Mastodawn

Just found out I wasted 3 weeks of work, a significant amount of solvent and other reagents because the commercial starting material is not what the bottle says it is to add insult to injury what is in the bottle isn't even clean, there is at least one other thing in there.

Hilariously (not really) the only reason I determined this was because I'm making something from the literature and none of my spectra were matching close enough. Went back to the start to check and remade the first step, it produced the same wrong thing. Tried some other conditions, same deal. Finally took an NMR of the starting material today.

#ChemiVerse #Chemistry

Sam Levine 4d ago

Someone kill me now. I just had to fess up to my supervisor that I didn't check the starting material at the start.

(it's not normally necessary, this wasn't a custom order or a particularly weird compound, it's a pretty standard small molecule building block)

Sam Levine 4d ago

Though I do get to write a very cranky email to the vendor. Always a personal favorite.

Sam Levine 4d ago

Supervisor has declared that next time someone wants us to just order them commercial compounds and hand them over for bio assays without any QC we should use this as an example of why we do not do that.

Sam Levine 3d ago

Why can't I bring myself to trash all of this material (which is taking up the largest proportion of my hood and is a giant mess) without confirmation from the company that the compound is wrong?!?! Am I really that insecure in my ID?!?!

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen 3d ago

@SRLevine is there a more trustworthy supply of the same substance on hand? you could always try the trick of seeing if your unknown depresses the melting point of the known substance

Sam Levine 3d ago

@mxchara Boo. Hiss. (I don't have a melting point apparatus)

Going to need to order from someone else anyway, I could always take an NMR of a mixed sample, but that doesn't solve the "hood is a disaster and I need to clean up to be able to work in it" problem today. sigh

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen 3d ago

@SRLevine ugh what a bummer. as with cooking and baking, cleaning up is the least fun bit of the job

Kate Nyhan 4d ago

@SRLevine
Your horrible experience will be someone else's valuable warning 😁

Joe Vilas 4d ago

@SRLevine Ugh. Sorry.

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️ Brie 🌞🚴📦✨4d ago

@SRLevine chemistry that leads to cranky emails and not burnt lungs is good chemistry ✨

Stanley Black-Decker 4d ago

@SRLevine Chemists sent you chemistry. I feel like you made a reasonable assumption even if it was ultimately wrong

Ángela Stella Matutina 4d ago

Underappreciated art.

@SRLevine I once got to chew out a vendor (and rightly so) in front of my boss. My grandboss even heard the story. It got me a special mention and an extra bonus on my annual review. 😁

Steve Gisselbrecht 4d ago

Why would you??? Why would you ever not assume that what's in the bottle is what it says is in the bottle?

Jenn, Blurst Of Her Name 4d ago

@stevegis_ssg +1, the only time I've ever run e.g. mass spec on reagents was when I was custom-ordering stuff. @SRLevine

helplessduck 4d ago

Is what you made dangerous? If tomorrow doesn't go well, I'll need a way out and I'd like quick and painless. Something that doesn't mess up my face.

Sam Levine 4d ago

@helplessduck Uh it shouldn't be? But I also don't know what I made because I'm not sure what the starting material was. I'd recommend taking something that isn't my weird product for a quick death.

John Timaeus 4d ago

Name the name. I need to know who's not shipping clean material as labeled.

Sam Levine 4d ago

@johntimaeus "aablocks" happy to show spec data if you really want

though I've ordered other things from them (including the partner reagent that went with this and that looks good) and everything was fine so...

John Timaeus 4d ago

I don't play with chemistry much for fun or profit anymore, but I deal with groups that do and it's nice to be able to ask "did you check starting materials" before digging into other reasons.

Jenn, Blurst Of Her Name 4d ago

@SRLevine there's no way your supervisor would have *expected* you to do that, right? If you were starting from an unopened bottle from a trusted vendor and it wasn't a special order? bc 😳

@titania @SRLevine
Ugh sorry that's terrible!
I think your supervisor needs to send that email to vendor (even if you you might have to draft it).

Sam Levine 4d ago

@SRDas @titania Nah, sending the email is 100% my job. I'm not a student and I have a lot of autonomy to run the chemistry stuff as I see fit and also deal with all of the inventory management issues (for the center and for my other supervisor).

I've had to send similar ones before, but last time I suspected it was a rotamer issue so I was polite when asking for their QC data, and it turned out my guess was correct and they responded with a metric ton of data files including high temp NMR and 2D NMR stuff so I didn't have to run those experiments myself.

Sam Levine 4d ago

@titania He's an analytical person by training and his lab is usually ordering small amounts of stuff that is often custom made, so they do QC everything. I QC stuff that's either being used in bio assays and/or if it was custom made for us, I don't bother with standard building blocks unless something goes wrong or I need a comparative NMR that isn't in the literature.

Jenn, Blurst Of Her Name 4d ago

@SRLevine I mean...this is a clear-cut case of vendor fuck-up and not something that you did wrong, is my thought, since it *is* a standard reagent? I can't imagine a world where I would have bothered assaying e.g. the indium nitrate I used buy regularly from Sigma.

Sam Levine 4d ago

@titania It's not from sigma or a big name company, I usually go with whoever is cheapest and this time was "aablocks". The other stuff from that order is fine however and I've bought from them before. I'm not going to be in real trouble about this I think, more like some eye rolling over vendors being crummy.

Jenn, Blurst Of Her Name 4d ago

@SRLevine glad you're not going to get written up for it or whatnot.

I'm actually familiar with aablocks inasmuch as one of my friends at the fab ordered from them and had the same thing happen to them. QA at their facility seems to be nonexistent. (He ended up going with the next-cheapest option after that.)

emotional support tiger 4d ago

@SRLevine darn…

Dang that sucks.

It sucks someone else screwed up but you get holding the blame

Sam Levine 4d ago

@alienghic Not real blame, but the spent 3 weeks on it isn't a good look since I should have stopped when the first spectra didn't quite match and not gone almost to the end of the route before getting annoyed none of them quite matched and digging into things.

Ouch. That's a frustratingly slow lesson.

I hope it all works out with your supervisor

@SRLevine @alienghic sounds like you got 3 weeks of valuable training.. hindsight’s a wonderful thing

Sam Levine 4d ago

@ozeng @alienghic Do I strike you as someone who needed 3 weeks of training in this area?

@SRLevine @alienghic in which area? Chemistry? No. In “forge ahead anyway” hubris? Apparently.

Every time I’ve thought “huh that’s weird” and disregarded it, it came back to bite me on the arse later. That kind of wisdom, spidey sense calibration, whatever you want to call it, is borne from (un)necessarily painful lessons. Something slightly fishy is going to be waving big fucking red flags next time, isn’t it… might save you from greater peril than losing 3 weeks.

@ozeng @SRLevine

dude just express some sympathy for a frustrating 3 weeks or move on.

the professional improvement will happen at his work.

Mx. Chara Aznable (they/them) of Pnictogen 4d ago

@SRLevine uh...who was the supply house?

Sam Levine 4d ago

@mxchara "aablocks". The other two things in the order seem fine (well one of them is for sure it was the thing this reacted with, and the reaction works, just doesn't make what it should, the other I used once and it seemed ok, but it's for a later stage in the synthesis and without this being right hard to check that, though I might take an NMR of that too, just not tonight)

@SRLevine im so sorry, that is incredibly brutal.

El Duvelle 3d ago

@SRLevine I wasted months of works a couple of times now for making the same mistake (but in my case, for expensive electronic parts that I use to make my rat implants).
We usually think it's our fault when something is not working.. but sometimes it's the thing's fault!

MCDuncanLab 3d ago

This is why in my lab if something doesn't work right we immediately blame the reagents.

Eli Roberson (he/him)3d ago

@SRLevine oh no