6 ms·

I'm amazed that wasn't taken into account! Many years ago, in the final year of my Biology degree, I did a paid summer internship at an Evolutionary Biology lab

I'm amazed that wasn't taken into account! Many years ago, in the final year of my Biology degree, I did a paid summer internship at an Evolutionary Biology lab here in Spain, assisting in a project where they were researching relationships between metal ion accumulation (mostly zinc) and certain SNPs (≈"gene varieties"). A lot of my work was in slicing tiny fragments of deep-frozen human livers and kidneys in a biosafety cabinet over dry ice. The reason I bring this up is because the researchers had taken the essential precaution of providing me with a ceramic knife to do the cutting (and platic pliers), to eliminate the risk of contaminating the samples with metal from ordinary cutting implements. That some research on microplatics did not take into account the absolutely mental amount of single-use plastic that is involved in biological research, particularly gloves of all things, boggles the mind.

p-e-w 7mo ago
> I'm amazed that wasn't taken into account! Agreed. While I didn’t anticipate this myself, nor would have likely figured it out myself, I also don’t expect my claims to influence global policy. The scientists who failed to realize this do expect that, so the standards we expect from them need to be higher in accordance with that.
johnbarron 7mo ago
>> I'm amazed that wasn't taken into account! This was taken into account: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47563392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47563392
- timr 7mo ago
  You found a paper saying that contamination is possible. That doesn’t mean that most of these plastic studies are doing the necessary controls, let alone the (almost impossible) task of preventing the contamination in a laboratory setting where nanomolar detection levels are used to make broad claims.
  - idiotsecant 7mo ago
    Luckily HN software developers, the foremost authority on literally every subject imaginable, are here to bless the world with their insights.
    - bonoboTP 7mo ago
      I think there's an important distinction of smug better-knowing instances. "I have unique insight as a non-expert that all experts miss and the entire field is blind to" -> usually nonsense "I think in this specific instance academically qualified people are missing something that's obvious to me" -> often true.
      - timr 7mo ago
        There’s also the possibility that some of us actually, you know…have subject-matter expertise.
        refulgentis 7mo ago
        Doubtful, in your case, no? "Nanomolar" is a dissolved-species concentration unit. It doesn't apply to spectroscopic particle counting.
        timr 7mo ago
        Uh, yeah. I know what the word means. See my response to the other comment where you say the same thing.
        deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
    - refulgentis 7mo ago
      Spiritual equivalent of a life sciences forum discovering memory safety, one person who wrote code for a bit saying they wrote a memory bug in C once, then someone clutching pearls about why all programmers irresponsibly write memory unsafe code given it has a global impact. Been here 16 years, it's always an adventure seeing whether stuff like this falls into: A) Polite interest that doesn't turn into self-keyword-association B) Science journalism bad C) Can you believe no one else knows what they're doing. (A) almost never happens, has to avoid being top 10 on front page and/or be early morning/late night for North America and Europe. (i.e. most of the audience) (B) is reserved for physics and math. (C) is default leftover. Weekends are horrible because you'll get a "harshin' the vibe" penalty if you push back at all. People will pick at your link but not the main one and treat you like you're argumentative. (i.e. 'you're taking things too seriously' but a thoughtful person's version)
Betelbuddy 7mo ago
>>That some research on microplatics did not take into account the absolutely mental amount of single-use plastic that is involved in biological research, particularly gloves of all things, boggles the mind What boggles the mind is you commenting on an article you clearly did not read...stating something that is not there...
- jvandrian 7mo ago
  The article starts with this: "Nitrile and latex gloves that scientists wear while they are measuring microplastics may lead to a potential overestimation of the tiny pollutants, according to a University of Michigan study."
  - Betelbuddy 7mo ago
    Read it again. You answer sustains my argument...
    - jvandrian 7mo ago
      Blocked it is then
Thorrez 7mo ago
> single-use plastic that is involved in biological research The samples were not contaminated by plastic in the gloves. Latex gloves don't contain plastic, they're made from natural rubber. Nitrile gloves also don't contain plastic, although they're very similar to plastic. The contamination that this study found wasn't microplastic contamination. The gloves weren't adding microplastics. The gloves were adding stearates, which aren't plastic, but look like microplastic in many of the methods for measuring microplastics.
caycep 7mo ago
granted, I feel like maybe a review of lab equipment regularly is not a bad idea. in my low level undergraduate summer job, we realized all the stuff I did in those 3 months were moot at the end because I end up running some blanks on the pipetting robot and discovered that some glitch resulted in progressively less material being pipetted towards the end of the tray vs. the beginning....

p-e-w 7mo ago

> I'm amazed that wasn't taken into account! Agreed. While I didn’t anticipate this myself, nor would have likely figured it out myself, I also don’t expect my claims to influence global policy. The scientists who failed to realize this do expect that, so the standards we expect from them need to be higher in accordance with that.

johnbarron 7mo ago

>> I'm amazed that wasn't taken into account! This was taken into account: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47563392 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47563392

timr 7mo ago
You found a paper saying that contamination is possible. That doesn’t mean that most of these plastic studies are doing the necessary controls, let alone the (almost impossible) task of preventing the contamination in a laboratory setting where nanomolar detection levels are used to make broad claims.
- idiotsecant 7mo ago
  Luckily HN software developers, the foremost authority on literally every subject imaginable, are here to bless the world with their insights.
  - bonoboTP 7mo ago
    I think there's an important distinction of smug better-knowing instances. "I have unique insight as a non-expert that all experts miss and the entire field is blind to" -> usually nonsense "I think in this specific instance academically qualified people are missing something that's obvious to me" -> often true.
    - timr 7mo ago
      There’s also the possibility that some of us actually, you know…have subject-matter expertise.
      - refulgentis 7mo ago
        Doubtful, in your case, no? "Nanomolar" is a dissolved-species concentration unit. It doesn't apply to spectroscopic particle counting.
        timr 7mo ago
        Uh, yeah. I know what the word means. See my response to the other comment where you say the same thing.
        deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
  - refulgentis 7mo ago
    Spiritual equivalent of a life sciences forum discovering memory safety, one person who wrote code for a bit saying they wrote a memory bug in C once, then someone clutching pearls about why all programmers irresponsibly write memory unsafe code given it has a global impact. Been here 16 years, it's always an adventure seeing whether stuff like this falls into: A) Polite interest that doesn't turn into self-keyword-association B) Science journalism bad C) Can you believe no one else knows what they're doing. (A) almost never happens, has to avoid being top 10 on front page and/or be early morning/late night for North America and Europe. (i.e. most of the audience) (B) is reserved for physics and math. (C) is default leftover. Weekends are horrible because you'll get a "harshin' the vibe" penalty if you push back at all. People will pick at your link but not the main one and treat you like you're argumentative. (i.e. 'you're taking things too seriously' but a thoughtful person's version)

Betelbuddy 7mo ago

>>That some research on microplatics did not take into account the absolutely mental amount of single-use plastic that is involved in biological research, particularly gloves of all things, boggles the mind What boggles the mind is you commenting on an article you clearly did not read...stating something that is not there...

jvandrian 7mo ago
The article starts with this: "Nitrile and latex gloves that scientists wear while they are measuring microplastics may lead to a potential overestimation of the tiny pollutants, according to a University of Michigan study."
- Betelbuddy 7mo ago
  Read it again. You answer sustains my argument...
  - jvandrian 7mo ago
    Blocked it is then

Thorrez 7mo ago

> single-use plastic that is involved in biological research The samples were not contaminated by plastic in the gloves. Latex gloves don't contain plastic, they're made from natural rubber. Nitrile gloves also don't contain plastic, although they're very similar to plastic. The contamination that this study found wasn't microplastic contamination. The gloves weren't adding microplastics. The gloves were adding stearates, which aren't plastic, but look like microplastic in many of the methods for measuring microplastics.

caycep 7mo ago

granted, I feel like maybe a review of lab equipment regularly is not a bad idea. in my low level undergraduate summer job, we realized all the stuff I did in those 3 months were moot at the end because I end up running some blanks on the pipetting robot and discovered that some glitch resulted in progressively less material being pipetted towards the end of the tray vs. the beginning....