Everything we have published, newest first. Use the section links in the header to narrow by area, or the search box to look for a specific test, technique or term.
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Buying Refurbished Laboratory Equipment Without Getting Burned
Some instruments are excellent second-hand buys and others are traps, and the difference has almost nothing to do with how old the machine is.
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Statistics for Bench Scientists Who Avoided the Module
Four concepts prevent most of the statistical errors that reach publication from the bench, and none of them require any mathematics beyond arithmetic.
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Semen Analysis: Reading the Parameters Properly
The reference values on a semen analysis are percentiles drawn from men who fathered children, not a pass mark. That distinction changes how the report should…
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Caffeine Content Variance Between Identical Drinks
Two cups from the same machine on the same morning can differ substantially in caffeine. Here is where the variation comes from and how to allow…
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DNA Barcoding Herbal Supplements: Promise and Pitfalls
DNA testing can prove which plant went into a capsule, but only if the product still contains readable DNA. Most extracts do not.
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Thyroid Antibodies: TPO, Thyroglobulin and TRAb
Three thyroid antibodies are routinely ordered together, and each answers a different question. Two of them are often unnecessary.
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Choosing a LIMS Without Regretting It Two Years Later
The demo is not the product. What determines satisfaction with a LIMS is configuration burden, integration reality and what it costs to leave.
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Electronic Lab Notebooks Versus Paper: An Honest Comparison
Electronic notebooks win decisively on search and audit trails, and lose on flexibility and exit costs. Both facts matter when choosing.
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Olive Oil Fraud and the Laboratory Tests That Expose It
Extra virgin is a legal grade with measurable criteria, and one of those criteria is a trained human nose. Here is what the laboratory actually checks.
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Cryopreservation: Freezing Cells Without Destroying Them
Cells are not killed by cold. They are killed by ice and by the concentrated solution ice leaves behind, which is why cooling rate decides survival.
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Analytical Balances and the Errors Nobody Notices
An analytical balance reports five decimal places whether or not they mean anything. Here is what quietly corrupts the last two digits.
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Lipoprotein(a): The Inherited Risk Number Few People Test
A standard lipid panel does not measure it, your level was largely fixed at conception, and a single test can settle the question for life.
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Honey Authenticity: Testing for Syrup Adulteration
Every test developed to catch diluted honey has been answered by a syrup engineered to pass it, which is why the methods keep getting more elaborate.
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Fume Hood or Biosafety Cabinet: They Protect Different Things
Both are boxes with moving air and a sash, and picking the wrong one exposes either the worker or the work to what it was meant…
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CO2 Incubators and the Art of Keeping Cells Alive
The gas setting on an incubator is not a convention, it is one half of a chemical buffer whose other half is dissolved in the medium.
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HbA1c, Fasting Glucose or OGTT: Choosing the Test
The three routes to a diabetes diagnosis measure different things, and they disagree often enough that which one you are given genuinely matters.
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Seafood Substitution: When the Fish Is Not the Fish
Once a fish is filleted, skinned and cooked, almost nothing visible identifies the species, and DNA testing keeps finding that the label is optimistic.
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Blood Cultures and the Skin Contamination Problem
A blood culture that grows something is not the same as a bloodstream infection, and telling the two apart shapes days of treatment.
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Antibody Validation: The Quiet Crisis in Protein Research
A commercial antibody is a biological reagent with no guarantee it binds only your protein, and the consequences run through thousands of published figures.
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Autoclave Operation and Why Cycles Fail Validation
An autoclave does not sterilise by getting hot. It sterilises by getting saturated steam into direct contact with every surface, which is why packing decides the…
