• Sertou@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    My problem with him is that he lacks rigor and his methodology is poor.

    Also, from the amount of money he throws around buying equipment, I suspect he has wealthy parents bankrolling him.

    Applied Science is a far more interesting youtube channel.

    • Objects in Space@infosec.pub
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      9 months ago

      My opinion of course but he’s not going for methodology or hard science. He’s doing fun chemistry stuff in a way that lets me watch and understand with zero understanding of chemistry.

      Sometimes things can be for fun and he doesn’t need to get published for turning lunar dust back into swiss cheese.

      • Victor@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Depends what you’re into. People down voting others for expressing their opinion is just stupid. You’re entitled to liking it, we’re entitled to not like it. (I’m not saying you’re the one who was down voting, of course.)

    • Chetzemoka@startrek.website
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      9 months ago

      He’s always been transparent about the fact that his parents helped him get started, and he’s been financially operating on his own for years. Many of his videos are every bit as rigorous as Applied Science.

      • Sertou@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Re: transparency about bankrolling, i believe you since you say so. I’ve seen many of his videos and never heard him say so. I guess I just missed the ones where he did, or perhaps he said so on social media.

        As for rigor, I can’t count the number of times he uses an unspecified amount of a chemical in a reaction, referring only to “throwing a bunch in.” But again, perhaps I’ve just watched the wrong videos.

        His approach seems to me to be very “by guess and by gosh.” Part of that stems from trying to follow poorly written instructions in an academic paper; applied sciences grapples with that too. And some of it may be less slapdash that it appears, with Nilered using a deliberately casual tone in his scripts so that they’re more relatable, knowing that people aren’t likely to use his videos to attempt to reproduce his results. Even taking that into account though, given the number of attempts it often takes him to get the desired result, I doubt his rigor. Props to him for showing the failures and partial successes, though. And whatever else I say about him, I do generally find him entertaining.

        • Chetzemoka@startrek.website
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          9 months ago

          You’re watching the wrong videos. A lot of his material manufacturing videos tend to have a lot more trial and error. In the more pure chemical extraction or synthesis videos, he’s hyper precise about amounts, timing, temperatures, and safety. In others he’s definitely in “making a funny video fucking around mode.”