Anonimity and secrecy

[CE Instruments]

Time and again posters ask complex questions hoping for answers. There is a huge wealth of knowlege here no doubt including many who are looking for potential business. I can understand no-one wants to be bombarded with SPAM but I think people would get better , faster and more useful responses if....
1 They provided all the relevant details, instrument , method and as much info. about the sample as they can
2 Please at least say what country you are in ! There is little point suggesting third party experts who might be able to help at no/lower cost if they turn out to be on the opposite side of the world !

[Peter Apps]

+1

It continues to amaze me how people think that they are going to get useful answers when they include almost no details about what they are trying to do and how they are doing it.

This is a hardy perennial, there was a long discussion about it some time back.

In the words of chromatographer1 "The more you don't tell us, the more we can't help you."

These days I mostly cannot be bothered even to ask for the necessary detail. If anything informative emerges as the thread progresses by guesswork and clairvoyance, I pitch in.

Peter

[James_Ball]

I think one of the problems behind this trend is that companies are hiring techs instead of chemists to perform ever more complex work. Most people with a chemistry or other science degree will usually provide details because they know how important they are, while a tech just knows that what they are doing doesn't work.

Here in the lab I see the same thing, hiring more techs and putting them to doing the more complex tasks, but when something goes wrong they have no idea where to even begin to trouble shoot the problem. Most of the time the problem doesn't get found until someone in QA/QC spots it because of the inexperience on the bench.

[tom jupille]

Add to that the observation that for many (most?) users, the chromatograph is essentially an appliance. "I just want to put in my samples and get my results".

[Consumer Products Guy]

I think some of this is a result of today's younger generation, who always found an adult/parent/etc. to call on a cell phone for every darn little thing, instead of looking or investigating themselves.

Sure - I've used Google to see how best to fix my daughter's car oil leak (due to an engineering issue/known defect, by the way, learned that on Google too), but like many here we develop and validate essentially all of our own test methods, because official methods for our consumer products (including OTC pharmaceuticals) just don't exist. Even our QA department was slow to understand that USP official procedures - with all their shortcomings - are just for the USP/NF monograph materials themselves, not for the much-lower levels in consumer products matrices.

I do understand that they cannot get 40 years hands-on experience in 6 months. I agree about a need for confidentiality and proprietary materials, but there needs to be adequate detail for any real help to be provided.

Posts like "why don't I get a peak" or "why is my peak funny shape" without decent details - I typically ignore.

There are useless requests for help everywhere on the Internet, often with zero real information. One such is on automtove forums: "my car won't turn over". I've been a professional mechanic and have worked on my own vehicles for decades, including engine rebuilds, and I still have zero idea if "my car won't turn over" means that the starter is not spinning the engine, or if the engine is spinning and just doesn't start.

[chemwomyn]

I agree with Consumer Products Guy about the younger generation. They seem to want "instant" answers and not willing to really work at it.

The other issue I have seen with troubleshooting is that people are downright lazy. They rather skirt around the issue, then spend hours of time fixing it. This is just my opinion.

[lmh]

Describing a problem properly on a message-board actually requires quite a bit of thought and observation. The person with the problem needs to recognise the essential parts of their instrument and method, record the symptoms clearly, filter out irrelevant factors etc.; all this requires them to develop a fair amount of understanding before they've even solved anything.

This understanding is exactly what you need to fix the problem anyway, so I suspect that the sort of person who's approaching message boards in the right way is also solving their own problem a lot more often than the "it doesn't work any more, please help" person.

I don't entirely blame "the younger generation". They are often working in environments that require instant solutions and won't make the investment to make sure that staff really understand what they're doing (either by employing highly trained/experienced staff, by giving staff the time and resources they need if they're to get that professional knowledge, or by retaining staff long enough for them to become experienced!). The decisions that make it hard for the younger generation are often taken by the older generation...

It's a pity that so many people see message-boards as a one-way traffic: I have the problem, you have the solution. I see them more as an online two-way discussion. Contributing, and occasionally finding that I've contributed rubbish and been disagreed with, is pretty educational in itself.

[James_Ball]

Describing a problem properly on a message-board actually requires quite a bit of thought and observation. The person with the problem needs to recognise the essential parts of their instrument and method, record the symptoms clearly, filter out irrelevant factors etc.; all this requires them to develop a fair amount of understanding before they've even solved anything.

This understanding is exactly what you need to fix the problem anyway, so I suspect that the sort of person who's approaching message boards in the right way is also solving their own problem a lot more often than the "it doesn't work any more, please help" person.

I don't entirely blame "the younger generation". They are often working in environments that require instant solutions and won't make the investment to make sure that staff really understand what they're doing (either by employing highly trained/experienced staff, by giving staff the time and resources they need if they're to get that professional knowledge, or by retaining staff long enough for them to become experienced!). The decisions that make it hard for the younger generation are often taken by the older generation...

It's a pity that so many people see message-boards as a one-way traffic: I have the problem, you have the solution. I see them more as an online two-way discussion. Contributing, and occasionally finding that I've contributed rubbish and been disagreed with, is pretty educational in itself.

All very true. I have to deal with the problem that management wants me to have a new analyst fully trained on every procedure and possible trouble shooting task in just a couple weeks. They don't understand that it took me 20 years to get to the level I am and it will take the next person a similar amount of time to also reach this level. I wish I could simply download the accumulated knowledge and pass it on, but until that is possible, people will just have to learn it the old fashioned way

I also noticed that our jobs became much more difficult when TV shows like CSI began, when our clients and management began to believe that the instruments we use can give an answer to a complex problem in mere seconds. I try to tell our management that it is not easy to develop a method in a week or less, yet they seem to think I should just be able to do a five minute internet search and spend a day in the lab and have some new method all validated and ready to accept samples for it.