiograph, then indicate where the primary data are stored (book number and page). Record every observation directly into the book. If you make a mistake, don’t rip out the page or otherwise erase the section, simply indicate which is wrong and then continue. When the experiment is concluded it is immensely helpful to write a conclusion, and to write down your thoughts as to where this takes you and what comes next. It is an NIH requirement that the primary data must be retained for 3 years beyond the conclusion of the NIH grant. Since some grants last five years, for an experiment recorded on day 1 you would need to hold on to the records for 8 years! Hopefully you would have graduated before that time. The issue then arises as to what to do with your notebooks when you leave this institution. Vanderbilt requires that the primary version of the notebook remain a responsibility of the principal investigator of the project (i.e. your mentor). However the individual who generated the notebook may request permission to keep a copy, a request, which I have never heard to be denied. Though conceivably if you were moving to another institution where your notebook might be of material (even financial) value to the new institution, then you would need to check with the PI and the university attorney for intellectual property rights as to the availability of the notebook material and the procedures for utilizing copies. Electronic Records: necessarily, today a considerable amount of material you generate is in digital form (graphs, charts, scans and photographs). The great ease of data generation and convenience of storage needs to be balanced against the ease with which such digital data can be manipulated ex post facto and the need to guard against even a suspicion of malfeasance. For key data components, which will be used in publications, it would behoove the research worker to obtain hardcopies at the time of creation, which would be stored in a binder of one kind or another. Certainly at the present time without tamper-proof software for notebook simulation the use of the computer hard disk to replace the notebook is unwarranted and not advised. References: Kanare, Howard M. Writing the Laboratory Notebook. American Chemical Society, Washington, D. C. (1985), currently out of press. Rayl, AJS. Misconduct Case Stresses Importance of Good Notekeeping. The Scientist 5 (22): 18, 20. (1991). |
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