Saturday, March 31, 2007

Why I call myself Miss ELISA

So I am a lab tech who specializes in an assay (test) called ELISA- Enzyme Linked ImmunoSorbant Assay. It basically is a test that is used to detect the amount of antibody in the blood. Someone I think very highly of once teased me that because of the amount of ELISA's I was doing and since I would be very busy with that work (I know how to do other assay's but was doing mostly that test at the time even though it was thought I might cross train with other tests) I would be known as Miss ELISA. I think its a good nickname and in the hope this person actually reads this blog I think he would well understand why I did choose it.
The vaccine job at NIH was so exciting at first, the most intellectually stimulating experience I have ever had. Until the politics interfered. And I discovered that there seems to be a certain dogma on how things are "done" at NIH and woe to anyone with a creative way of solving things. The program me and my boss designed was so efficient and good that the old methods (which I strongly believe were intrinisically flawed) that not only were the "old school " methods shown to be flawed it put into question years of data. And since they couldn't replicate my results they attacked them by saying my methodolgies were flawed (wrong- just different) andthen even resorting to data manipulation. The old school people stabbed both me and my boss in the back (he and I were blatantly lied to on several occasions) and finally outmanuvered my boss and got him ousted.Needless to say that was bad for me and they made me miserable until I left. I earned an undeserved reputation as a troublemaker I believe with the powers that be and believe I am "blacklisted" from NIH employment and maybe places with contracts that relate to my old department.
Anyway, between being horrified by the dishonest and bad science being practiced in a department at NIH that was in clinical trials in Africa vaccinating children, and the rise of Bush and Cos war on the scientific method, I have been very concerned about modern science.
I found a message board group that seemed like a good place to discuss these issues (democratic underground) however the paranoia of the extreme left (the woo-woo tinfoil hat group) along with trouble makers knowingly planting scientific misinformation I found it very frustrating.
So I established this blog and I will exercise my editing powers to weed out the "undesirables" to this blog.

1 comment:

kristi said...

I'm glad to see you've set up your blog, and I look forward to more posts! You probably won't have to zap my comments, since I'm one of the frustrated science geeks from DU!