Hi everyone. This is part 2 of the series. It is about walking through a very difficult time but sharing it in an honest way. These were the decisions that I had to make and the challenges that I had to face to ultimately get to the point where God wanted me. If you have not read part 1, please go back and look at that first. It will give context for part 2. With that, we pick up where we left off in part 1!
My first decision was difficult but critical for me. I had to shut everything down immediately for that essential experiment so that I would not be able to acquire data from it. Even though I wanted to at least get some insight as to whether the experiment would have worked, and I struggled with the thought of walking away with nothing, there was a problem with continuing. What if I proceeded and the data that emerged looked beautiful? I could only imagine the temptation and issues it would have caused. The mistake made in the control condition created a situation where it would be more difficult for the control and experimental conditions to be different. Therefore, if the data looked great, you could only imagine how much stronger the significance could have been had the control treatment been executed properly. It would create a desire to somehow justify that it would be “okay” to just “omit” reporting what happened to the control. Even though I believe I would have done the right thing, I decided I did not want to be placed in that situation at all. The best way to protect my integrity was to make the decision early on to eliminate the possibility that it could be broken.
The more challenging task was what to say to my team about what happened. The lab was now in a crisis. Nothing could be repaired from what was lost. We could only deal with the cards that we were dealt and find a way to operate in a better way. I would have to talk about how to implement a series of check points to ensure that we would be more meticulous in the future. I am not going to pretend that all I could think about was ways to encourage the heart. I was stuck in a really disheartened mentality for a few days after it happened where I could only feel the pain of what I perceived had been lost. “There, there Silvia, you poor little thing, everyone understands how this is devastating. You have a right to be upset.”
I needed help to know what to do.