Winter break is over, and it’s back to the grind.
Aaand it looks like my data (worth the last several months of research) are all the wrong signs.
“So your data went from pretty good agreement with experimental data to pretty terrible.” (one of my advisors)
Yup. Never overestimate arithmetic, folks.
To be fair, there were a lot of tricky aspects of “should it be plus or minus here”, “is it Kd or Ka values”, “which leg of the thermodynamic cycle are you looking at”, etc. Even when I explained why I thought it was wrong to this advisor, he initially argued against me, following along the same (erred) original line of thinking I had.
So that was my first three days back…
On a different note, yesterday, the same day I had this “oh shit my data is wrong” meeting with my advisor, the biotech company Theranos (the blood test / lab on a chip startup) announced that they’d be cutting 41% of their workforce. On top of dealing with lawsuits, criminal charges, federal inspections/sanctions, and so forth.
I hate it when people try to force perspective down my throat (yeah, I know I’m alive and relatively super fortunate, but just let me have a fucking bad day, won’t you?), but I don’t deny that perspective can sometimes help a lot.
Even though she is the youngest self-made female billionaire, I don’t envy Elizabeth Holmes (founder and CEO of Theranos) one bit. Apparently, Fortune even named her one of the “World’s Most Disappointing Leaders”. Yikes.
Welp, back to the lab again.
V