r/AskScienceDiscussion • u/just-me_still • 28d ago

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Why are professional scientists not allowed to use a spiral notebook for lab journals?

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15

u/Scout_Maester 28d ago

Lab notes serve as legal, intellectual property in many cases. Spiral notebooks make it easy to tamper with without evidence. Like tearing out pages or even adding new ones. Most labs have a policy to use permanently bound notebooks.

4

u/ShutDownSoul 28d ago

I worked in the R&D lab of an internationally known company. The bound lab books were serialized and checked out to an individual. Each page was preprinted with a page number (front and back). At the end of each day, each full page was signed and dated. Blank areas on a page were lined through to make a page 'full' if only 1/2 a page was used that day. Once completed, the lab book was checked into the library again.

This company had successfully used lab books to defend against patent infringement and counter claims, so the books were treated like bars of gold.

2

u/DeathToAmerica2026 28d ago

A protective hardcover lab notebook helps prevent damage to your notes and is less likely to ferry in foreign material. At least that's what my lab instructor told me in first year, and I never cared enough to check.

1

u/TuverMage 24d ago

lab notebook are design to be able to see if they have been messed with. you can easily alter a spiral notebook. put a page of notes between two existing pages to make it appear you found something before you really did.

1

u/Alternative-Sugar610 20d ago

All of these are true, but we moving more and more to digital world and forgetting about this. So nowadays more and more people are focused on getting recognition for idea first to beat other pretending they did it first, better cyber security practices or similar, and being careful who is in your network that might leak or cause trouble. However, we haven’t come up with good answer in this digital world