{"id":3937,"date":"2016-06-07T11:15:13","date_gmt":"2016-06-07T11:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/?p=3937"},"modified":"2016-06-07T11:15:13","modified_gmt":"2016-06-07T11:15:13","slug":"lab-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/aviewfromthebridge\/2016\/06\/07\/lab-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Lab Wars: a game of scientific sabotage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted on behalf of Richard Van Noorden<\/strong><\/em><\/h3>\n
\"3d<\/a>

{credit}\u00a9 \u201cLAB WARS\u201d BY CAEZAR AL-JASSAR AND KULY HEER; GRAPHIC DESIGN BY CRIMZON STUDIO, ILLUSTRATIONS BY NIZAR ILMAN{\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

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In the race for discovery and recognition, researchers have sometimes cheated, lied, colluded, suppressed evidence and even sabotaged others to get what they want \u2014 as Michael Brooks documented in his 2012 book Free Radicals: The Secret Anarchy of Science<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Two researchers today launch a game<\/a> that captures this anarchic spirit. Board-game fans Caezar Al-Jassar, a postdoc at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, and Kuly Heer, a clinical psychologist, have designed the card game Lab Wars<\/a> to represent the scientific rat race, with extra sabotage.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a very exaggerated form of science,\u201d admits Al-Jassar. Most testers wanted even more power to disrupt, he adds.<\/p>\n

Competitors play lab archetypes, ranging from \u2018PhD student\u2019 to \u2018emeritus professor\u2019. They collect equipment such as electron microscopes and centrifuges, generate results, and acquire papers, books, and, most valuable of all, Nobel prizes. Characters interfere with each other\u2019s productivity: a principal investigator derails a PhD student by dictating their experimental time; a PhD student annoys a post-doc by necessitating extra equipment costs; and so on.<\/p>\n

The game is at its most cut-throat when players mess up other laboratories. They can steal papers or lab equipment, gain favours from peer reviewers, or sabotage other labs with radioactive materials and computer viruses. If all that sounds unlikely, Al-Jassar says that all the sabotage cards are based on real or rumoured events.<\/p>\n

\"promo<\/a>

{credit}{credit}\u00a9 \u201cLAB WARS\u201d BY CAEZAR AL-JASSAR AND KULY HEER; GRAPHIC DESIGN BY CRIMZON STUDIO, ILLUSTRATIONS BY NIZAR ILMAN{\/credit}{\/credit}<\/p><\/div>\n

Some games based around science mingle education with entertainment: there\u2019s a card deck of women in science<\/a>, for example, Cell Trumps,<\/a> and various efforts at representing evolution in board game format<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an element of the didactic in Lab Wars, with some explanation of the lab equipment involved. The cards\u2019 designs contain knowing winks: astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson\u2019s face is cast on the Nobel medal, rather than Alfred Nobel\u2019s; players compete for papers in the fictional journal Nurture<\/em>. Al-Jassar says he hopes to add famous historical scientists with their lab equipment to the deck if there is enough enthusiasm. (As is the way for specialist products, LabWars\u2019 Kickstarter page<\/a> doubles as a purchase point for the basic game and as a fundraising campaign site for future interest; it will only be funded if the developers raise \u00a35,000.)<\/p>\n

But in the main, Lab Wars is for fun. Borrowing elements from established favourites such as Citadels <\/a>and Dominion<\/a>, the game is a fairly complex tactical battle that will take less than an hour to complete with three players; it is aimed at older children and adults, scientists and non-scientists alike.<\/p>\n

And some testers, Al-Jassar says, have enthused about using the game to show others what science is really like. After all, for many a hard-pressed post-doc, research can feel like a game where the cards are stacked against them.<\/p>\n

Richard Van Noorden is senior news editor at Nature<\/em>. He tweets at @Richvn.<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For Nature<\/em>\u2019s full coverage of science in culture, visit www.nature.com\/news\/booksandarts.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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