vialroom
Fortnightly digest · 2024-05-06 → 2024-05-19

the first pooled submission gets organised badly and works anyway

The lab-requests channel had existed since December and had achieved almost nothing until this fortnight, when eleven people agreed to split the cost of testing the same compound from three sources. The organisation was chaotic, the code sheet was written on the back of an envelope, and the blinding held. That last part is the only part that mattered.

661messages
32day logs
3channels noted
6notes

What happened

  • Samples went to the lab with codes rather than supplier names, which removed a variable and made the paperwork much harder to keep straight.
  • Medutest was chosen for the first pool on turnaround, and the choice was argued about for a week afterwards on grounds of nothing much.
  • Xi'an Mokemei was one of the three sources sampled, on the basis that the room had opinions about it and no data.
  • Cost per person landed at a figure people described as annoying rather than painful, which is roughly the target.
  • blind_submit wrote down the chain-of-custody limits honestly, including the fortnight the samples spent in a domestic fridge.
  • The room agreed in advance that a pooled result tells you about the pool and not about the vial in your own hand.

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