So you thought pipetting wasn't trendy?
'In a dreary, lonely lab a young female postdoc puts down her pipette to massage her aching latexed hands. Sounds like the perfect set-up for a hot new music video. Well at least it does to Tyler Kay, creative director at Compare Networks Production Group (CNPG) in San Francisco, California.
A recent release from CNPG features a group of five winsome young men singing the praises of a new automated pipetting system called epMotion, made by international biotech company Eppendorf. As the lab heroine is whisked to a beach under the Golden Gate Bridge, the band members gyrate around her and her glasses are shed along with her inhibitions, just before the chorus. “Girl you need epMotion” (whispered: “yeah girl it's time to automate.”)'
For Eppendorf's stab at the boy band, pipette-appeal genre, see the video here.
What do the scientists themselves think? Well, one view is: "Please, in the name of all that's holy, make it stop. I'll even buy something from Eppendorf if you take it down." (The Scientist at Nature Network). Another scientist's opinion (in the comments): "I’m fairly sure that guy in the sunglasses was in grad school with me you know… If I’m right, his name is Lauren and he’s an ecologist…"
The dawn of this new advertising era is heralded at Mind The Gap, whose verdict is that "it’s always good to have entertaining portrayals of scientists out there, reminding everyone else that we’re not an alien species". The first "classic of the genre" thence discussed, The PCR Song (courtesy BioRad), is here.
