Why media controls are important for your results!!

Hey Everyone..

A lot of young microbiologists have a question regarding importance of media control in concluding the results. Not to worry, I was one of you guys too. In fact I didn't realized the importance of media controls until I started with my research. It involved me to make various unusual medias and most of the time I used to neglect keeping a media control, only to gape at my flasks next day wondering whether any changes have occurred or no. 

So to all my young lazy microbiologists out there...here is an ultimate example which will explain you the importance of controls.

Consider a drunk man, alcohol filled up to his neck is walking on a plain road. You observe him walking while sitting on a bench and notice that this man keeps on tripping again and again as he walks. Now you come up with three different conclusions.

1. The road on which that person is walking , might be problematic.
2. This may be a normal careless walking habit of the person, or
3. This is happening maybe because the person is drunk.

SEE...a lot of confusion will cause ambiguity in your results and you might not be able to conclude the correct reason. This can be avoided by keeping certain controls like:-

1. Make another person, with no alcohol(negative control) walk on the road, which will tell you whether the problem is in the road or in your test person.
2. Make one more person (positive control) drink the similar amount of alcohol and observe his walking, this will tell you about the walking habits of alcohol.

Hence now if your negative control walks properly and your positive control keeps tripping like your test person, you can confidently conclude that the road is proper and the person normally doesn't walks like this. Thus you can surely say that the test person is tripping because he is under the influence of alcohol.

Same principle holds true for media controls too. Therefore to avoid any ambiguity and to prove the efficacy of your results you must always keep  controls. Hope this simple explanation helps you.

Thanks.

Lots of Love

- Staph