[mapt]

> but I'd like to point out that this kind of study must be done in a way that doesn't discriminate any of the students.

This is definitionally impossible. Testing whether the tool benefits the students that get it is an attempt to benefit certain students at the expense of others. Get over this hangup if you want to do this sort of research.

[nkmnz]

Feel free to create your own university where you can do this sort of research in a discriminatory way. Have fun with the litigation afterwards. Also, explain to the peer reviewers that they just need to get over the hangup, too, when you try to publish your research.

[mapt]

"Feel free to create your own university where you have the funding for petri dishes. In the meantime, I'm going to publish without them, because I feel like this tissue culture I'm growing on my lunch is statistically significant."

Just because I am not personally entitled (by funding, by ethics, by career position) to collect the necessary data to demonstrate a hypothesis, does not make that hypothesis demonstrable with lesser data.