• sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    4 hours ago

    I heard a joke once that a physical chemistry experiment will have 1000 data points per trend line; I organic chemistry will have 10 data points, and biochem will have 2 data points.

    I bet to biochemists it’s very insulting. Back to the comment in the anti-acknowledgements, that was insulting without even being funny.

    I like the ones that are symmetrical, like math thinks that physics is easy, and physics things that math is too unreal (I don’t remember the jokes)

    • emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
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      3 hours ago

      a physical chemistry experiment will have 1000 data points per trend line; I organic chemistry will have 10 data points, and biochem will have 2 data points.

      There is an element of truth in this, but that one biochem datapoint probably took more money and (wo)manpower than a hundred phys chem datapoints. Which is sad, because biological systems are usually more complex, and therefore more ‘noisy’, needing more datapoints for a definitive result. Medical studies get a lot of datapoints for obvious reasons, and because they can afford to do it thanks to Merck et al.