Why is the precious instrument "deep lock spring?"

A few days ago, Han Jian, a researcher at the US-based Hanson Alpha Institute of Biotechnology, spoke of a common “strange thing” in his blog post “What a strange thing: The high-speed railway station building is magnificent and toilets are empty”: there are many instruments sold in the mainland (high-throughput sequencing). However, the sales of reagents lags behind and is disproportionate. He wrote: "This is like having a lot of artillery on the battlefield, but it does not give artillery shells."

The author once visited the Marine Environment Monitoring and Forecasting Center of a Marine and Fisheries Bureau. During the visit to the laboratory, a doctor of the same company even claimed that: "I did not expect there are so many high-quality goods here." He said that these imported gas/liquid chromatography, NMR spectrometer, random one also To hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, and some even more than a million dollars.

However, it is extremely uncoordinated that the labs where these instruments are located are all “iron gates”; these delicate instruments are also covered with dust cloths and are rarely turned on at ordinary times. One million dollars worth of valuable equipment, only to end up in a "locked in the depths of no one knows" encounter.

The idle rate of some large research infrastructures and expensive equipment has always been criticized. Some people claim that these valuable instruments and equipment have "three lows": low management level, low sharing level, and low use efficiency.

The author's investigation revealed that blindness in the purchase of equipment and inadequate staffing of professional and technical personnel are the main reasons for the idleness of scientific research equipment.

Some scientific research institutes and scientific and technological support units did not have an overall plan for the construction of the laboratory. They did not conduct in-depth research on the development strategy of the disciplines and blindly implemented the hardware. At the same time, before the purchase of equipment, there was a lack of in-depth research on instrument utilization rates and repeated acquisition rates, blindly pursuing high performance indicators.

In addition, the role of professional technicians in scientific research units has long been neglected. High-end equipment generally uses higher thresholds, and most of them require the guidance of professionals. In many places, equipment and equipment are lack of qualified professional and technical personnel to operate and maintain, and they are not willing to use it easily for researchers. No more expensive equipment is just a pile of scrap iron.

In addition, the longitudinal issue "If scientific research funds are not spent within the time specified in the project will be recovered", "forcing" some units to purchase equipment, so as to lay the hidden dangers of idle equipment.

"If you don't use it, you'll retire. If you don't use it, then it's abolished." No matter how advanced the instrument is, it has a certain period of scientific life. In order to avoid waste of resources, it is imperative to solve the problem of idleness of expensive instruments.

To take off the hat of the “three lows” of valuable instruments, we must first strengthen the investigation before the purchase of the instruments. In particular, for the purchase of high-priced single pieces or complete sets of equipment, comprehensive investigations and comments on the necessity and rationality should be conducted. Serious accountability for major equipment platforms should be strengthened.

Second, we must strengthen the emphasis on scientific and technological support departments and professional and technical personnel. All units should improve the personnel ratio of the scientific research-support-management functions and create a healthy scientific research environment.

In addition, related institutions should strengthen the concept of “co-building and sharing” and vigorously promote the construction of a large scientific instrument collaboration service platform.