this post was submitted on 09 May 2024
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[–] grubberfly@mander.xyz 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

what'd be the smallest sample size that would yield a relevant result?

30? 1000?

[–] Gonzako@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] Shellbeach@lemmy.world 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Can we not... Just... Bring back some moon dust?

[–] TheBat@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago

There's the possibility of contamination if we do that.

[–] flora_explora@beehaw.org 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Well, if humans were a homogeneous population maybe that could work. But just imagine the huge number of factors at play here. Like, demographics, cultural background (different exposures & different allergy rates in general I would guess), genetic susceptibilities, individual lifestyles (e.g smoking) and probably a lot more! Even a sample size of 1000 seems pretty small to test for general human allergy rates to moon dust. If you were talking about just one population of humans, e.g. the US, you would certainly need more than 30 but maybe not 1000.