#Pipetting
LightNews LightNews
mattexx.bsky.social
He sucks at pipetting, but he's an absolute wiz at primer design
September 26, 2026 at 4:26 PM
matthematics.com
#STEM folks stop what you’re doing and read this.

All the coding, pipetting, and calculus won’t matter if our graduates aren’t humans.
March 19, 2025 at 12:41 PM
mikefeigin.bsky.social
I spent one summer mouth pipetting at Woods Hole. Right after the safety lecture that forbid mouth pipetting! 😜
September 27, 2026 at 7:44 PM
chenxinli2.bsky.social
We are basically like this in research already. Postdocs and PhD students growing plants, doing tissue culture, and pipetting, while AI chat bots doing the analyses, writing proposals and papers. Humans having to do the menial tasks, while AI chat bots took over the creative work.
gwillow.me G. Willow Wilson @gwillow.me · 2d
Every day we get closer to this:
Cartoon by the human artist Twonks, showing George Jetson vacuuming the floor while Rosie the robot paints a picture
September 25, 2026 at 9:58 PM
cbartman.bsky.social
Wearing a gopro while I do experiments so I can track when I make pipetting mistakes
July 23, 2025 at 3:42 PM
bmauschen.eurosky.social
Sooooo, legen wir los - Stockfots vom Pipettieren. Wie schlimm kann es schon werden?

Öh, Beverly, stell doch das Eppi (Reaktionsgefäß) in den Ständer, greif die Pipette richtig und drück mit dem Daumen, dann wird das vielleicht präziser. 🤨 (1/14)

focusedcollection.com/160226270/st...
Female researcher pipetting liquid in science laboratory. — latex gloves, Lab Coat - Stock Photo |...
Download Female researcher pipetting liquid in science laboratory. #160226270 high-end stock photo. Expensive images and pictures of Female researcher pipetting liquid in science laboratory. are authe...
focusedcollection.com
December 26, 2023 at 10:30 PM
prasad.bsky.social
one of the FTEs discovered VIPR, so I am dubious about the claim that Claude did all the thinking and humans did only the pipetting

bsky.app/profile/huis...
September 24, 2026 at 2:46 AM
jenniferraff.bsky.social
Sometimes they let me Lab in my lab.
A woman in black pants and a blue jacket with blue gloves on is pipetting water into a tube in preparation for a high school outreach exercise. She is smiling because she never gets to work at the bench anymore and even pipetting water is fun for her.
December 11, 2024 at 5:22 PM
evan-tuality.bsky.social
Mouth-pipetting phenol to own the libs
September 25, 2026 at 2:04 PM
drsandman11.medsky.social
Walter White pipetting green liquid Green liquid
June 18, 2026 at 12:55 AM
n0rtist.bsky.social
I made a rhythm minigame about pipetting in a week. I'll have links about it below #GodotEngine #gamedev
April 29, 2025 at 2:00 PM
c0nc0rdance.bsky.social
The first rule of mouth-pipetting is:
DO NOT GET THE HICCUPS.
Researchers pipetting by mouth in the late 1960s. Three people are near a lab bench. Two are using long glass Pasteur pipettes to transfer samples from glass culture jars. Credit: Sarah Harrop, Medical Research Council.
August 1, 2023 at 4:11 PM
achillebro.bsky.social
raise your hand if you did mouth pipetting in your lifetime 🙋
(in high school chemistry, pipetting textile dyes, some of us dyed their tongues bright orange)
November 21, 2024 at 2:36 PM
chemjobber.bsky.social
Lol pipetting
nizet.bsky.social ᐯIᑕTOᖇ ᑎIᘔET, ᗰᗪ @nizet.bsky.social · Aug 14
one small consolation of being a 60+ year old investigator is the ability to submit to 𝘔𝘈𝘛𝘜𝘙𝘌 family journals — sure they’re low impact (for our knees) but they have an early bird special if you submit between 4:00 and 5:30 on weekdays
August 15, 2025 at 3:33 AM
wolf.observer
bring back mouth pipetting. it's fine
November 3, 2025 at 6:13 PM
evan-tuality.bsky.social
Fastest pipetter in the west
A man pipetting with two hands at once in one tube
February 13, 2025 at 3:44 AM
cenmag.bsky.social
The challenge of being neurodivergent in #STEM: Neurodivergent scientists say STEM isn’t built for them, despite the contributions they bring. cen.acs.org/careers/dive... #phdsky #academicsky #phdchat #academicchatter 🧪
Kit Wallis is standing in a lab, pipetting ammonium bicarbonate into a small centrifuge tube.
December 29, 2024 at 7:38 PM
c0nc0rdance.bsky.social
So therapeutic, like one of those fancy massage chairs, but for your pipetting fingers.
Bilbo Baggins meme, where he says "After all... why not?" and then lower panel shows him putting his finger in the vortexer and the text reads "why shouldn't I vortex my finger?"
April 16, 2024 at 9:03 PM
wrigleyfield.bsky.social
“We have replaced the danger of mouth-pipetting with the danger of a generation of scientists spending their most productive years writing grants that will not be funded. This is its own form of danger, just slower and less honest than the phenol.”

A fun one
boghuma.bsky.social BK. Titanji @boghuma.bsky.social · 3d
"I’m saying that I would personally mouth-pipette a solution of pure chloroform right now, today, in front of God and the NIH Director and the entire Office of Research Safety, if it meant a young scientist in my department could get a payline above 20%."
substack.com/home/post/p-...
Opinion: I Miss When The NIH Payline Was 40% And We All Mouth-Pipetted Phenol
By Dr. Douglas R. Waverly, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry, Yale University
substack.com
September 24, 2026 at 1:08 PM
melodyschreiber.com
Ahhhhh can you imagine MOUTH-PIPETTING and using only hand washing to isolate a new hemorrhagic virus -- from two people who had just died
isabelott.bsky.social Isabel @isabelott.bsky.social · Nov 2
From the chapter in Sonja Buckley’s autobiography detailing her (& the first ever) isolation of Lassa virus, a terrifying viral hemorrhagic fever, in the “bare hands and mouth pipetting” era of virus isolation. Jesus christ.
Spring 1969 was approaching bringing in its wings new vigor. The world and Max Theiler, from a front seat, were about to witness the isolation of Lassa virus, the cause of an apparently highly fatal West African disease. It was Thursday afternoon, March 6th. I was involved in a large study of tick-borne arboviruses, having been invited to participate in an international symposium on tick-borne viruses to be held in the fall of the same year in…Czechoslovakia. There was an urgent phone call from Wilbur G. Downs from the Head Office of The Rockefeller Foundation. The director of the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit. Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, Yale University School of Medicine, had just returned to New York from an extended field trip undertaken in the line of duty as the associate director of the Division of Medical and Natural Sciences of The Rockefeller Foundation. He was asking me to stay at work until his arrival with some important specimens obtained from three American missionary nurses stationed in northeastern Nigeria. All three had been afflicted in succession during the dry season with a severe febrile disease of unknown origin. Two of them had died on January 26th, and February 13th, respectively. The third nurse had been stricken on February 20th, 1969. had been flown to New York and was now in critical condition at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center. I called John, my pathologist husband, and informed him that I would be delayed. Jordi Casals, his section adjoining my tissue culture section on the 7th floor of the Laboratory of Epidemiology and Public Health of Yale, had been summoned to remain at the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit also. Wil Downs arrived carrying a thermos bottle filled with specimens by 4:00 p.m. We had a conference in Jordi Casal's laboratory as to the methods of procedure and strategy. What to do? Wil Downs decided to include my tissue culture section in the isolation attempts. He said: "We have to inoculate adult …the disease is not typical for an arbovirus, and we better inoculate also some cell cultures." I had not one single "spare" cell culture available on that evening. On the following day -Friday -Elinor Gilson, my skillful cell culture technician, prepared 240 Vero cell stationary tube cultures and 70 Vero cell French square bottles…In the sixties [vero] was a commonly used continuous cell line in many laboratories for the study of viruses. In the midst of all these preparations Wil Downs came into the tissue culture section, dressed like a surgeon with gown, mask, head cap and rubber gloves. He carried a metal rack holding numerous glass tubes labeled with the names of the three nurses (Laura Wine, Charlotte Shaw & Lily Pinneo) nature of specimens & dates of collection. I removed carefully small amounts of fluids from each tube, just enough material for inoculation of the Vero cell cultures. I had no mask or gloves, only the white laboratory coat as well as the sterile technique ingrained in me by my Swiss microbiology professors. Hermann Mooser and Arthur Grumbach. I handed the samples to my longtime and trusted technical associate, Charles Mullen, trained in bacteriological techniques by Stanhope Bayne-Jones at Hopkins. He stored them temporarily in the deep freeze over the weekend. In what kind of mental frame was I? Quite honestly, I was ever so slightly annoyed. All my experiments with tick-borne viruses were interrupted at the time. But discouraging was the fact that some of the Lassa fever specimens had been frozen and thawed many times during the transit from West Africa to New Haven. I had, therefore, no hope of isolating a pathogen. I had, however, great pride in the Yale Arbovirus Research Unit and in The Rockefeller Foundation. Thus, I was going to give "my very best shot". Moreover, Wil Downs had told me that aliquots of the Lassa fever specimens had also been submitted for isolation attempts to 3 other laboratories. namely to the CDC, to the NY …Thus, the element of competition played definitely a role. All 3 facilities failed in their isolation attempts, coming up empty-handed. I spent the whole day of March 10th 1969 with the inoculation of the Vero cell cultures with the specimens derived from the two deceased missionary nurses…& from the hospitalized missionary nurse. Lily Pinneo, fighting for her life in NY. There were serum samples taken at different intervals following onset of fever, samples taken on the day of death or during the autopsy and also various pleural fluid samples from Lily Pinneo. All materials were inoculated in 10-fold dilutions; control Vero cell cultures were inoculated with diluent only. The Vero cell cultures were then incubated in my large walk-in incubator... I had imposed strict safety regulations in the tissue culture section. Only Charles Mullen and I were allowed to handle the Lassa fever experiments. Every time we would leave the sterile rooms, we would thoroughly scrub our hands with soap. All work was actually done at that time by "mouth-pipetting". a hazardous procedure at that, which invoked in my memory the picture of Arthur Grumbach standing next to me, observing and criticizing my every move, far back in 1946. It was "technique, technique, technique without short cuts!" We carried all the contaminated pipettes and other glassware immersed in special pans to the autoclave ourselves, not leaving the glassware room until the autoclave was in operation. 3 sterile rooms were designated "Reserved for Lassa fever" and scrubbed down at the beginning of the day and again at the end of the day, including benches and floors, and throughout 1969. During the next few days, control and inoculated Vero cell cultures remained normal. In the adjoining section, the serological tests were negative. The inoculated mice appeared to be healthy. On Friday, March 14th, 1969, Charles Mullen and I changed the fluids on all the stationary Vero cell tube cultures and departed for the weekend. …On Tuesday, March 18th 1969, I was told that the mice had remained healthy. I was so disappointed about the Lassa fever experiments that I postponed the examination of my cultures until the afternoon. At 2:00 p.m.. Max Theiler arrived in the tissue culture section for a cup of coffee. said to me: "Do you have anything new?' & I answered: “Oh. I have not even checked the experiments as yet." Right then and there, in the presence of my former director, I started to examine the 240 Vero cell stationary tube cultures under the large Zeiss microscope placed in my office. The control Vero cell cultures were normal. The specimens of Laura Wine, Charlotte Shaw and Lily Pinneo, however, had destroyed the Vero cells in tubes inoculated with undiluted material as well as low dilutions of samples. Max Theiler, always with a prepared mind, said in a very low voice: "African hemorrhagic fever" -- giving the newborn pathogen a tentative name. This name, however, did not stick, because hemorrhages of greater or lesser extent are observed with a great variety of infections… I begged Max Theiler not to mention my positive results to Wil Downs who was at the time in his office on the 6th floor until I had finished examining all the cultures. But within the hour, Wil Downs was in my office. He sald: "I hear you have something." I answered: "Yes, but I have to make a second passage to be sure." He agreed. We also showed the CPE to Jordi Casals. The 3 of us were conscious of the fact that the Vero cell cultures had proven to be sensitive to the unknown agent, while the adult & baby mice had apparently remained healthy. This was indicative of the fact that we were not dealing with an arbovirus. I went home that evening, exeited, but tired. John, my husband, had cooked our main meal, as he was going to do many times during 1969. One week later, March 25th 1969, all the second titer passages were showing cellular damage, evidence of infection and multiplication of the three agents…
November 3, 2025 at 4:51 PM
barrlab.bsky.social
Totally!!! Same for mouth pipetting phenol and phenol-chloroform. Best lip plumpers around
September 27, 2026 at 10:12 PM
pjenkinslab.bsky.social
Now you know how us lab nerds feel when they show an FBI crime analyst pipetting without any tips on the pipettes.
December 1, 2024 at 4:04 PM
exoplanetdinosaur.bsky.social
It’s actually pipetting
alexwild.bsky.social Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · Sep 18
tl,dr; it’s email
Photograph of children’s book cover “What do scientists do all day?”
September 22, 2024 at 10:34 PM
giulia-boezio.bsky.social
"We have replaced the danger of mouth-pipetting with the danger of a generation of scientists spending their most productive years writing grants that will not be funded."
September 24, 2026 at 6:38 PM
isabelott.bsky.social
Having trained someone up from 0 pipetting experience: never underestimate the value of “drilling” tricky steps, e.g. practicing pipetting out of a narrow neck glass bottle with water in it to have the muscle memory to not contaminate the trizol bottle, practicing not going over open tubes/tips, etc
cellmorphosero.bsky.social Julia Sero @cellmorphosero.bsky.social · Sep 2
What are your "good hands" training tips? @baym.lol and others?
- Slow down
- Pay attention
- Visualise doing the whole protocol. What do you need to have labelled when? Where are you standing? What are you doing during the incubation? Etc.
- Start new methods with 2-3 small low-stakes experiments.
baym.lol Michael Baym @baym.lol · Sep 1
Every few months the "good lab hands" thing comes up and it misses a key point: you can learn to have good hands. Training matters.

Good hands aren't some magic gift from the PCR gods, you have to develop them through directed repetitive practice, like any other skill
September 2, 2025 at 12:09 PM