Halloween costumes that really scare scientists

Some scientists, even on Halloween, might be relatively immune to the fear of things that nonetheless freak out many everyday normal people.

Brains, powerful lasers, antibiotic resistant genetically-modified bacteria, potent viruses, radioactivity.

The list goes on and on. Mutant cells and animals. DNA containing cancer-causing genes.

So as Halloween approaches, what does scare the heck out of scientists?

Here is my list of the top scariest Halloween costumes to freak the lab coats off of scientists.

If you are a scientist you might want to sit down.

• The Ghost of grants “not discussed” (it was a good grant, really!)
• The Outlier (that data point that ruins everything)
• The Monster Teaching Load (think of “The Blob” and run)
• The Third Reviewer (if you just do these 23 new experiments….)
• The Sequester (leave my precious funding alone!)
• The Ghost of grants past (you say it expired?)
• The Grim Scooper (how could you scoop us…we’ve been working on this for four years…)
• The Zombie Committee Chair (they want your brain)
• The Idea Pirate (where’d you get that hypothesis?)
• The Hulk (you know the one who angrily wants to crush you for getting into their “territory” and has 30 people in their lab, always has tons of NIH grants and CSN papers every year and the one to which reviewers compare you)