IF YOU'RE planning a lab experiment, be wary of using plastic equipment. Plastic test tubes and pipettes leach compounds on contact with water that may alter your findings.
While testing experimental Parkinson's drugs, biochemist Andrew Holt of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, noticed that measurements of the enzyme MAO-B were all over the place. When his team investigated, they found that water stored in plastic microcentrifuge tubes blocked MAO-B and contained traces of an antimicrobial compound added to the tubes by the manufacturer (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1162395). Plastic pipette tips leached chemicals that block reactions, and plastic plates made MAO-B more active.
"It's inevitable that a lot of data that's in the public domain will be skewed," says Holt, though he has not yet identified erroneous data or conclusions in published work.