• Question: What was your biggest mistake in your work?

    Asked by goomgang to Clare, Dave, Glo, Ozge, Sean on 21 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Sean Clement

      Sean Clement answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      ooh. I’ve never made any major mistakes (that I remember or am willing to admit to, anyway) I know somebody who managed to drop an engine off a boat though. Amazing thing was that the engine was the thing driving the boat at the time. Thankfully, it was only in shallow water and we were able to retrieve it…

    • Photo: Gloeta Massie

      Gloeta Massie answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      I was running a SUPER important experiment. Three years of research were riding on the results of the experiment, and I mislabeled one of my test tubes. I ended up having to toss out all of the data and it cost the lab LOTS of money. Thank my lucky stars, I had the opportunity to try one more time six months later – and that time, it worked. What a nightmare that was!

    • Photo: Clare Woulds

      Clare Woulds answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      I’ve come close to burning a batch of samples which I could not have replaced by turning a temperature dial the wrong way. I’ve also broken expensive things (like a really fragile glass electrode which cost ~£400, and while we were at sea so we couldn’t get another). Accidents happen! Last time I was at sea our remotely operated submursible got very badly damaged. That will cost about £1 million to repair, but it really doesn’t seem to have been anyone’s fault. Not a happy day at sea though!

    • Photo: Dave Sproson

      Dave Sproson answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      I once accidentally deleted an entire directory of work that had taken me about three months to do! Luckily I managed to do it much faster the second time because I knew exactly what I had to!

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