I was chatting with a pregnant co-worker yesterday about how many old wives’ tales there are about ‘predicting’ the sex of a pregnant woman’s fetus. For example, she mentioned that there’s an old wives’ tale in Greece that says that if you have a turtle in the house, and the turtle grows faster from neck-to-tail than from side-to-side, it’s a girl. Otherwise, it’s a boy. (Or maybe it’s the other way around?)
I was thinking about this last night and realized that – though I’m generally quite skeptical and I don’t believe in old wives’ tales – I was fairly superstitious back in graduate school. I’m the proud owner of a ‘lucky’ calculator that came to almost every exam I’ve taken since 9th grade. And there were certain t-shirts I wore to lab on ‘important’ days (maybe when running a reaction for the first time or when I was performing a key biochemical/cellular assay…) I wasn’t alone in this regard: other people in the lab had ‘lucky’ pens or certain rituals they performed before doing an important experiment…
How about you? Any superstitions or rituals that you do (or did) in the lab that don’t make any scientific sense? Do you ever have trouble reconciling your scientific/logical side with the superstitious side?
Joshua
Joshua Finkelstein (Senior Editor, Nature)
Friday 13th isn’t too far away as well – I think I avoided doing reactions on those days, well, most Fridays really, well, if you ask my former advisor, he’d probably say I avoided doing reactions most days of the week…
I definitely have some stupid rituals. For one, I have about 10 different types of pens that I use for specific purposes: lab notebook = black ball point, NMR spectra = blue uniball, vial labels = black uniball, waste labels = blue ball point, etc. Also, I feel that bad things will happen to me if I don’t recycle plastic bottles, so I’m always sure to walk them the 50 yards from the lab to the recycling bin.
Paul – I love those Uni-ball pens (and used them all the time when I was in graduate school…) I was shocked to learn that they cost more than a dollar per pen. (I’d never describe myself as a being ‘cheap,’ but I just can’t bring myself to shell out that much for a disposable pen…)
Joshua – Nature makes you buy your own pens?
For me, it is a pink flannel shirt with a picture of a wolf over the upper pocket that I have had since the 8th grade. Last time I wore it was the day of my prelim (of course for the actual prelim I changed into a suit), and everyone made fun of me, and not just because of the color. Both elbows are ripped out, and I probably looked like a starving grad student. The shirt has served me well – I’ve worn it for every chemistry exam since high school.
I have a lucky Sharpie for glassware labeling. In light of how research has been going, though, perhaps I should get a new Sharpie.
I can honestly say I have never had such superstitions.
However, a few years ago I used to deliberately wear a certain shirt (it commemorated an NZ victory in the Americas Cup, not that it matters) and call it my ‘lucky NMR shirt’ whenever I was planning to spend a day analysing homonuclear spectra. This was actually in response to certain superstitions held by certain lab members, and was my way of poking fun at them.
Beth – Nature doesn’t make us buy our own office supplies, but we don’t currently have any of those pens (or any other high-end/‘fancy’ pens) in the Boston office…
While I did not have any rituals per se, I definitely believed that ‘experiments knew’. They knew when I was desperate (and didn’t work), when my heart was not in it (and didn’t work) and when I was trying to teach someone else how to do it (and didn’t work).
From that sentence, you might get the impression that things did not go all that well. I was, however, really lucky to have good friends in the lab whose company kept me pretty happy most of the time!
When I had to go for an exam (usually math), if the traffic light on my way to school turned red when I got to it, the questions would be hard, if it was green, it would be an easy paper.
I think I psyched myself to believe that, and so, whenever the light was red, I subconsciously did the exam badly !