Learning Something From Nothing: The Critical Importance of Rethinking Microbial Non-detects.

ABSTRACT: Accurate estimation of microbial concentrations is necessary to inform many important environmental science and public health decisions and regulations. Critically, widespread misconceptions about laboratory-reported microbial non-detects have led to their erroneous description and handling as "censored" values. This ultimately compromises their interpretation and undermines efforts to describe and model microbial concentrations accurately. Herein, these misconceptions are dispelled by (1) discussing the critical differences between discrete microbial observations and continuous data acquired using analytical chemistry methodologies and (2) demonstrating the bias introduced by statistical approaches tailored for chemistry data and misapplied to discrete microbial data. Notably, these appro

SUBMITTER: Chik AHS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6182096 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature