Lab Diary #436
Finally a short post 📢 May Include: Early termination, Randomization groups, Too Many Computers
Spoken into my phone while driving
9:43. So. Things have changed, and I am driving home from the study, and I guess I wanted to give an update while it’s fresh on my mind. So, this morning, C—, a bespectacled man with a small mustache and goatee, kind of a classic beta cuck—no shade—came in and told me that I was unfortunately going to be early terminated. At first, I was scared that something had fallen through in my strategy, like, for instance, they had discovered the Altoids tin, but C— quickly assured me that, in fact, I was entered into the wrong randomization protocol. It was a problem with the computers. There were so many, Dr. Vince, a jubilant redhead with that pioneer-y, workhorse energy, later told me. What happened was that I was entered into the non-menthol randomization group, so when it came to me starting, and I was given my mental cigarette, it messed the data up, and there was no way to fix it. The data was corrupt, and so I had to suffer.
That was just the way things were, C— said. This was a scientific study, after all, and I was bad science. C— told me that he would give me $500 for the extra day and that that was “the most that I could ethically give you.”
Back to the story. So, yesterday I met this girl named K— who used to live in New Orleans. She was young—I think she said she was 22—and, like many of the nurses, she had her hair pushed back in a tight ponytail. We talked about New Orleans and how confusing Kansas City was, even though she’d lived there for almost eight years. K— told me that I should get an IV; that, in so many words, all those pokes were in “a good location.”1 And then K— added, “Well, I guess it depends on what jobs you’re trying to get.” This morning, I told K— I got the IV because of her recommendation. I also told her that I told the supervisor that I got the IV because of him, but I was lying. This was the truth.
Anyways, whenever C— came in to tell me that I was dismissed, K— was waiting outside, and when C— left, K— came back in to escort me to the product test, I guess no one told her, so it was me that had to tell her that, well, actually, I wasn’t going to be testing any products at all. She sympathized with me and told me to try to talk to Dr. Vince—the big guy—and get him to let me stay, or at least pay me the full amount. I appreciated her advocacy, something that I don’t see at a lot of other facilities, but that was really strong here: a kind of solidarity between subjects and employees, not an adversarial relationship. I told her about my friend P—.2 We talked about things. And I don’t remember how we got there, but I remember her telling me about how some people admitted to her that they weren’t actually smokers at all. “I don’t know why you’re telling me, of all people,” she said to me, referring to the confessors. “You’re lucky I don’t say anything.” I thought it was interesting that people felt safe to talk to her, but I did note that she didn’t have snitch energy, which I told her. Between K— and the pregnant girl from before, there was an admission, kind of explicit even, that rules were broken, and maybe they had to be. Then K— ranted about the non-smoker, and why they didn’t just do healthy studies—there were so many more.
At some point, I asked C— if he would consider giving me the study completion bonus, thinking about what K— had said—love her—and he told me that he’d have to check in with Dr. Vince. Soon after, Dr. Vince came in to repeat why I was being early terminated, but I think it was also his way of checking in. I had a feeling, a good feeling, that I should ask him, and so I did. Pensive, he asked me if I knew how much the completion bonus was. I said I didn’t. “1200?” C— said. He looked it up, and was right, and Dr. Vince repeated the number out loud and then began to pace back and forth in the room of bunkbeds that they called a suite, his head pointed down and his spindly finger tapping his face. He returned to face me then. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “We’ll eat the cost. You’ll get the study completion bonus instead of being paid for the day.”
They also told me that I had priority status for any future studies that I might want to do. This meant smoking studies, of course, as I was a smoker now, according to their system, and that’s something that wouldn’t change, not quickly, anyway. There was one happening right then, C— said, it was called a respirator study—like I knew what that meant—and there was one more group checking in on the 9th. C— made it seem like it might not work out after all because the timing was so close, but that there was another study that they were anticipating in the summer or fall.
Anyways, I would be down to go back, and in a way, the summer would be more convenient, and would actually give me some money for travel, which would be nice. But of course, it’s all a bit of a chance. I keep thinking about what K— said when I told her the news: “I tell people all the time, you need to have another thing. This can’t be your only thing.”
11:26. It’s worth repeating that it’s hard to prepare for a study even if you have experience like I do, because all facilities are a little different. Each one has its quirks. I’m thinking about Dr. Vince which, if it has a quirk, it’s that it’s built for hyper-efficiency. The operation is almost foolproof. There is little room to make any mistake, to receive any bad data. At other places, you do it by hand, you scratch it out and try again, you reboot, and you restart. And that to me is a big difference between here and the other facilities. Even the facility itself is perfect, ever-new, evergreen, sterile, despite the sheer number of people who live here every day.
The rooms at Dr. Vince are always open; there are cameras everywhere, and I’m sure that someone is watching them; there are nurses and staff members and supervisors that always come to check on you; and, not always, but on the first day, you even had to get permission to use the bathroom, which meant that staff was aware at all times not only who was in the bathroom but who was in what bathroom, even.
Something that Dr. Vince doesn’t care about is food—food is Icon’s thing—but here, food is given a little early or a little late, there’s no requirement to tell someone when you took the first bite, or the last. It’s a little more informal in that regard, and I wonder if that’s organized in advance with the study sponsors, like if Dr. Vince is like, “yeah, we don’t really do the food thing here,” you know, that’s not our thing.
One thing that I feel like is really important to note about Dr. Vince is that the staff call people by their names and not their initials, something I’ve never heard before. It shocked me at first. When I talked to P—, she even told me that she told a staff member that she didn’t go by her birth name, and then all of a sudden the staff member corrected it in her file, and everyone started calling her by her long-chosen name, which was just really cool, something that should be normal, right, but which unfortunately isn’t.
There are always pros and cons. Here, you can’t touch the lights. You can’t even close your own door. If I had to think about all of the facilities that I’ve been to, then I would say that the best thing about Dr. Vince was the staff, who were just amazing, really, and the food that wasn’t bad either, and the fact that you could non-stressfully get the things that you needed. I borrowed a charger, got a pen, got Chapstick, got toothpaste, I even got a beanie, and it was all cool. The downside was the feeling of always being watched, which never really went away, and, I think that Dr. Vince might argue, was kind of the point of the whole charade.
Until next time,
—Cory the Rat
By this, she meant that while the regular needles were normally stuck in the inner elbow, which bruised visibly due to continued use, the IV needles were typically placed in a less conspicuous part of the arm, therefore allowing more discretion for when you were outside of the lab.
My best friend, who has done studies there