Here's the issue: in general, graduate students and even undergrads know where the dangers lie. They are informed beforehand and warned. The risks of a serious accident are enough to get the next level up to reiterate warnings.

Then the people in danger ignore them. They drive to work obscenely long hours and behave carelessly. They don't use safety gear when they can avoid it.

This is in stark contrast to the industrial scientists. The whole lifestyle is different. An industrial scientist gets in at 9, leaves at 5, and tries (usually) to be productive in those hours, minus a fair lunch. An academic scientist, left to his own devices, will eat at the bench, sleep in the office, and work 16 hour days. This difference in behavior should indicate that simply punishing the PI isn't enough to drive an improvement in safety. Nor is mandating classes, having some inspections, or any of that. To apply enough force to drive cautious, mindful, risk-averse behavior in academic scientists would also require a degree of force that would destroy the entire enterprise.

Now, there is some truth in the fact that students and postdocs are such cheap labor that they are used in wasteful ways - often instead of expensive instruments, for example - and that this creates an excessive need for boring and repetative tasks which breed contempt for safety and require long hours that creates an environment for carelessness. I am all for adding a clause in NIH and NSF grant reviews that asks: is labor being used appropriately? Should the grantee have asked for more money or equipment instead of using students to achieve these goals? Is training being employed properly or are students just paper mills here? Should he be hiring techs instead? These questions would improve the situation, I feel, but not as much as one might think. To really change the safety culture of academia, one must change the priority of the students themselves. Right now, they have and they treasure their freedom from oversight, their ability to perform 'on the edge' and innovate, to be casual, to work odd hours, to show to themselves their devotion to the task by a sort of self-abuse. This is a much harder nut than simply creating supervisors with incentive to avoid accidents. Largely, PIs do care about accidents, even small ones. They warn incessantly. However, it takes draconian measures to mandate student behavior - and if that happens, all the students leave.

So, we should backtrack on this columist's advice, rethink the problem, and then solve it differently.

As the former oseh rep for my lab in grad school, I can't disagree with you too much. I'm only slightly embarrassed to confess that when a coworker came to me one weekend for to find out the protocol for a laser related eye injury, I told him what to do, but also warned him that reporting the accident would not resolve his injury and would have negative repercussions for our research center (particularly since his advisor was the director). I would have been more sensitive if he had injured someone other than himself or if the injury had been more serious. But as it was, I was right and the rest of the laser optics center was punished for his carelessness (he definitely knew better).

Yeah, I've injured myself a few times; mostly not due to excessive carelessness, but rather due to the normal kind. A cut or a pinch, mostly, nothing serious. I remember my panic when it seemed like an undergrad I supervised might have a lab acquired infection ... bacteria ... I was so relieved when I found it was just food poisoning from bad chinese food or something... not because I thought our safety was inadequate... though most of the more annoying rules got ignored (goggles for PCR, anyone?) but because I knew that this would cause great pain for everyone, my boss included, if it were true. *sigh* The whole enterprise is something of a mess. That's why OSHA stays out of it, in large part. Students are basically 'exempt' in a sense, because they generally take their own risks at their own whim.

nothing here is rubbing me the wrong way. that is to say, none of this is unfamiliar. i myself relate to the tendency to ignore safety because of the repetitive nature of what I do, and I know a lot of my closer friends in the same type of work are probably the same way (didn't we used to mouth pipette beta mercaptoethanol?). it's weird. the more you wear ppe the more you scorn it. after a while (i work with blood), it becomes a chore to wear it, probably because the negative effects of not wearing it are kind of like the negative effects of not wearing sunscreen, but sweating in a hot room underneath a waterproof lab coat gets to you after a while. yeah, you are in danger, but you won't know until something actually happens, when you show up with a carcinoma, or get hcv because that one sample, out of the many thousands you perhaps handled improperly got you there.

but then again, having the diverse experience I happen to have, having both worked in industrial and scientific settings, the basic premise of the thing is universal. you get used to what you do and after a while you don't think you can be hurt or think you're too attentive to get hurt. you know the drill, so go ahead, because it's more convenient to lift something heavy using your back, or it's more convenient not to have to throw on a lab coat as you're about to do something that will take you ten minutes or so. it happens all the time. it's not just smart people.

I can only assume the same pressure is even greater for grad students, who, in a way determine their own hours, who might drop in between going to dinner to set-up an experiment. It's not like we're all marie curies nowadays, going about our business without the knowledge of the hazards that prominently exist. and that's the rub, unless you have a parental type figure there scolding you into doing what is proper and doing what will protect you in that 1% scenario that you're striving to avoid, or OSHA observing you breaking the rules, eventually you will become attentuated and you will go on and do what you please.

I don't really want to blame institutions for this problem because what are they supposed to do. this crap happens all the time. for every cop that pulls over a speeder he misses the thousands of people that turn and then signal after they've already begun the maneuver. and that's just thinking about something that we all encounter on a daily basis, and that some of us actually do quite frequently, when in fact it's the same basic idea, you are safe and methodical at all times because at any time that you're not you endanger your own life, but it becomes tiresome somehow to flick your wrist and be attentive. it's not surprising that this translates over into people we might consider to be smarter or more thoughtful about what it is that they do.

the solution is that if you are supervising people of any kind in relation to work that might in time injure them, and you know of a way to avoid it, you just have to be the one there badgering them into wearing their ppe. you have to make that point so prominent that when they don't wear it they know internally that they're violating a rule that you enforce. in an academic setting it is that much harder. how can you be there to scold everyone all of the time when you can't really be all places at once? I think you have to resign yourself to being that voice in the back of their heads telling them that they should throw the salt over their shoulder to blind the devil behind them.

BenK:

Yeah, I've injured myself a few times; mostly not due to excessive carelessness, but rather due to the normal kind. A cut or a pinch, mostly, nothing serious. I remember my panic when it seemed like an undergrad I supervised might have a lab acquired infection ... bacteria ... I was so relieved when I found it was just food poisoning from bad chinese food or something... not because I thought our safety was inadequate... though most of the more annoying rules got ignored (goggles for PCR, anyone?) but because I knew that this would cause great pain for everyone, my boss included, if it were true. *sigh* The whole enterprise is something of a mess. That's why OSHA stays out of it, in large part. Students are basically 'exempt' in a sense, because they generally take their own risks at their own whim.

It's not just the hassle of reporting work related incident, it's a kind of "work comes first" bravado. One morning I crashed my bicycle at top speed, dragged myself into the lab with my hand hurting. Boss wiggled my hand and fingers expertly, proclaimed it just a bad bruise, let's get to work. By afternoon the hand looked like a smurf hand, large and blue. Turned out to be fractured in two places.

I agree that this attitude is rampant, though I disagree that it is inevitable. A PI (jargon for the lab's director) has immense control over the culture in a lab. Most PIs are concerned with safety insofar as they are required to be. They do not actively pursue a culture of safety in the way that companies do, partly because they were also educated in labs that likely had similar "you can't restrain creativity" bravado. However, if you look at labs where PIs do pursue a culture of safety, you will see something different.

I hear you. I moved from the academy to the US Army, and guess who takes injuries more seriously? I recall hauling myself to work a few times with 101-2 fevers and putting in a full, albeit reduced productivity, day. What an idiot I was. Some people would say, still am. *shrug* There was something of a machismo factor, I agree.

When I was a grad student working at a state university affiliated research institute I took a couple hours off to attend a (supposedly mandatory, according to the memo) mandatory fire safety class. When I got back and mentioned to my advisor (who, by the way, was the institute's director) where I had been, he looked at me as if I'd lost my mind.

ok, more lab confessions.

my carelessness comes in the form of knowingly doing something that harms me. for example, working with gamma radiation, steroids, other hormones, etc., increases my chances of getting cancer, but by at most 5%. to me, that's an acceptable risk. I'm sure that many others would disagree. I suppose it's worth it because of the 'glory' that's to come when my projects yield awesome results.

Things have changed greatly in the last 10-15 years as universities have paid huge fines. The universities had tried to avoid all responsibility, claiming that P.I.'s were essentially independent contractors and thus the only ones responsible for safety in the lab, (while at the same time they collected 60% or more of overhead on each grant). The P.I. (with at most a few long term staff) was required to plan science, educate students, raise money and run research, and also to train workers in safety procedures, dispose of waste correctly and ensure all relevant laws and procedures were followed. The fines have forced the universities to take on what always should have been there responsibility; things like training new hires in safety procedures, inspecting labs for safety problems, disposing of hazardous waste. The funding agencies rightfully consider these part of the overhead costs.

This article is yet another piece of Slate garbage, making a story out of practically nothing. If you don't take the time to educate yourself on proper safety precautions in the lab you deserve what you get. If you don't have the lluevos to tell people when they're doing something in an unsafe manner or train your subordinates properly, the same.

mAlbright:

ok, more lab confessions.

my carelessness comes in the form of knowingly doing something that harms me. for example, working with gamma radiation, steroids, other hormones, etc., increases my chances of getting cancer, but by at most 5%. to me, that's an acceptable risk. I'm sure that many others would disagree. I suppose it's worth it because of the 'glory' that's to come when my projects yield awesome results.

wear your protection stupid person. if you went to a casino, and you had a five percent chance of winning. i bet you'd keep going to that casino. 5% is a lot of chance. it's not even remotely negligible. your protection doesn't really impede your results, and you're putting your life at risk. sure the chances are low out of 100 percent, but that's not low enough. it's your own life we're talking about here. you wouldn't say that smoking was ok because your chances of getting cancer from it were low would you? big news, doing this over and over and over increases that measly chance that you'll get infected, or you'll get cancer. you really want to play so fast and loose with your own life because of "awesome results"? as if "awesome results" was dependent on your not wearing or concerning yourself with proper protection. hell, at least marie curie didn't know the danger. you know it and you look at it and say, eh.....if I was your PI, and you kept ignoring your own safety. I would suspend you from the lab until you started doing it. and you would probably hate it, because you would feel like you were being grounded and you are an adult.