Let me make myself clear!

"When the brochure said 'laboratory fume hood', I didn't know they meant the whole laboratory."

I have been looking at the specifications for a lot of laboratory equipment lately. And interesting reading it makes too. The degree of automation, the flexibility inherent, the thought given to costs and safety – it’s all very impressive.

At least I am pretty sure that’s the case.

The problem is that the impenetrability of equipment brochures seems to have increased hand-in-hand with the sophistication of the equipment and as is so often the case, unless you are already an expert, it is the work of days to decode exactly what it going on. Certainly there seems to be an ‘arms-race’ in brochure writing that is going to lead to an ‘unclear’ disaster (see what I did there?) of epic proportions. One day everything we could ever want to use in a laboratory will be out there, but we just won’t be able to find out where exactly, thanks to the unneeded profusion of technical information and unexplained jargon in the pamphlets that should be assisting us not confusing us!

I am convinced that eventually it will reach the point where we will loose track completely of exactly what we can and can’t do. Perhaps scientists will even develop equipment that already exists and when questioned why, will simply shrug and say:

I didn’t know you could do that.

That will be the cry heard from labs near and far: I didn’t know you could do that! I have already heard it. I had it said to me by a Very Senior Visitor on a Very Senior Committee. I was explaining what I did and how it is now possible to label with antibodies specific individual proteins in a cell membrane and image the immobilised protein with the attached label and a small gold marker. Thus you could look at their distribution over large areas of membrane.

You knew that didn’t you?

Yes, see the actual protein itself, as a particle – not just its position, in an electron microscope.

You do know that didn’t you?

Of course there are provisos and this is old hat now anyway. The point is that this Very Senior Visitor turned around and said to me:

‘I didn’t know you could do that!’

And I thought to myself: what really? Then how are you supposed to be assessing the Grant Application I sent to your committee six months ago? I am not blaming him. There is far too much going on to know in great detail a sizeable fraction of what going on in any discipline, however it’s good to know what it’s possible for you to do if you wanted to and how you might go about it.

And equipment brochures don’t help!

So, I would like to start a campaign, get the ball rolling. This is the Masterplan: every brochure for every piece of laboratory equipment should be obliged to have an introductory passage that states clearly exactly what this piece of equipment is for. No jargon is allowed – no abbreviations or references – just a plain statement of function. This should be printed against a blue background, so you can find it immediately on every piece of literature.

There shall be no exceptions and no excuses. And if anybody ever says: it’s obvious to everybody what a ‘Scaleraterang’ is for – let me tell them now: no it’s not!