The blog post discusses Alex’s experience as an experimental physicist and the difficulties he faced in keeping track of important events during experiments. He suggests that using bodycams, similar to those used by police officers, could be a solution to this problem. Alex explains that the use of bodycams would provide a wide field of view and record all the problems that arise during an experiment. This would make communication between the experimenter and the supervisor more efficient and improve the replicability of experiments. Additionally, Alex argues that using bodycams would make experiments more rigorous, as it would be easier to catch mistakes and improve methodology. Alex concludes by pointing to NileRed’s YouTube channel as an example of how video recordings can be used to counter positive publication bias.

I wasn’t exactly a natural at experimental work. My undergraduate lab marks were, erm, not brilliant. A poor memory mixed with a lack of practical intuition, a good experimental physicist, does not make. So, it is a tad ironic that I decided to do a PhD in electron microscopy – a mostly experimental field.

I liked planning experiments and analysing their results. I just didn’t very much like doing them. Sessions on the electron microscope always felt clunky. I had to frequently stop doing the experiment to note down significant events in my lab book and I was not the best at deciding which ones were worthy. Actually, I was terrible at deciphering happenstance from important experimental happenings.

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