Failed as a THE correspondent
06 Jul, 2012
Instruments of the last millennium
Sharp eyed lab geeks (well OK, me) will have spotted that your article on the impact of FoI legislation on research data (“Is early light from the FoI just too bright?” 16th Feb, 2012, p22/23) was illustrated with a picture featuring a Micromass Platform quadrupole mass spectrometer. This is truly an instrument of the last millennium – it was discontinued in 1998 and defined as ‘obsolete’ by 2005. As far as I can tell, there have been no recent research publications (certainly in the last six or seven years) using such an obsolete piece of kit.
Either THE is making a subliminal comment about the parlous state of infrastructure in UK universities (desirable, but unlikely), or it has some very old stock footage. I would have been more impressed had it used this image to point out that UK universities struggle more and more as they seek funds to equip laboratories with the core technology that drives forward ideas, outputs and, I dare say, impact.
If there are colleagues who are still interested in this particular mass spectrometer, they might like to know that there is one on ebay that has been reduced to about £3,000. I wonder how many Universities have a PayPal account?
Professor Rob Beynon
University of Liverpool
Here’s the ebay advert!
Sharp eyed lab geeks (well OK, me) will have spotted that your article on the impact of FoI legislation on research data (“Is early light from the FoI just too bright?” 16th Feb, 2012, p22/23) was illustrated with a picture featuring a Micromass Platform quadrupole mass spectrometer. This is truly an instrument of the last millennium – it was discontinued in 1998 and defined as ‘obsolete’ by 2005. As far as I can tell, there have been no recent research publications (certainly in the last six or seven years) using such an obsolete piece of kit.
Either THE is making a subliminal comment about the parlous state of infrastructure in UK universities (desirable, but unlikely), or it has some very old stock footage. I would have been more impressed had it used this image to point out that UK universities struggle more and more as they seek funds to equip laboratories with the core technology that drives forward ideas, outputs and, I dare say, impact.
If there are colleagues who are still interested in this particular mass spectrometer, they might like to know that there is one on ebay that has been reduced to about £3,000. I wonder how many Universities have a PayPal account?
Professor Rob Beynon
University of Liverpool
Here’s the ebay advert!