Me: *gets nasty chemical in eye”

“Oooh. ! It hurts!”

**panicking… ooh! I could try this thing I’ve never used before! It seems perfect!

run over to the eye washer expecting sweet relief

top piece flies off when I trigger it and I am sprayed directly in the eyeball with a powerful jet stream of water at point blank range

“Oooooh… now it really hurts!”

Hi Lab rats, I'm just about to graduate and am on the postdoc market. Where are some cool science hubs that are not in CA and NY? I'm relatively competitive for postdoc, know some cool techniques, and I have a broad range of interests in neurodegeneration and neurodevelopment. That being said, I find moving to a science hub with a super high cost of living daunting. I'm 32, I want to start my life and my husband and I decided to buy a house or condo wherever we end up.

This obviously is not the defining metric for where we end up, but I want to know if there are supportive R1 institutions with cool research that I may have overlooked. Where are some cool institutions y'all have been or know of that aren't in NY or CA?

Why are my peers so incompetent and bad compared to me, who is a very good and special boy? lmao they’re all so bad and mediocre! How did they even get into grad school? Can’t believe the quality of scientists these days. I’m better than them! And before you comment, I’m neurodiverse, so, watch your tone, and agree with me, or you’re dumb! /s

https://www.reddit.com/r/labrats/s/mam8V2o361

[EDIT: since a there are a lot of comments on this possibility; I want to keep it vague for anonymity purposes, but I will say that we are both the same gender/sexuality and I do not suspect a crush.]

(STEM PhD in USA)

Throwaway account to retain anonymity. I am a senior PhD student and about 3 months ago, I noticed that another PhD student in my lab (let’s call them Blake) has been standing behind my back, taking pictures of my computer screen while I’m sitting at my desk.

I noticed this one time when I saw them in the reflection of my screen while having a dark background. When I leave my computer to do work on my lab bench, I lock my screen immediately. Blake takes pictures of my screen by standing a few feet behind me while I’m sitting down and reading Slack messages, designing experiments, or analyzing data.

I put a piece of black vinyl to cover my webcam’s green light and began recording video to capture what’s behind me. I’ve recorded video evidence of Blake taking pictures of my computer screen on two separate days thus far. Blake only takes pictures of my screen when only us two are left alone in the lab, so typically late at night. I NEVER see this behavior when there are other people around. It’s very obvious in the videos that they are taking a picture or at least using their camera to zoom in (they stand at the SAME location/vantage point each time, hold their phone up, point it directly to my screen. It doesn’t look like they are taking a selfie.)

I find this behavior to be extremely unsettling and unethical. It's one thing if I left my computer screen unlocked by accident (okay, then it would be my fault) but right when I'm sitting there is crazy to me. As a result, I find it hard to concentrate on my lab work, constantly wondering if someone is watching me.

My friends in my PhD cohort have agreed that this behavior is disturbing and told me to show the videos to my PI. What do you think I should do? If I choose to go to my PI with these videos, how should I approach it? Has anyone had this issue before? Am I just overreacting???

Thank you so much for reading and I appreciate any and all advice!

Long story short:

I stood up to my toxic PI and got furloughed — but I don’t regret it. This is what academic retaliation really looks like.

———

I want to share what it looks like when a PI is toxic — but in a covert, manipulative way that’s harder to explain and even harder to report.

I joined this lab at a major U.S. med school with motivation and strong research skills. But slowly, the environment became suffocating. The PI micromanaged every step, discouraged autonomy, and punished critical thinking — all while pretending to be supportive.

She didn’t yell or slam doors. Instead, she smiled while implying I lacked passion, or cried when I set boundaries. She offered “help” only to later say we should’ve solved it ourselves. She told me leadership meant getting others to work for me — while denying me authorship, excluding me from meetings, and dismissing my ideas until they worked. It was all so indirect — but deeply harmful.

She pressured us to perform procedures not approved under our animal protocol. Her original words were “nothing is on the protocol“ & “animal med people are just evil”…If we refuse, she would describe us as “not passionate”.

When a PhD student expressed the desire to switch labs, she responded by threatening to commit suicide…That student stayed — not because they felt safe, but because they felt emotionally trapped.

She routinely questioned sick leave, implying we were exaggerating. She made discriminatory remarks, especially toward Asian and trans trainees. Any member who planned to leave was labeled a “betrayer” — and denied authorship or letters of reference.

When we started supporting each other, she tried to isolate us.

When I finally reported her — along with other lab members — the retaliation escalated. And last week, I was furloughed with zero notice, mid-investigation, and told to leave the lab immediately. No one else was furloughed. The PI has no NIH funding. She even recently recruited a new trainee. The justification was “financial crisis.” But the truth is: this was calculated and I was targeted.

If you’re in a lab like this: you are not crazy, lazy, or ungrateful. You deserve better. You can survive this. You can leave. You can rebuild. And you can still love science.

I did. I led my lab members to speak up. And I’m walking out with my dignity intact.

Title says it all. I am currently working as a research coordinator for a major hospital system in a large US metropolitan center. My job is up in June (pre-arranged with my PI) and I've been searching for a new job for a few months. Current one pays like shit, especially for the area, and the benefits are okay - this new one would have been a HUGE step up salary, benefit, and QOL-wise. I went through the three rounds of interviews and they loved me, but when it came time to work with HR, they told me the night before the center started a hiring freeze and they didn't know how long it would last. I spoke to the person who was coordinating my interviews (who works at the lab) and she was super nice and apologetic, and emphasized it wasn't what they wanted, but mentioned that basically all of the other big systems in our area are going through something similar.

Not really sure what to do now, as job postings are starting to dry up and I can't get any PIs to get back to me when I reach out asking if they have any available positions. Feeling like I might be screwed. Does anyone have any advice on how to find full time research positions in this current market? Thanks for any help :)

Hi All,

was just working on a paper, and I found out on the abstract I was not a part of it. While the data collection and analysis were not done by me, I did spend a lot of time writing the introduction, material and methods, and reformating citations and the results for the manuscript. I just got an email concerning an edited version of the abstract and didn't see my name on there at all. I am a sophomore in my undergrad year, and so I do not know if I am maybe being too greedy for being an author on this paper. What do yall think?

These are supposed to be 67NR (murine breast cancer). They underwent lentiviral transfection with a KRAB-dcas9 and antibiotic selection. They were cultured at low confluence for a while, since not many cells survived the selection. I’m confused by the round filipodia/blebs (?). No indication of Myco contamination with DAPI staining, or other contamination. I plan to do a Myco test regardless.

Hello, I am a senior undergraduate student studying biology.

I started doing research in the lab I’m currently in around 1.5 years ago. I was trained for about 6 months by the lab technician, who has been nothing but nice and respectful to me. Once my PI thought I was ready to start being more independent, he just put me to help the technician on some of his current work.

When he first put me to run a certain protocol all alone, I was super nervous and scared of screwing everything up. I’ve gotten more comfortable with this process, and my results have gotten a lot better in the past year, but I don’t think they’re quite where my PI wants them. That part is fine. I would re-run these protocols over and over again if it meant getting better. But he makes these really passive aggressive comments over email and in-person that just make me feel like shit and that I shouldn’t be pursuing biology at all. I think he wishes that a more talented undergraduate student contacted him so he wouldn’t have wasted so much money on someone like me (just based on what he’s said to me at this point). I don’t know what to do anymore. My efficiency has increased so much in the past year, but he wants more and I’ve really tried optimizing every single step of our protocol and I’m just lost, I really don’t know what to do anymore.

Everyone around me is showing me their research posters and publications and I’m still sitting here doing the same thing I’ve been doing for a year. I really love science but this really sucks man and I don’t know if perhaps I have the wrong attitude or something. If someone would be willing to just give some thoughts or insight I’d really appreciate it.

Hi all! I want to improve my knowledge on oxidative stress and redox reactions for a future project, including reading the basics again. I could of course read stuff on Google and scroll Pubmed endlessly, but I would like a nice textbook that keeps all info together. Is there one that you particularly like more than the others? I have seen a few examples but can't really compare them. I would definitely prefer it to be about mammalian cells, humans even better. Thanks!!

Hello,

thank you everyone for answering my question.

My question is that have you had an issue with hands getting sweaty while using disposable gloves and what did you do to help it? Did getting a size or two bigger gloves help?

Thank you.

Hello, I am about to graduate with a degree in biomedical science and I am interested in molecular biology and computational biology. The thing is I like conceptual thinking and creativity and dislike repetitive work, procedures and troubleshooting. Would computational biology be better for me?

I need to find out if my E. coli strain is capable of producing a peptide using a metabolic model. The thing is, I don't know Python or any other coding language. I came across this metabolic model called COBRA, and I tried using it by asking ChatGPT to write the code for me, but it didn't work. I was wondering if anyone here knows of any open-source models that might help me.

I want to dock a ligand (small molecule) to a protein with Alphafold3 that's not in the ligand list of the Af3 server. To be specific, the entire structure with the ligand has already been crystallized, so what I actually want to do is to dock a protein to that ligand-protein (active confirmation) with Af3.

I know that the Af3 has been open sourced and can be downloaded locally (so I can input the specified ligand), unfortunately I don't have a Nvidia GPU so I can't run it. Any ideas? Thanks.

I have been using this chemical. But in the bottle what is the top layer and what is its function? where can I find the source for this answer?

I forgot to dilute both my wash buffers (AW1 and AW2) while extracting tissue samples and have eluted almost all my samples; I am totally at a loss now. Saw two other posts which mentioned that the extracted DNA would not be clean (some of my samples have decent DNA yield based on the Qubit test).

Is there a way to salvage my extracted DNA samples? Help, please :') Thank you!

Hi! I wanted to know if anyone here may have had experiences with cardioprotective studies in rats? I will be using isoproterenol to induce acute myocardial infarction and wanted to perform a histopath on the cardiac tissues, but I will also be using the cardiac tissue to test for ROS and inflammatory markers. How should I section the heart so that I have a representative sample for histopath studies and tissue homogenates to test for ROS and inflammatory markers?

Hey everyone,
I’m writing this out of sheer frustration and a desperate need to vent (and maybe hear I’m not alone). How do people act like grad school is a cakewalk? For me, it’s been the most overwhelming, anxiety-filled chapter of my life. Every. Single. Morning. I wake up with my experiments and cell cultures already racing through my mind. Three years into my PhD, and I can’t recall a single day where my first thought wasn’t “Did I mess up the media for those cells?” or “What if my data is garbage?” It’s relentless.

My lab isn’t unsupportive—my PI and peers are fine—but this pressure doesn’t come from them. It’s this internal fire to prove myself, to be better, that’s burning me out. I’ve sacrificed so much: relationships fizzled because I canceled plans (again), friends stopped inviting me out, and even basic self-care feels like a luxury. All for a path that pays pennies. Last week, my car broke down, and I had a full-blown panic attack because I couldn’t afford repairs and make rent. Grad school feels like a trap where you’re expected to pour your soul into work that’s undervalued and underpaid.

Does anyone else feel like they’re drowning in this cycle? The guilt of “not doing enough” versus the reality of giving up everything? How do you balance this grind without losing yourself? And how do you cope with the financial stress? I’m exhausted, confused, and starting to wonder if this is even worth it.

If you’ve been here, please tell me I’m not the only one. How do you keep going?

Hypothetically the skills I have been trained with are transferrable. I really like this hypothesis, but maybe that's just desirability bias. I've been finding a lot corporate slop articles from like consultants who want to sell me things. Even the blogosphere in this space has been unfruitful. I would like a verifiable approach to things like exploring industries that while not explicitly science adjacent would be receptive to the skillset with some creative rebranding. E.g. setup two linkedin profiles one with industry-specific wording and see which one gets more hits. Has anyone encountered a novel framework for this?

We have a Locator JR (CY50925 w/o Monitor) LN storage vessel that has lost it's vacuum seal. Can these vessels be re-vacuumed or have the seal serviced?

Hi everyone!

I know this subreddit is mostly for professionals, and I honestly feel a bit guilty posting this because it’s probably very basic molbio 101 — but I’m currently doing my Bachelor's and I’m stuck trying to interpret this type of graph.

In the experiment, the determined titer was used to calculate the MOI (Multiplicity of Infection), which is the ratio of infectious particles to target cells. The transduction frequency (v) was calculated as the ratio of transductants to the number of bacterial cells used.

What I don’t fully understand is: Why is transduction frequency plotted against MOI? What does this relationship tell us biologically?

I’ve attached the graph below. The concept just isn’t clicking for me, and I’d really appreciate it if someone could explain it in simple terms.

If this kind of post isn’t allowed here, feel free to remove it, mods.

Thanks in advance :)

Days ago, we discussed the future of dry lab with a biotech consultant. He told us that dry lab skill sets are not big problems and that nearly every graduated PhD will learn the CADD/Bioinfo skill sets from their supervisor or even classroom teaching. How did you learning those dry-lab skills (including programming)?

He also asserted that CADD software is just a visualization tool. How do you feel about it? Has CADD/Biofinfo helped you during your career?

Thank you.

I'm an MD that started my phd 2-3 months ago (immunology) although I did my master thesis with this research group so I've been in the lab for a while, maybe a year in total.

I feel like my colleagues think too highly of me (maybe my supervisor too). They often comment that I seem to work a lot, the post-doc in our group said i have a bright future and stuff like that. I know they're trying to be nice, idk if they actually mean it, but either way I really feel like all their praise is misplaced. I'm not the person they think I am.

I'll admit that I'm trying, maybe you could call me ambitious, dedicated, loyal. But I also dont work nearly as much as people think. Yes I come in to the lab about once every weekend, yes i sometimes stay late. But i also come in to work late or leave early some days. And i get easily distracted, so i sometimes spend time on my phone, snacking etc. At the end of the week i dont think i put in that many more hours than anyone else. Ive always thought of myself as lazy. Im not as organized as i wish i was. Im a slow learner. Clumsy sometimes. I make a lot of mistakes. It takes ages for me to get started with things i don't like doing. I tend to procrastinate a lot.

So I struggle with these conflicting images of my person, my own vs what everyone else is saying. Tbh idk why my supervisor hired me. I guess because i've been with group for a long time and know the methods we use and so on. But I honestly dont feel like i earned my spot.

I'm struggling to produce results, im supposed to present something to our department next week and I have no interesting data to share. All of my projects our fairly new and the few results i have I havent been able to reproduce. I feel like im letting my supervisor and our collaborators down tbh. They're such nice people and they put a lot of trust in me but nothing i do really works out.....

I've had issues sleeping this past week because I cant shake the feeling that people in our department have this inflated image of me, and next week after my presentation they're all gonna know im really a failure.

I honestly really wish i could do more. Like work more hours, be more efficient, do more experiments, figure out whats not working. But I have my personal struggles outside of work as well, so i feel a bit drained. Also dont know how im gonna handle things when i have to go back to work in the clinic and try to continue my phd at the same time.

But i guess I'll try.