this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
813 points (92.5% liked)

Science Memes

19588 readers
2458 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Dayroom7485@lemmy.world 28 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

So here’s the thing with today’s prosthetics: they kinda suck. For example this 2022 study reports that 44% of amputees rejected their prosthetic:

Most responders complained about the comfort (60.87%, n = 14) as well as the weight of the device (52.17%, n = 12).

What apparently goes a long way is accepting the missing limb and living with it. And I guess religion does help with that.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 13 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Of course, it's all primitive dogshit, basically early 20th century sticks with fancier motors. Big deal.

We need to figure out how to regrow limbs. A stupid salamander can do it.

[–] cynar@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

There's some evidence that mammals never lost the ability. Unfortunately, our scarring response is massively faster and locks wounds down.

A few years back, they engineered mice to lack a gene, to find out what it did. Initially, someone got in trouble for not properly marking the modified mice (via holes in their ears). They later discovered the holes healed completely, including regenerating fur etc.

Unfortunately, it also makes recovery from larger wounds difficult, since without a scarring response they don't close quickly.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 3 points 4 days ago

Yes, I've read some old books that talk about the "current of injury" and how you can induce something like regeneration in humans if you leave the scab alone, but only for small things like fingertips.

I suspect, as you say, that you trade one thing off for another, but we're all office workers these days so we can probably figure out something even for large wounds, since we can just sit around for weeks and heal.

I hope that when this AI craze dies down that we can redirect our humongous computing resources to simulating entire cells, maybe entire organs.

Deep down I'm a life extension nutter but reality had a way to knock that out of me...