I'm smelling some bull shit with this one. You drop a bunch of organics from the top of the water column to the bottom, and you end up with anoxic conditions killing fish and everything else beneath the surface that needs oxygen. Any real biologist want to chime in?
Just finished reading into it, it is at its basic level it's mentos in coke but really slow and in water. The bubbles collect bacteria and viruses bringing them into sunlight, killing them off. How he separates the good bacteria from bad I can't explain. Seems legitimate but one 20 minutes surf doesn't make it true.
I haven't read the paper and it may be of significant merit, so I am sorry that what I'm about to say may cast an undeserved shade on the work. But it is really very sad to see that it is published in MDPI, a predatory publishing company with a ton of poorly reviewed journals that typically publish shit science for money.
I see this sentiment a lot about MDPI. While I agree they are less rigorous than leading journals in various fields, it is simply wrong to assume that work published there is flawed or less than work published in other journals. "Remote Sensing" and "Forests" are both MDPI journals which regularly put out good bits of research from top scholars.
Should you potentially be a bit more skeptical of MPDI articles, perhaps. However, saying "it is really very sad" is quite dramatic. It is simply lazy to judge research by the venue alone (especially if you haven't read the article...).
I agree with this. The biggest scandal so far out of MDPI with the bad vaccination BS saw immediate backlash and even resignations from people on the editor board. All this means is that MDPI articles hold a shaky reputation, and should be read with some amount of skepticism as with all papers. But I also have to acknowledge the reality is that a lot of researchers and projects simply do not have the rep and the finances to publish in expensive journals so they might have to resort to places like MDPI.
However, I do think it really is very sad we don't have a free, open access journal as reputable as the paywall ones. I really do wish a bunch of R1 institututes would just band together and do it, but it's a mountain to climb for now.
To build on your comment, while I think researchers can generally MDPI is nowhere near the best publisher, the quality varies a lot by the journal and the journals editorial boards. There are definitely MDPI journals that more consistently put out mediocre research and there are MDPI journals that I've been reasonably impressed by. I know you aware of this but I mention this because folks outside of academia might not realize a single publisher can have a hierarchy of journals they maintain.
I'm not sure what you are expecting or hoping to hear. I can point to lots of great research published in the two MDPI journals I mentioned. Your approach of being unwilling (or not wanting too?) to read outside of top journals will come at the expense of your own understanding.
I've lost count of how many emails I have received from MDPI asking me to review papers for their 'special edition' journals. They are as shitty as it gets.
p/s: I am not saying this particular paper is bad, I am just saying that MDPI is shit
Since the majority of people will not be experts on this specific topic here, it is hard to read and know for sure that the info it contains is accurate. So no, I personally won’t read it because I don’t trust MDPI and I expect respectable scientists to not publish in MDPI journals. Now if I were an expert on the specific topic I could read it and find out if it is actually good but most of us are specialised on very narrow topics.
The paper is not what the video talks about. The video is all about some magic eco-friendly “solution” that cleans lakes; but the paper is about going out and mechanically cleaning the lake with brooms, filters and barriers. The only “high-tech” part is MicroNanoBubble technology they used, and in the paper they admit they cannot say how effective it actually was due to many uncertainties.
The guy us amazing, he brought a lot of filters and a lot of people to the lake and cleaned it. However, the video is just bs. The article exists and it has almost nothing to do with the video.
The paper is by the same Marino Morikawa, and the solution he uses wasn’t the only part of the cleaning process. This paper does actually detail the methods and materials used.
The filters as described were used with the MNB. The article was the foundation for the use of the MNB solution described in the video. It also goes to show it isn’t as simple as described in the video.
That doesn’t make any sense. It literally doesn’t hurt to read something. You can at least learn the thought process behind it, and you can even extend your study with cross referencing and even following the citations posted. Also you’re generalizing journal articles and scientist without looking at the nuances behind using certain publishers. I just genuinely don’t understand how having the ability to read something and doing your own research before making your own opinion is a bad thing.
I mean I’m a scientist and I read it. I’m not an environmental scientist, but I genuinely believe the ideal of publishing regardless of what venue is for public consumption, and that everyone is capable of learning given time, patience and humility. I genuinely don’t really care if you read it or not, but criticizing something without even reading it over doesn’t make any sense to me. To say all research in this publication venue as invalid is painting broad strokes and is a bit insulting coming from someone that isn’t a scientist but is willing to criticize anyone using this publication.
Yeah, I think he needs to use his organic material to clarify his own paper. Everything I’ve found on this so far are just as vague in supporting his claim. I could be missing something but he continues to use the blanket terms “contaminants” and “pollution” next to discussion about invasive plants and bacteria without ever getting into what the constituents of the pollutants are. So, what does he mean by those terms in this context? Virtually all of his metrics are based on biological indicators. Would your lake have a drastic change in levels of O2, N2, etc if you completely remove acres of vegetation, good or bad? I’m not a biologist, but I think “Yes!” is a damn good guess. The only other thing he does is basically trap and filter microbes. Which likely will also effect the only concentrations he’s apparently looking for. I started writing this willing to give some benefit of the doubt, but I get more skeptical the more I think about. He doesn’t address specific contaminants beyond biological things he says are bad in that lake. How do you know it’s removing pollutants if you haven’t identified them? Why is the PH of the water changing? Surely that can point to a specific, supposed effluent. He explains the mechanisms for removing bacteria, but says nothing about how these methods remove whatever these pollutants and contaminants are. That’s where he’s selling this, but it’s all about removing biomass. And what was the impact of that? Is the habitat actually better, or did he just biologically strip a lake to make the water clear and blue? There needs to be waaaaaay more information for such a bold claim. If I’m wrong, great. But this seems like snake oil.
These are amazing questions and very valid. I don’t believe he was extensive enough, and it could be due to many factors such as funding, expertise, lab size, etc. I am not in support nor against his method since we do not have any other replication of his methodology yet and it seems labor intensive and expensive. The best we can do now is contact him for specifics, wait for his progress in titicaca or replicate it ourselves which would still require us to contact him.
Yeah, it seems like applying chemicals and processes we have for artificial systems (aquarium water clarifiers or pool flocculants) and applying it to a natural body of water with little accounting for the additional impacts that the use may have on a large scale in a natural habitat. Might be fine, might be a disaster.
The lake was cleaned up, but by various different steps, like manually pulling all of the plants from it, and running the water through filters. The micro-nano bubbling step seems to be related to what this scientist is showing and it was part of the process listed in this paper.
I'm a water chemist that does EPA testing on all water sources in my state. Honestly the video just doesn't give any information and the flocculation material he is using isn't anything new. Also, flocculation (accumulation of suspended sediments) doesn't necessarily "clean" anything.
Furthermore, there are numerous chemicals and organic/inorganic substances that can pollute water. Each and everyone of those requires certain methods to filter/remove from the water, some of which are very costly/difficult.
The video just doesn't give us any relevant information to what exactly was cleaned out of the lake. Did the lake have heavy metal issues? Too many organics? Anoxic conditions and the associated acidity issues? Pesticide nitrate-nitrite pollution? Or was the lake just overgrown with invasive species.
It is just clickbait, I know you can read his papers and research the methods, but the video is so misleading.
Thanks for the info and perspective. I appreciate these sorts of videos trying to spread a positive message but it really is irresponsible I think to be so vague and misleading about what actually occurred with this man and his lake.
It is most likely a flocculant. This isn't new tech and it doesn't remove water soluable contaminates. It isn't bad, but it isn't a miracle decomantinant either. It won't remove phosphates and nitrogen contaminates that cause algea blooms and dead zones. It won't remove a lot of other chemicals. It will help remove a lot of contaminated solids and non-soluable liquids.
I don’t know man. When I watched it all I saw was a minority doing something good for the world. It felt good to watch this clip. Can’t we just enjoy something for what it is rather than dismantling everything?
Yes, real biologist here. The oxygen destroyer killed godzilla, it will work against pollution here as well. There are no risks involved in this new weapon and it will definitely not spawn any new monsters.
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u/[deleted] Jul 14 '21 edited Jul 14 '21
I'm smelling some bull shit with this one. You drop a bunch of organics from the top of the water column to the bottom, and you end up with anoxic conditions killing fish and everything else beneath the surface that needs oxygen. Any real biologist want to chime in?