this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
638 points (99.1% liked)

Science Memes

10923 readers
1922 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] grubberfly@mander.xyz 7 points 6 months ago (2 children)

what'd be the smallest sample size that would yield a relevant result?

30? 1000?

[–] Gonzako@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] Shellbeach@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Can we not... Just... Bring back some moon dust?

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

There's the possibility of contamination if we do that.

[–] flora_explora@beehaw.org 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Well, if humans were a homogeneous population maybe that could work. But just imagine the huge number of factors at play here. Like, demographics, cultural background (different exposures & different allergy rates in general I would guess), genetic susceptibilities, individual lifestyles (e.g smoking) and probably a lot more! Even a sample size of 1000 seems pretty small to test for general human allergy rates to moon dust. If you were talking about just one population of humans, e.g. the US, you would certainly need more than 30 but maybe not 1000.