The twist is that all the stuff dramatized in this article is bog standard analytical chemistry process + technique, including the solid phase extraction. All

The twist is that all the stuff dramatized in this article is bog standard analytical chemistry process + technique, including the solid phase extraction. All this stuff is in consumable kits and turnkey machines, which yes do require expertise and care to use properly but there's nothing weird about it. Samples are always a mixture of too much crap you don't want and which interfere with each others' detection. Etc. It's all part of the job. Also Fourteen hours is about the length of the practical lab exam portion of my undergrad analytical chemistry course, spread over a few days of course. Of course this was in the nineties and maybe SPE was novel - all the other chromatography and spectroscopy was more or less established though It's basically the same as the articles you see where curl, nmap, dd are breathlessly described as novel hacking tools. Still copaganda I guess