What Experiment or Research you wish somebody did?

[SomeHappyFish]

I want to see what you guys have in mind.

 

[GlassMunky]

That’s not how medical studies are discussed by knowledgeable folks. Test on 1,000 people and you will miss some one in a million effects that show up when a million people use it. Medical scientists know that.

and im not talking about studies being talked about to other scientists in a lab. im talking about how the average dr talks to their patients. a patient asks "is this safe" and they "yes all the facts say its safe". then we get new facts and ug-oh its no longer safe..... this absolutely happens in US medicine all the time over the last few decades..... to say otherwise is just crazy

 

[DanTheReefer]

I have a theory that an aluminum sulfate regimen could kill vermetid snails, dose it while mucous nets are active. Would like to test if it would kill vermetids and any other harmful effects and how long they would last.

 

[encrustingacro]

1. Molecular analysis-based delimitation/sorting out of Cynarina/Acanthophyllia and intermediate phenotypes ("Indophyllia")
2. Molecular analysis-based species level delimitation of Acanthastrea (echinata, subechinata, hemprichii, brevis, rotundoflora)
3. Molecular testing of Micromussa regularis and Acanthastrea minuta
4. Molecular "sorting-out" of the Mycedium/Pectinia/Physophyllia clade
5. Molecular testing of Goniastrea thecata (It's definitely not a Goniastrea; probably related to Favites vasta)
6. Molecular study of the relationship between Dipsastraea vietnamensis and Astraeosmilia
7. Molecular testing of the West-Australian population of cf Micromussa pacifica
8. Factors that affect polyp extension/coenosarc inflation and how much they correlate to coral health
9. Testing different propagation methods of solitary corals
10. Factors in captivity that affect coral growth forms

 

[megtrax17]

I want to see what you guys have in mind.

Honestly I know research is already done. But I’m overwhelmed with dosing. When I do my research on how to do something I like to know how it works, why it works, ect and get a better understanding of it. For example we know we can get the flu from someone else spreading the virus to us. I’m the type that likes to know how does it spread from that person to me, how did it get to that person, where did the flu start, ect.

So what I’m saying is I wish I could grasp a better more solid understanding of how to know EXACTLY what and when to dose down to the minute. Sure there are auto dosers that read parameters and do the guesswork for you but it would just be nice to know myself. I’ve asked this question so many times, watched so many videos and honestly am finding out that everyone is pretty much just GUESSING and hoping they’re right/hoping their test kits are right on dosing and it’s working for them but the not knowing the EXACT science on the numbers overwhelms me haha! We spend way too much on corals for guesswork and math that may or may not be right

 

[Reefkeepers Archive]

Finding different fish/invert predators for various of the more uncommon pests (I'm looking at YOU sea spiders)

Also specifically if bethenic centhropores are harmful to any tank inhabitants and which ones.


Also may have been done but simply the morphology of a splitting/growing LPS/SPS polyp, does the skeleton get absorbed and reformed when something like a lobo splits down the center, what about when it elongates, ir already has a skeleton wall, so does that get broken down? How does something like a scoly grow underneath the flesh/tissue, also what is the process of an acro polyp at the tip drifting to the side of the branch as the Coral grows?

 

[Spare time]

Maybe the scientists you know don’t do that but basically the entire western medicine model is exactly like that.
Think of how many pharmaceutical drugs were deemed safe after lots of human testing and then went to market and then years or decades later we learned about other problems after people died
Things like this absolutely do happen all the time. And that’s my point. Every dr you went to before getting prescribed that medication that caused problems said it was safe, that was “fact” based on lots of papers and studies.

Then new facts come out proving the old facts false….


You’re focusing on the wrong part of my post just to be argumentative and for what? Just to be right? To stand up for scientists? lol

Again, proper scientists don't claim things as facts. That is usually marketing or poor reporting. A pharmaceutical companies advertisements may say "fact" or "proven" but science is based around how much evidence you have for something not about 100% certainty. Evidence can change, which again is why no one says "facts" in science in its true meaning. Western medicine, when properly vetted, goes through many phases of trials before released to the public. However, regulatory mishandlings and failures of oversight could lead to a mistake on interpreting the data. Can you also provide examples instead of saying there is tons of examples? To be honest, it more or less sounds like you have no clue what the scientific method is or how it works and the rigor that data has to go through before it can be a widely accepted hypothesis. And yes I am defending scientists because if you ever bothered to know what it takes to become one and produce substantiated hypotheses, you would know your comment is ridiculous. I think you also are equating a lot of individuals' roles as the same in how western medicine is made, researched, tested by outsiders, marketing, and provided to prescribers. That is a very complicated set of processes that you seem to be lumping together with what I am defending which is how scrutinous the scientific method, when applied, is to testing a hypothesis.


Your response also doesn't really rebuke what I said about a hypotheses vs a theory in terms of acceptance. Very rarely is the closest thing to a fact in science (a theory) rejected.

 

[Spare time]

no offense but i feel like youre biased because yuore a scientist. MANY MANY MANY medical doctors absolutely talk like that to their normal everyday patients that dont have a phd or even a HS degree. because you don't see it doesnt mean it doesn't happen. because you dont deem them as knowledgeable folks doesnt mean it doesnt happen.

I don't think you realize that scientists often spend their lives trying to rip each other's hypotheses apart. That is part of the scientific method. Also the last line was kind of out of nowhere and again seems to be coming from some dislike you have towards science.

 

[Katrina71]

Birth control for nems good/bad.

 

[encrustingacro]

I'm not agreeing with @GlassMunky or anything, but there is some truth to science not being totally perfect. Because scientists need to aquire funding for their research, they are incentivized to push out eye-catching research articles with little afterthought to whether their studies are reproducible or claims are actually true.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

A cure for ich would, IMO, move this hobby forward in so many ways. Less newbies throwing in the towel, less death of livestock in homes and LSF, and possibly increased husbandry of various species. Oh, and a cure for impatience in the hobby would also be great!

I have a way to prevent it, but nobody wants to do it

 

[MnFish1]

i mean as of now, this is probably the best we can do since we don't know what it is. but id compare it to like going to a vet for your dog and them telling you "yup he's sick" and then not specifying weather its from a broken leg, a respiratory infection or cancer. just that they are "sick". Its kind of a useless moniker.

Agree - its kind of like going to the doctor - with a sore throat, and the diagnosis is 'you have a sore throat', as compared to strep, EBV, CMV, covid, diphtheria.... etc. There have been numerous studies suggesting various causes (however, when push comes to shove many products that have claimed to 'cure it' - some blamed protozoa, some bacteria, etc. So it IMHO remains unclear. Some of the work being done with certain wild corals in FL is certainly interesting @Thales - is there any update as to the cause for RTN/STN (Lets say for acropora) as compared to LPS?? (that you're aware of)?

 

[MnFish1]

I want to see frags mounted the typical way, vs cutting them in half longwise and gluing the cut sides down. I'm curious about mortality and overall growth rates over the course of a year.

Last time I fragged my stylophora I glued a bunch of frags upright, and a bunch I cut into 3 discs and glued in a triangle on the plug. The ones cut into discs encrusted the plugs significantly faster than the standard method, and looked like they were on track to blow the standard method away in long term growth, but I didn't keep any of them long enough to find out.

I remember a recommendation/study - which suggested leaving the cut end open and glue the end with tissue. Supposedly this leads to more branching. It seems to me that one does need to treat the cut end with an antibacterial solution - but I don't remember the exact protocol. In any case, its out there

 

[MnFish1]

I have a way to prevent it, but nobody wants to do it

Could you enlighten us?

 

[MnFish1]

Think of how many scientific or medical discoveries were touted as FACT for decades only for us to learn in recent years we were completely wrong….
That happens ALL THE TIME.

Except thats how science works - to a degree. For example the MD (Unfortunately don't remember his name) - who associated helicobacter pylori with stomach ulcers - with some pretty good studies - was roundly vilified for quite a while as being a quack. Science builds upon itself. Sometimes entirely negating a prior highly regarded study. If one is testing a new drug (something I have a fair bit of experience with - out of the billions of people in the world, only special select relatively healthy groups of patients are used in the trials (assuming its not a cancer trial, or some other fatal disease) - thus when Cox II inhibitors came it out - people were not aware of some of the risks - i.e. heart issues at the start - until millions of people were using them. The good news - and the way science does 'work' is that some of those drugs were removed from the market.

 

[Thales]

Agree - its kind of like going to the doctor - with a sore throat, and the diagnosis is 'you have a sore throat', as compared to strep, EBV, CMV, covid, diphtheria.... etc. There have been numerous studies suggesting various causes (however, when push comes to shove many products that have claimed to 'cure it' - some blamed protozoa, some bacteria, etc. So it IMHO remains unclear. Some of the work being done with certain wild corals in FL is certainly interesting @Thales - is there any update as to the cause for RTN/STN (Lets say for acropora) as compared to LPS?? (that you're aware of)?

Bacteria are involved in SCTLD progression section

Stony coral tissue loss disease: a review of emergence, impacts, etiology, diagnostics, and intervention

Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) is destructive and poses a significant threat to Caribbean coral reef ecosystems. Characterized by the acute loss of coral tissue, SCTLD has impacted over 22 stony coral species across the Caribbean region, leading to visible declines in reef health. Based...

www.frontiersin.org

 

[shootingstar_reef]

That paper also points out that the disease seems to start with the algal-symbiont (whichever genus the coral has) that progresses to tissue loss and is unrelated to temperature. Bacteria are definitely a factor because antibiotics slow or stop infection, though this is inconsistent. It’s hard to determine what exact role they play because corals have a complex holobiont that makes precision hard, including positively identifying bacteria or any viruses that could be involved (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2021.750658/full).

 

[Spare time]

I'm not agreeing with @GlassMunky or anything, but there is some truth to science not being totally perfect. Because scientists need to aquire funding for their research, they are incentivized to push out eye-catching research articles with little afterthought to whether their studies are reproducible or claims are actually true.

That isn't all true. There is a peer review process as well as the fact that many, many, scientists are constantly trying to tear each other down lol. Its a brutal business to be in.

 

[encrustingacro]

That isn't all true. There is a peer review process as well as the fact that many, many, scientists are constantly trying to tear each other down lol. Its a brutal business to be in.

The peer-review process is not infallible. Because of the incentivization of bad science, ~40% of scientific studies published are not reproducible. Sure, retractions and corrections are made, but those bad studies should not have even been published in the first place. Scientists are pushed to publish more studies of less academic rigor rather than less studies of more rigor to acquire more funding for their institutions.

Here are some sources for further reading:

We're incentivizing bad science

Current research trends resemble the early 21st century’s financial bubble.

www.nature.com

Replication crisis - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Spare time]

The peer-review process is not infallible. Because of the incentivization of bad science, ~40% of scientific studies published are not reproducible. Sure, retractions and corrections are made, but those bad studies should not have even been published in the first place. Scientists are pushed to publish more studies of less academic rigor rather than less studies of more rigor to acquire more funding for their institutions.

Here are some sources for further reading:

We're incentivizing bad science

Current research trends resemble the early 21st century’s financial bubble.

www.nature.com

Replication crisis - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The replication crisis is in psychology with 21 papers tested. That is one field and that referenced review represents a fraction of papers.


Where is the 40% coming from?

Also peer review is just one aspect. Researchers will often try to disagree with papers after they have been published