When Trainees Rotate Out, What Happens to Your Lab’s Knowledge?
A postdoc gives notice in March. She has been in the lab for four years. She optimized the assay half the group now runs, and the reasons behind three of its steps live in her head rather than in any file. The protocol on the shared drive is two revisions behind what she actually does at the bench. In six weeks she is gone, and the part of the method that was never written down goes with her.
Every academic lab knows some version of this. The specifics change, but the shape is the same: knowledge that the lab depends on is held by a person, not by the lab, and people in academic research move on.
Read More
