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Students swiped doorknobs in our chemistry building and analyzed the swabs by mass spec. Antidepressants were found on every one of the doorknobs...and no one
by JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
Students swiped doorknobs in our chemistry building and analyzed the swabs by mass spec. Antidepressants were found on every one of the doorknobs...and no one was even surprised by that outcome. My boss' estimate about how many grad students are on some sort of psychiatric medication is "all of them."
- SketchySeaBeast 8y agoMy conclusion is that the janitor is on antidepressants.
- leemailll 8y agoMore often than not janitors wear gloves doing their work in lab
- heavenlyblue 8y agoThey take so many antidepressants they are too lazy to take their gloves off.
- checkyoursudo 8y agoIn undergrad, one of my jobs was working for the University Plant Services (labor, janitorial, etc). Some of the most well-adjusted people I've ever worked with in my whole life were those janitors and managers. One was even a former high-flying book publisher whose previous life was all stress and chemical abuse. He was an amazing dude. He loved being a janitor at the Uni. Obviously, I can't extrapolate that limited experience to all janitorial staff, but having myself later been through grad school and then professional school and knowing what went on there, I would wager that it wasn't the janitors on anti-depressants.
- throwawaymath 8y agoWhat if one person on antidepressants frequently visits most rooms in the building? I don’t see how we extrapolate from doorknobs to people.
- jjoonathan 8y agoBecause only positive results can be published and you'll get fired (err, your position will run out of funding) if you don't.
- im3w1l 8y agoIt reminds me of the study finding that 90% of dollar bills have traces of cocaine. Have to be careful drawing conclusions.
- JohnJamesRambo 8y agoMy two anecdotes are unrelated, sorry. My boss estimates how many people are on meds because many tell him they are on meds.
- distant_hat 8y agoYou can't but I did a PhD (Physics) and pretty much every PhD researcher with me was on antidepressants for some time. It was so common that nobody bothered to hide and people would trade information on which antidepressants would work best while keeping their work life unaffected. In other shit, almost every married candidate I knew went through a divorce (except for a Mormon guy).
- neilv 8y agoDid they get human subject consent and IRB and HR approval, for this research on their coworkers, and that veered into private medical information?
- distant_hat 8y agoResearchers play around a lot with stuff in the labs. You are not linking individual people with these results and you will certainly not see this published anywhere.