I agree that it’s very fragile for certain uses. I think usually the reasoning is something like “this is an informal norm that labs should follow, and which is good if generally enforced, and provides an easy way to detect if not”. There are tons of ways to beat this if you’re adversarially trying to. I agree that finding better ways to avoid contamination would be good—@TurnTrout has a bounty for this, and there are some people are working on this now.
I agree that it’s very fragile for certain uses. I think usually the reasoning is something like “this is an informal norm that labs should follow, and which is good if generally enforced, and provides an easy way to detect if not”. There are tons of ways to beat this if you’re adversarially trying to. I agree that finding better ways to avoid contamination would be good—@TurnTrout has a bounty for this, and there are some people are working on this now.