It is a scientifically proven fact that the more careful you are with your experiments, the more shit will go wrong – especially when you really need it to work out. Like with my hell experiment. What was supposed to be the last of the hell experiments (like really, no joke, one to go before writing and submitting publication and thesis)…well, er….more or less blew up in my face. I’ve never had contamination problems before, because I diligently spend hours sloshing my glassware around glove deep in nitric acid every week. I don’t know if one of my flasks missed the acid bath, or if I’ve pissed off the lab deities, but my error bars far exceeded the magnitude of the result. In laymans terms, my samples contained an average amount of 5 ppb of my compound give-or-take 20 ppb, which makes about as much sense as saying “the bank is one mile east of here, give or take 5 miles.”

My inexplicable fail means that I have to do it over. Again.