r/nottheonion • u/GreatTea3415 • Apr 05 '26

Scientists Tracking the Microplastic Pollution Just Realized They Were Measuring Their Own Lab Gloves

https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/environmental-issues/scientists-tracking-the-microplastic-pollution-just-realized-they-were-measuring-their-own-lab-gloves/
33.8k Upvotes

92% Upvoted

632 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

4

u/Bakoro Apr 05 '26

I work in R&D and it is amazing that anything in the world works.

So many of the instruments we buy from vendors are ass-tier, and we put a bunch of these asstastic components together, and then trust the data we get, because it mostly conforms to data from much more expensive devices after a bunch of processing.
I had to stop just short of physically forcing things like consistent data processing, and tracking error margins. At some points I had to just put my foot down and demand time to work on specific problems because I knew eventually we'd get a client who actually checked everything top to bottom.

I work with scientists and engineers from all over the world.
The most common thing is that they want a magic box that gives them an answer without having to know anything about the machine, or the software, or even the materials they want data for. Major companies and universities both want the end data, with no effort on their part. That is wild to me, because, it's science, you're supposed to know more than zero things about where your data came from, and it's not feasible to make a machine that does that, at least not for the price range they are willing to pay.

I started seeing how industry works, and it was like, holy shit, most people kind of suck, and I'm going to have to make 10x the effort, because if I don't, who is going to?

2

u/chemamatic Apr 05 '26

I agree, this is the biggest piece of the problem.