The sad state of things is that 90% of the population won’t care if their favorite MrBeast video has DRM.

Agreed!!

(unfortunately PeerTube is so far off being a reasonable alternative)

Why? Because of the hosting cost? Where is Youtube getting this for cheap?

After sparing this paper a fair bit of attention I feel I’ve wasted it.

Nowhere in the paper could i find in what conditions the test samples were kept during the experiment. This is pretty basic stuff. At this stage I’d wage sloshing was the issue.

Reading this part of the methodology:

"2.2 Initial sperm analysis

After liquefaction…

[Two paragraphs later, in the same section: ] After this first analysis, the 15 sperm samples were split into two fractions. All the samples were exposed to ‘Parabolic flight’ (split 1) and to…"

Did they liquefied the samples and tested like that? Whaa?

The “After this first analysis” should not be in the “2.2 Initial sperm analysis”. It just shouldn’t!

Then I think “15 sperm samples were split into two fractions”. … “the samples were exposed to ‘Parabolic flight’ (split 1)” — splits, fractions, what a mess!! At this stage I’ve wasted enough.

The paper should be retracted, the reviewers spanked and the editor fired.

Abstract

Most of the widely used vaginal lubricants in the U.S. and Europe are strongly hyperosmolal, formulated with high concentrations of glycerol, propylene glycol, polyquaternary compounds or other ingredients that make these lubricants 4 to 30 times the osmolality of healthy vaginal fluid. Hyperosmolal formulations have been shown to cause marked toxicity to human colorectal epithelia in vivo, and significantly increase vaginal transmission of genital herpes infections in the mouse/HSV model. They also cause toxicity to explants of vaginal epithelia, to cultured vaginal epithelial cells, and increase susceptibility to HIV in target cells in cell cultures. Here, we report that the osmolality of healthy vaginal fluid is 370 ± 40 mOsm/Kg in women with Nugent scores 0–3, and that a well-characterized three-dimensional human vaginal epithelium tissue model demonstrated that vaginal lubricants with osmolality greater than 4 times that of vaginal fluid (>1500 mOsm/Kg) markedly reduce epithelial barrier properties and showed damage in tissue structure. Four out of four such lubricants caused disruption in the parabasal and basal layers of cells as observed by histological analysis and reduced barrier integrity as measured by trans-epithelial electrical resistance (TEER). No epithelial damage to these layers was observed for hypo- and iso-osmolal lubricants with osmolality of <400 mOsm/Kg. The results confirm extensive reports of safety concerns of hyperosmolal lubricants and suggest the usefulness of reconstructed in vitro vaginal tissue models for assessing safety of lubricants in the absence of direct clinical tests in humans.