I'll add my two cents worth in here and bring it around to matters more
directly dealing with the Flow mailing list.
First of all I won't disagree with anything that Julie has said. This is
clearly a failure of both students and professors and it has been true for
every generation. (How many people remember an Ouchterlony Plate?). It was
the case in my lab. Graduate students and post-docs are almost always the
ones that bring new and simpler (i.e. kits) techniques into a lab. The
Professor is usually reluct to accept the change because A) "It wasn't how
I did it back in the good ol' days when we prepared our own media, made our
own test tubes in the glass shop and read our papers by the log fire." B)
the kits cost (or are perceived to cost) more and perhaps most importantly
C) the Professor understands all the limitions of the kit because they've
done it from scratch themselves. The later point while potentially valid
does not relieve the Professor from teaching the student the principles of
the techniques involved in the procedure.
This same problem occurs in spades in flow cytometry. Today we have
wonderful optimization and calibration standards from a number of
companies. In addition we have very sophisticated programs which used
these standards to automatically set compensation levels. We also continue
to have a vast amounts of horribly compensated flow data added to the
literature every day. Why? I have found that most newcomers (and a number
of oldtimers) to flow cytometry haven't the foggiest idea of the basic
priciples that underlie compensation, why we need it and how to correctly
set it up. They just take their standards, run the program which tells
them that compenstion has been "correctly" set, and then run their samples
irrespective of the fact that they bought their PE-Cy5, PE-TR or APC
conjugates from multiple sources! These standards and programs are
wonderful, I use them and highly recommend them to others. However, as
Clint Eastwood would say "They need to know their limitations"
Is this the users fault? In part yes because they should take the time to
understand the priciples of the technology they're using. But it is also
the fault of the flow commmunity at large for not doing a better job of
passing this information on. New technology, new software, new kits are
wonderful. They make our life simpler and moe efficient, we just need to
be careful of the hand that feeds us. I will now step down from the
soapbox.
Alan Stall
====================
"Moore, Julie" <uzm5@cdc.gov> on 03/19/99 09:10:38 AM
To: cyto-inbox
cc: "Escalante, Ananias" <abe1@cdc.gov> (bcc: Alan Stall/SDCA/BDX)
Subject: kits versus comprehension--a comment
Flow Folks-I apologize for clogging the list with this kind of response,
but
I am a bit dismayed at this negative commentary regarding present day
graduate students...
Having earned my PhD not so long ago, I am not so far removed that I cannot
remember what it was like or what approaches were taken in the lab that I
feel made me more than just an automaton. It is my opinion, and I feel
quite strongly about this, that the lack of understanding on the part of
graduate students regarding what exactly is going on "in that tube" does
not
and can not lie entirely on the student. Graduate training is just that:
TRAINING. If a student does not understand, or at least fully appreciate,
what she or he is doing, that student's mentor is not free from blame. I
think in the rush to publish, publish, publish (both on the part of mentor
and student), the active exchange and intellectual discussion that should
be
a part of any laboratory, especially those in which graduate students are
pursuing their degrees, falls by the wayside. Unfortunately, kits provide
an easy way to get things done quickly and efficiently-but this does not
prevent anyone from reading the classic papers (and the contemporary good
ones) and actively discussing the theory behind experiments and the
implications of the results!
In this generation of kits, we need to ask ourselves: what has happened to
mentor responsibility?
Julie Moore, PhD
Molecular Vaccine Section, Immunology Branch
Division of Parasitic Diseases
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Chamblee, GA 30341
Phone: 770-488-4948
Fax: 770-488-4454
Email: uzm5@cdc.gov <mailto:uzm5@cdc.gov>
-----Original Message-----
From: Deborah Berglund
[mailto:umbbd@gemini.oscs.montana.edu]
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 1999 10:47 AM
To: Cytometry Mailing List
Cc: Cytometry Mailing List; Calman Prussin
Subject: RE: Intracellular bubbly
I have to get in on this one. We are constantly being
dismayed at the
lack of knowledge of students because of easy to use kits
and instrument.
Some of them have no clue what they are doing or why, they
just follow the
directions. This is not a good thing.
We are poor and cheap and make up most of our own reagents,
leaving the
kits to those who do routine stuff and don't really care why
things work.
Have a glass of champagne for me!
Deb Berglund
On Tue, 16 Mar 1999, Mario Roederer wrote:
>
> >I will be happy to go hand to hand at the upcoming FASEB
meeting with any of
> >your technical staff examining Ag specific responses by
flow and will bet a
> >case of Champagne (OK, 1/2 a case) that my "notoriously
variable cookbook"
> >system will have less noise and as good a signal as the
out of the box "fix
> >and perm" kit from Caltag. Are we on? Kevin Holmes can be
the referee,
> >results to reported to the Cytometry mailing list.
>
> Cool! I'm in on this one! Let's up the ante, and make it
a full case of
> Roederer champagne (i.e., the good stuff). I'll bet on
Calman.
>
> (By the way, we use "cookbook" methods that are, by
today's standards,
> quite dated--and they still give us excellent results that
are
> reproducible. We use PharMingen antibodies and home-made
fix/perm
> solutions).
>
> mr
>
>
>
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