The decimal-point error, and the habit that catches it posts 31–60
This is a continuation of a long topic, addressed by post number rather than by page. Start at post 1.
Two questions I would want answered before drawing anything from the decimal-point error data above: how were the cases selected, and what happened to the ones that dropped out.
Reading rather than contributing, but this is the most useful thread I have found on it.
I had written a reply contradicting post #30 and deleted it. Here is what survived.
Do not shake. Swirl, or leave it. Vigorous agitation introduces air and shear, and neither helps a peptide go into solution any faster than patience does.
For what it is worth, the same held on the two occasions I checked.
Picking up post #32: that is the part I would want checked first.
I would keep decimal-point error and the decision it usually gets used for separate in this thread. They are related and they are not the same question, and merging them is why the last one went badly.
Decimal-point error looks different depending on whether you are reading the primary literature or the summaries of it, and the difference is not in our favour.
Preservative effectiveness is tested against a defined microbial challenge under defined conditions. It is not a licence to treat an entered vial as sterile indefinitely, and no supplier claims otherwise.
Anyone with a larger sample, please post it.
Narrowing post #36, because the general version has more than one answer.
Do not shake. Swirl, or leave it. Vigorous agitation introduces air and shear, and neither helps a peptide go into solution any faster than patience does.
Not a strong opinion, just a consistent one.
Saving this. It is the version I will quote when the question comes round again.
Answering the question post #39 raises rather than the one it answers.
Preservative effectiveness is tested against a defined microbial challenge under defined conditions. It is not a licence to treat an entered vial as sterile indefinitely, and no supplier claims otherwise.
I have deliberately not rounded that, because the rounding is where the argument starts.
What I would tell a new member reading about decimal-point error for the first time: the confident posts are not the reliable ones, and the reliable ones are longer.
The strongest argument against my own position on decimal-point error, stated as well as I can state it, since nobody else has yet.
Post #43 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.
Do not shake. Swirl, or leave it. Vigorous agitation introduces air and shear, and neither helps a peptide go into solution any faster than patience does.
A note on scope: what I am saying about decimal-point error applies to the case in the first post and I would not extend it further without checking.
Where the decimal-point error reasoning breaks down for me is the step from the group result to the individual case. That step is almost never argued for.
Noted, and thank you for writing it out rather than summarising it.
Building on post #46 rather than restating it.
Preservative effectiveness is tested against a defined microbial challenge under defined conditions. It is not a licence to treat an entered vial as sterile indefinitely, and no supplier claims otherwise.
A qualification I should have led with rather than closed on.
Post #48 answers the question as asked. The question underneath it is different.
Having read the whole decimal-point error thread before replying: the question in the first post has not actually been answered yet, and three of us have answered a nearby one instead.
Everything in post #48 holds. The case it does not cover is the one I have.
Write the reconstitution date and the concentration on the vial. Not on a note, on the vial. Every account here of a dosing error involving the wrong concentration involves a vial with nothing written on it.
I have no interest in any supplier named above.
On decimal-point error: the maintained page in the documentation commons covers the general case with citations and a review date, which is more reliable than any reply here including this one.
The arithmetic in post #54 is right; the assumption feeding it is the part to check.
Preservative effectiveness is tested against a defined microbial challenge under defined conditions. It is not a licence to treat an entered vial as sterile indefinitely, and no supplier claims otherwise.
I have said this before in a thread nobody could find, so it is worth repeating.
Understood. Thank you for being specific about the limits of it.
What I would want before treating decimal-point error as settled: the method, the sample, and whether anyone tried to find the opposite result. Two of the three are usually missing.
Do not shake. Swirl, or leave it. Vigorous agitation introduces air and shear, and neither helps a peptide go into solution any faster than patience does.
The uncertainty is in the assumption, not in the calculation.
I keep a log for decimal-point error specifically because my memory of it turned out to be systematically wrong in one direction. Six weeks of notes cost nothing and settled it.
Two things can be true about decimal-point error at once: the mechanism is plausible and the evidence for the size of the effect is thin. Most of the argument here is people defending the first against attacks on the second.