From: Allen
Date: 3/9/98
Time: 7:49:34 PM
Remote Name: 198.161.229.190
<<<May I kindly correct you? I analyzed your post and technique. I had no intent to criticise.>>>
No Problem. I suppose it's sematics, but I did ask for criticism, and assumed that people would criticize our techniques, methods, and maybe even our competance <G>. I certainly took your comments in the light in which they were intended, and appreciate them. Science doesn't get done without hard questions being asked. I was the one who suggested that we might be sloppy -- not you. I think we always have to be open to the thought that we may not be on target, if we are to do a good job. As tyros at this, we are very conscious of our potential shortcomings.
<<<I can't recall having taken two 25 bee samples from the same bee sample. My haemocytometer had two grids. I remember that often the reading from each grid was different from the other by as much as ten spores or so. As I recall one spore on the entire grid equals 4,000 spores per bee so finding one spore on one grid and five on the other creates a considerable difference.>>>
Well, we're working on this idea a bit. My son Jon replied further down the page, and it is appearing to us at this point that we are expecting too much from such a small sample -- if we are expecting it to tell us anything meaningful in terms of evaluating treatments. Maybe a statistician will give us a hand here. Jon -- from his comments -- seems to have some feeling that we are dealing with samples that are from a population too variable for the size of sample.
<<<On occasion I found round structures in the field of view with the Nosema spores. One needs to be careful not to count these. Nosema spores are quite distinctive, I think. >>>
We're still new to this, so we gave the spores the benefit of the doubt and counted some doubtful objects, I think. Probably we should have done the reverse. If we had, we would have had more negative results.
I wonder what size sample the original workers who gave such strong recommendations for Fumigillan used for methods?
As always, thanks for the discussion.
Allen
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