The influence of past research on the design of experiments with dissolved organic matter and engineered nanoparticles

Authored by Nicole Sani-Kast, Patrick Ollivier, Danielle Slomberg, Jerome Labille, Konrad Hungerbuhler, Martin Scheringer

Date Published: 2018

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0196549

Sponsors: No sponsors listed

Platforms: Python

Model Documentation: ODD Pseudocode

Model Code URLs: https://github.com/nicolesanikast/ABM_science

Abstract

To assess the environmental fate of engineered nanoparticles (ENPs), it is essential to understand their interactions with dissolved organic matter (DOM). The highly complex nature of the interactions between DOM and ENPs and other particulate matter (PM) requires investigating a wide range of material types under different conditions. However, despite repeated calls for an increased diversity of the DOM and PM studied, researchers increasingly focus on certain subsets of DOM and PM. Considering the discrepancy between the calls for more diversity and the research actually carried out, we hypothesize that materials that were studied more often are more visible in the scientific literature and therefore are more likely to be studied again. To investigate the plausibility of this hypothesis, we developed an agent-based model simulating the material choice in the experiments studying the interaction between DOM and PM between 1990 and 2015. The model reproduces the temporal trends in the choice of materials as well as the main properties of a network that displays the DOM and PM types investigated experimentally. The results, which support the hypothesis of a positive reinforcing material choice, help to explain why calls to increase the diversity of the materials studied are repeatedly made and why recent criticism states that the selection of materials is unbalanced.

Tags

models networks Aggregation Protocol Nanomaterials Environmental fate Scientific collaboration Colloids