from Hacker News

“The Great Plate Count Anomaly” that is no more

by alexwg on 12/28/14, 3:01 PM with 7 comments

• by paulsutter on 12/29/14, 2:30 AM

  Autoclaving components of the medium separately has been done since the 1970s. Here's a paper published by my dad in 1975 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Look under Materials and Methods, Media. It's mentioned like it's no big deal. They had tried a number of combinations, this is what worked best for them.

  http://authors.library.caltech.edu/11146/1/SUTpnas75.pdf

  EDIT: My dad has Parkinsons now. It's great to see him light up and talk about his work.

• by ChuckMcM on 12/28/14, 9:19 PM

  That is an awesome find. It has to feel pretty amazing to figure out that something that has been "the standard" for so long is broken in a fairly simple way.

• by msie on 12/28/14, 5:52 PM

  I read somewhere else a theory of how buildup of hydrogen peroxide in the body is what kills victims of septic shock.

• by dreamdu5t on 12/29/14, 2:25 AM

  Amazing to know how little we knew and experimented with such a popular process used for so long. It makes me wonder what's undiscovered about other processes we take for granted.

• by dzdt on 12/29/14, 2:52 PM

  I am no expert on this topic, but this story has a strong "bad science journalism" smell. The pattern is (1) longstanding complex open problem (2) stupidly simple "solution" claimed as a panacea. Generally with this pattern, the simple solution turns out to be well known among the top experts, and really isn't a solution to the whole problem, just a tiny part of it.