Berkeley: Day 31 - Productivity Through Negation

[funranium]

There is a researcher who needed to get a fresh permit-to-operate for his x-ray machine, which he had been given as a gift. The snag was that his research involved human subjects. That has some extra requirements for training and certification for the operators. He didn't know what they were so he asked, not quite kindly, if I could tell him what those requirements were.

So, I burnt this morning researching what was required slapped it all together by lunch and gave him a three page long email full of links indicating what he needed to do to get up and running.

I was cordially thanked for all the work I did but he considered the requirements overwhelming. He told me to shelve my efforts on the permit so far because he'd decided to find a way to run his study without using x-rays.

Hooray, I think, for a morning of wasted effort preventing several days worth of work. The real test will be to see if he actually doesn't use the machine.