Describe something daft that has happened in a pharmaceutical company (no names please!)?

Question

My examples:

QC samples are routinely left sunbathing on the windowsill for approximately 2 weeks prior to being analysed. Hmmm, I wonder why we always find the light degradation product?!?!?

Quantitation of degradation has to be done using consistent integration parameters - resulting in wildly inaccurate results occasionaly, which have to be reported as "accurate"!

Answer 1

QC samples are not 'routinely' left in sunlight.  Don't state this as a fact  unless you can back it up.

Explain how this is a problem.  This isn't physics so the math is not straight foward.  If the degridation is first order, then we use a corresponding first order differential equation.  If it's second order, then we use a second order differential equation and so on.   Some reactions are quantified by second order partial differential equations of 3, 4, or even 5 variables.  These are IMPOSSIBLE to have an exact solution for when dealing with large systems. We try to include as many of the variables as possible, but you have to understand that chemistry is mostly experimental.   When we first model an equation to something chemical, it will undergo several changes before it's accurate.  Google QSAR equations and look at how medicinal chemists predict ED50s, IC50s, etc.

Answer 2

I used to work in the QC department of a pharmaceautical company.

A friend of mine once spent several minutes trying to light a bunsen burner that he'd connected to an air line.

One time our density meter broke, so we had to use hygrometers. Another friend put a hygrometer in a product she was testing and a few minutes later, put ANOTHER hygrometer in the same sample then wondered why her sample was so dense as the second hygrometer wasn't fully sinking into the sample as expected. It was a sample of Symethicone in a measuring cylinder and this stuff is opaque, so she didn't see the first hygrometer she'd already dropped in :-P

Another friend accidently turned the muffle oven on HIGH, so the plastic stoppers in all her volumetric flasks melted and most of the flasks exploded with the pressure.