Researchers discovered their own lab gloves are artificially inflating environmental microplastic counts
Posted: Sun Apr 05, 2026 4:45 pm
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Very embarrassing, but it's important to find and disclose anything that may skew results. It takes a lot of humility to come clean about something like this, and I'm sure this'll be used as ammo by the sorts of people who dismiss science they don't like.
Researchers have switched over to cleanroom gloves and unfortunately have to start over, but at least this time they'll have a more accurate count of environmental microplastics.
Very embarrassing, but it's important to find and disclose anything that may skew results. It takes a lot of humility to come clean about something like this, and I'm sure this'll be used as ammo by the sorts of people who dismiss science they don't like.
Researchers have switched over to cleanroom gloves and unfortunately have to start over, but at least this time they'll have a more accurate count of environmental microplastics.