Trials and Tribulations of Lure and Trap Testing: Field Trials
James Feston, BCE, Director of Research and Development, Insects Limited
One of the most exciting and frustrating parts of developing a new product in-house or evaluating an existing product for distribution is testing it out in the real world or as we call this “field trials”. Field trials are typically carried out in third-party production, storage or distribution sites. On paper, the story should be so simple:
• Develop a protocol
• Find a testing site
• Carry out protocol exactly as it is written
• Get your answer
Of course, in real life, the story is much more fraught than a short bullet-pointed list.
So, for the purposes of this article, I feel the story is best expressed in brief narrative form.
A field trial of an All Beetle Trap at a third party location. Photo by E. Estabrook
It wasn’t easy to get to this point. You heard about this product/idea years ago, and have been working with it ever since. You’ve invested time and money followed by successive additional investments of time and money. You did all the research, it checks out in the lab, success is just around the corner!
Pheromone Testing Process
It’s time to get it out there and do a final check, get that rubber to hit the road. With some leveraging of contacts and some kind words (and possibly more money), you find the perfect site to test things out. What fortune! And it’s only been a brief year and a half since you started the search.
It’s a shame that by the time it was ready, the temperature dropped early, the test facility isn’t climate controlled, and the bugs have settled in to wait until spring to start flying again. No matter, you file away the materials and the protocol until Spring. Sooner than you know it, the bugs are flying and you get out there and set up the test!
All is well until you check the traps for the third time. A few are missing from on-site cleaning, another has been vandalized, and another is filled to the brim with an insect you were not even looking for. Also, the facility manager helpfully informs you that they performed a pesticide fogging of the facility 2 weeks ago and forgot to mention it.
You press on! The trial comes to an end, you have been looking at the numbers during the trial and you think things will be OK. You take all the data back, crunch the numbers and the results are… mixed. The good scientist in you recognizes the “challenging” data set in front you and draws only the conclusions that are supported.
Which is that we need to do this whole thing over again.
Now older and wiser, you conduct the experiment again, minus some kinks, get much cleaner data, and (let’s make this a happy ending) it turns out that the test product is great and should be rushed to market with great haste and conviction! Now on to the next!
Field Testing Takeaways
Fortunately, most field trials don’t feature all the pitfalls from the story. But to be sure, there will always be something, and that’s the challenge that makes a successful test rewarding. So what are the takeaways?
Stay focused. What question are you really trying to answer? If the purpose of the testing is to determine if the product works or not, write your protocol first and foremost, to answer that question. The more complicated it gets, and the more questions you try to answer in the same test, the harder it gets to pull anything meaningful out if things go south.
Stay organized. When experiments go on for months or weeks, it’s easy to get lost. A clear summary at the beginning of your protocol of what you are doing and why is helpful to stay on track. Creating your data table ahead of time and filling it in as you go, is superior to the sticky note, random notebook method of record keeping. Ask me how I know.
Plan for issues. Of course, you can’t predict the future, but you can certainly learn from the past when constructing a protocol. Try to remember the things that have gone wrong before, and work to avoid them, or plan around them entirely.
Communicate clearly. Field studies often require cooperation between several people from multiple companies who may have various degrees of capacity, and interest, in helping you. The spectrum runs somewhere between enthusiastic/competent to antagonistic/ineffectual (they don’t have time be playing bug scientist when there is work to be done!) The point is, do your best to make sure everyone understands what they are doing, and to some degree, why. Also, don’t be too surprised if you find participants making “executive decisions” about the protocol. Just try to be aware and communicative enough to catch these surprise changes before things get too bad.
Keep it real. You have a choice when you are interpreting results. It isn’t hard to draw questionable conclusions from a data set, especially messy field data. And that is when you need to be judicious and honest. If not for it’s own sake, then at least to avoid the product tanking when it hits the market because it doesn’t work. The worst part of selling a product that is intended to help people, is to have them tell you it doesn’t work. Do the right thing, and sleep well at night.
One of Insects Limited’s core values is to provide the absolute best products available worldwide that help our customers solve their pest issues. It is only through thorough research, study, and testing that we achieve superior products.
This is what we take pride in and this is why we take the extra steps to make sure that all of our products are thoroughly tested before they are brought to market.
Insects Limited, Insect Pheromone Company
Insects Limited, Inc. researches, tests, develops, manufactures and distributes pheromones and trapping systems for insects in a global marketplace with a focus on the statement above. The highly qualified staff also can assist with consultation, areas of expert witness, training presentations and grant writing.
Insects Limited, Inc. specializes in a unique niche of pest control that provides mainstream products and services to protect stored food, grain, museum collections, tobacco, timber and fiber worldwide. Please take some time to view these products and services in our web store.
