A PI and a graduate student working on an Air Force-sponsored project obtained data that led to a rethinking of some fundamental aspects of High Tc superconductivity. The resulting publications stimulated a significant amount of discussion and enhanced the investigators’ careers. About three years after the original publication date, however, other investigators suggested a different interpretation of the data. Thus, the principal investigator (PI) had an urgent need to reevaluate the raw data, taken four to five years earlier. Unfortunately, the laboratory notebook had vanished after the graduate student left, and the computer files were thrown out with an old computer one year earlier.

PLEASE CONSIDER THESE QUESTIONS

1. To what extent should a PI assure that important raw data are retained?

2. What procedures are in place at EMU to store laboratory notebooks and computer files?

See Discussion

Adapted from: University of Minnesota