This is one of those things that bench scientists hate putting up with -- silly visiting dignitaries, using your labs as their props. Why the lab manager could apparently spare PPE for Drs. Fauci and Collins and not HHS Secretary Sebelius or the President of the United States is beyond me. (Photo credit: Lawrence Jackson /White House)
What kind of message would it send to the bench scientists of America if the President had donned a pair of safety glasses and a specially embroidered Presidential lab coat?* Now that would be change I can believe in.
*P.S. Thanks for the stimulus money! There are some seriously starving postdocs out there. Now about all of those out-of-work middle-aged bench scientists...
Interesting catch yet this looks like it could be a biology lab which should indeed mandate safety glasses however most such labs I have been around have been less stringent on that point. Oddly biologists seem to have a greater mania to wear lab coats that many in syn labs lack. Analytical labs are most all around compliant as far as I have observed.
ReplyDeleteSomewhat related I often laugh at vendor brochures or website pictures that show similar fopas, typically things like no gloves when holding up flasks to look a solution, which is probably just colored water anyway but still against principles. I too wonder if some of photographed "lab workers" are stand-in models from sales or admin.
CMC guy