Why a PhD student should perform at least one blind test for a thesis Premium

Blind tests renders the knowledge required to conduct an experiment incomplete, demanding more rigour from scientists to bridge this gap.

Scientific misconduct is a big problem in India. Since 2006, the rate of Indian papers that are retracted for misconduct has been double that of the US. Misconduct gives students the wrong idea of what kind of work is acceptable work, diminishes trust in India’s research output, and tarnishes the reputation of our researchers worldwide.

At its core, misconduct arises when scientists are able to control the outcomes of their experiments, instead of letting the scientific method take its course. But there is one experimental design that works with scientists to bring their best selves out. This is the blind test.

My students Felicite K. Noubissi, Ashwin Bhat, and Prakash Arumugam performed a blind test to show that the Adiopodoumé strain of the fungus Neurospora crassa suppresses a biological process called RIP.

RIP is a mutational process that peppers multiple mutations into all copies of any DNA sequence that appears more than once in the genome. RIP typically occurs during a sexual mating between two fungal strains. Yet of the hundreds of Neurospora strains isolated from around the world, only the Adiopodoumé strain from Côte d’Ivoire, Africa, contains a DNA sequence that appears in several copies in the genome, without being disrupted by RIP’s effects.

The students asked whether the fungus’s DNA was this way because the Adiopodoumé strain suppressed RIP.

Ms. Noubissi grew Neurospora strains on 19 petri dishes. On five dishes, she grew the Adiopodoumé strain, and on the other 14, other wild strains. She then handed the dishes over to Mr. Bhat, who – unobserved by anyone else – picked three Adiopodoumé dishes and seven other dishes, and relabeled them 1,2, 3, and so on until 10. He then handed them to Mr. Arumugam. Again unobserved, Mr. Arumugam re-relabeled them A, B, C, and so on until J, and finally sent them back to Ms. Noubissi.

This way, there were two sets of labels for the 10 dishes: one with Mr. Bhat, indicating which strains were numbered 1,2,3, …., and the other with Mr. Arumugam, indicating which of the plates 1,2, 3, …. were relabeled A, B, C, …..  They wrote down which dishes had been labelled what on pieces of paper and sealed them in an envelope. (One group stuck the envelope to the lab’s ceiling.)