Rough Going

Upper management at a previous position required me to report EDS results to two decimal places, even through the samples were rough, irregular and non-homogeneous. Despite my reluctance to provide the data, I strongly persuaded. I wanted to keep my job.

One particular upper manager had strong views on this, they bordered on religious. It seems he use to get these types of results from another microscopist, who was no longer at the company. After all the computer prints it out to two decimal places, doesn’t it?

I use to provide a disclaimer attached to my results. It made me feel that I was complying with the boss and still being true to my standards.

I recently had a chance to run an experiment on the affects of surface roughness and EDS results. I ran EDS on a textured metal sample, then polished the sample to a 1 micron polish. With all the parameters the same, I then reran EDS.

Here’s my results:

Rough surface: 12.4% lead

53.0% copper

34.6% zinc

The same sample after polishing

Polished to 1um: 4.1% lead

58.9% copper

37.0% zinc

What a difference! The lead content changes by 300%! The other elements didn’t change that much. Seems I was right (of course I knew I was) to insist on the disclaimer.

It seems that when science and politics get mixed up, science losses. CP Snow wrote a thin little booklet about science and government. I wonder what he would have written about science and business.