I didn't know what the matrix effect was until I had a chance meeting with my supervisor years ago. At the time, I worked as a product development engineer in the medical devices industry. As part of my job, I often performed molecular testing on bone samples, looking for a minimum protein concentration in the samples. One day, after running samples, I was shocked to see that I got no results—zeros across the board. My supervisor happened to be walking by when the results appeared on my computer screen. He was shocked too. When he asked why there would be all zeros when that had never happened before, I hesitated to speak.