
Scientists across the spectrum — at universities, at public health labs, at biotechs — are facing a global shortage of pipette tips that threatens to upend their work.
Adding insult to that injury: Many of them don’t actually understand their distributors’ process for determining which orders will be filled first, or how much of they’re order they’ll actually get.
Both the Trump and Biden administrations have used federal law — the Defense Production Act, specifically — to ensure federal contracts for Covid-19 testing supplies are filled first.