The PCR* god, or when science meets magical thinking

I believe that a lot of us will feel identified with the title of this entry, even though some will not admit it in the open. The general stereotype of scientists, which is mostly true by the way, is that we are atheist, materialists, and highly critical. That's how we approach our work and man things in our everyday life. But despite what TV shows want to portray, we are also human, an thus, subject to despair, confusion and panic.
It is widely accepted, that religions arose as part of a psychological and social need to explain the unknown, and provide comfort for the collective. So, in the field of science, where we deal with unknowns on a day to day basis, how do we deal with an experiment that fails over and over when everything seems to be working just fine?
How do we explain the existence of a stubborn bacteria that refuses to die no matter how many times we put it in the autoclave? How about the typical case of pens, reagents or even paper towels disappearing and reappearing in a seemingly random pattern?
When we reach these levels of desperation, we scientists only have one refuge: the supernatural.

Several supernatural entities have been described so far populating labs around the world:

The lab midget: A trickster, like aluxes and pixies.

The PCR god: to whom we all pray to get clear bands and specific PCR products.

Saint Charles Darwin: the patron of all evolutionary analyses
Saint Gregor Mendel: patron of geneticists. Protects against PCR contamination.

I believe there must be many more. Maybe we should make a worldwide survey and write a grant proposal...





His holiness the PCR god inspired this representation on the person of E. Scheinvar.



* PCR (Polymerase chain reaction): It is a technique that serves to make many copies of an specific fragment of DNA. Like what they do in CSI to catch the killer.