I have multisensory aphantasia. I assumed everyone was like this until I read an HN thread a long time ago. I have a very strong inner monologue. For example, I can hear part of a song in my head. Ie the guitar but it's my inner voice initiating the sound of a guitar. But I cannot hear a whole song. Maybe it's what rhythm had always been a challenge for me with guitar and piano.
I haven't really read the studies but shouldn't they have negative controls to negate these effects? Wouldn't that let the author's correct for a baseline contamination level in the lab?
That was the difficulty with DNA: how do you make that control if everything is contaminated and minor variations in protocol (like wafting your hands over the samples one too many times) changes the baseline?
It took years to figure out proper methods and many subfields have their own adjusted procedures and sometimes even statistical models. At least with DNA you could denature it very effectively, I’m not sure how they’re going to figure out the contamination issue with microplastics.
I have worked at a sequencing center before. DNA contamination is easier to mitigate because the lab disposables aren't made out of what you are testing. Disposables are almost always plastic and tend to have minimal DNA contamination. Environmental DNA contamination is largely mitigated with PCR hoods and careful protocols/practices. However, these procedures don't mitigate DNA contamination at the collection level, which is likely where the statistical models you mentioned help.
I can't imagine wafting your hands over the tubes would change the plastic amounts substantially compared to whatever negative controls the papers used. But again, I am not an expert on this kind of analytical chemistry. I always worry more about batch effects. But it does seem like microplastics are becoming the new microbiome.
Not even that! This study doesn't even say contamination is causing overestimation. It says that it's possible.
But as mentioned elsewhere in the thread, everyone knows that it's possible and take measure to mitigate it.
A paper that said those mitigations were insufficient or empirically found not to work would be interesting. A paper saying "you should mitigate this" is... not very interesting.
> Not even that! This study doesn't even say contamination is causing overestimation. It says that it's possible.
From the article:
> They found that on average, the gloves imparted about 2,000 false positives per millimeter squared area.
I dunno, that seems like a lot of false positives. Doesn’t that strongly imply that overestimation would be a pretty likely outcome here? Sounds like a completely sterile 1mm^2 area would raise a ton of false positives because of just the gloves.
The way you mitigate this is by using negative samples. Basically blank swabs/tubes/whatever that don't have the substance you're testing in it, but that is handled the same way.
Then the tested result is Actual Sample Result - Negative Sample Result.
So you'd expect a microplastic sample to have 2,000 plus N per mm^2, and N is the result of your test.
That has happened many times in scientific research. The aforementioned fad in DNA sequencing was one such case where tons of papers before proper methods were developed are entirely useless, essentially just garbage data. Another case is fMRI studies before the dead salmon experiment.
That is how I became serious about programming. I played around a bit but I never really wrote anything useful until I started playing Asheron's Call. I learned C++ to write bots and other plugins for Decal (an embedded mod framework).
There are other examples of oncoviruses including: Epstein-Barr virus and Human herpes virus 8 (Kaposi's Sarcoma).
Makes me wonder: Is the cancer "industry" searching for causes or just after-the-fact treatment?
There are billions of dollars spent on this problem through huge DNA/RNA/Epigenomics/Chromatin Accessibility sequencing initiatives. There is also a huge amount of model system work such as mouse models.
I played Aardwolf briefly but I mostly stuck to a nightmare/LP MUD that is still around but essentially empty. I learned to code (which ended up being a gateway to C/C++), grief, and be compassionate to new players.
I have a different problem with my M3 Macbook Pro. If I leave chrome (sometimes other apps too) open with the macbook plugged in and the lid closed the computer will get very warm and stay very warm until I unplug it / close chrome.
Edit: It's also not warm when plugged in and using chrome with the lid open.
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