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Article History

Received: 8 December 2024

Accepted: 26 February 2026

First Online: 17 March 2026

Competing interests

: The author declares no competing interests.

: This study involved the observation of human participants in professional laboratory settings. Ethical approval was obtained from the University of Texas at Austin Institutional Review Board (IRB). All research procedures were conducted in accordance with the approved IRB protocols and in compliance with relevant ethical guidelines and regulations applicable to research involving human participants, including the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments. The study was approved under IRB Study ID: STUDY0000390, with approval granted on 21 February 2023, prior to the commencement of fieldwork. The scope of approval covered ethnographic observation, interviews, and audiovisual recording of laboratory activities for research purposes. No experimental interventions were involved.

: Informed consent was obtained orally on 7 August 2023 from all participants by the author, prior to the start of the research activities reported in this study, including observation, interviewing, and audiovisual recording. Participants consented to participation in the study and to the use of the resulting data for research and publication purposes. Participants were informed about the aims and scope of the study, the nature of their participation, how the data would be used, and that their anonymity would be protected in all publications. No data collected prior to this consent process is included in this article. The requirement for written documentation of informed consent was waived by the University of Texas at Austin Institutional Review Board (IRB) as part of its approval of the study (IRB Study ID: STUDY0000390). The IRB determined that the research involved no more than minimal risk to participants and that the primary potential risk was a breach of confidentiality; avoiding the creation of written consent records was therefore deemed to reduce this risk. The oral consent procedure, including the consent script, was reviewed and approved by the IRB.