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>It was so frequently in Chemistry research that my compounds were useless or the methods to synthesize them did not work, and it would be helpful to document t
by djtango 7y ago
>It was so frequently in Chemistry research that my compounds were useless or the methods to synthesize them did not work, and it would be helpful to document that.
This mirrors my experience where a lot of the post-docs carried war stories of things like lab/country-specific humidity playing a role in synthetic methods succeeding (or failing). There were a lot of dark arts/tricks of the trade that people carried around with them: stuff like going that extra mile to dry things of water super thoroughly (even if it was not mentioned in the paper we were referencing).
- ISL 7y agoMany "dark arts" aren't known as dark arts to the people who know them. They're just the things you always do, because if you don't do them, nothing works. An approximate CS analog: Writing great commit messages, and using an SCM. You don't have to do them, nobody writes it up because those who know regard it as trivial, but if you don't do them, almost nothing works. Everyone who knows what they're doing does it.
- djtango 7y ago>An approximate CS analog: Writing great commit messages, and using an SCM. This is definitely not the analogue. The analogue is always doing a clean install of the OS before running your experiment. Or only ever using Arch version x.y.z for replicating lab 1 and maybe a.b.c for replicating lab 2. It's knowing all the magic undocumented JVM flags ahead of running the application. Some you know to use as part of war scars/best practices. Some are just pure inside information from working in that lab or having a personal relationship with people in that lab.