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submitted 3 days ago by fossilesque@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

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[-] sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 2 days 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 6 points 2 days 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.