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drgolast Sunday at 11:55 PM1 replyview on HN

This remains uncontrolled and unblinded experiment complicating the interpretation of the results. For instance, can you be sure that any changes you might see are not caused by (e.g., hormonal, behavioural) changes induced by your knowledge that you just received 10x the average amount of microplastics?


Replies

koengyesterday at 5:14 PM

if 10x the average amount of microplastics are showing changes that are approximately equivalent to hormonal or behavioral changes, it's not a significant factor to be worried about.

There are many times where unblinded experiments are still valid. And unfortunately, n=1 means that you can't have controls. The question: "did this intervention, in one person, cause a greater-than-normal increase in epigenetic changes, above baseline?"