While digging through flash drives, I found my master’s degree presentation. In it, I included this quote from my undergrad thesis supervisor, who was a notorious bull in the glass labware shop. Enjoy:
“Working safely is not just something you do in addition to your research to keep the administration off your back; safe research is reproducible, high quality research. It is a mark of professionalism. When you walk into a lab that looks like Frankenstein’s, the quality of the research is likely to be, and certainly will be perceived to be, as erratic and irreproducible as a mad scientist’s. It’s a damn good thing journals don’t inspect labs before accepting our publications.” – Dr. Alfred Hochstaedter, UCSC 1997
Never have truer words been spoken. A disordered lab sure as shit is not the sign of an orderly mind. I tend to repeat his words to the grad students of problem child professors in hopes of breaking the chain. At least a few people have gotten the religion.
That said, I do very much like the look of Frankenstein’s lab, but reproducibility, that function is far more important than any form.