However if the experimenter has access to a mass spectrometer or other means of characterizing the chemical composition of commercial synthetic sea water mixes, then this option may be the preferred one due to its convenience and low cost, assuming that at least one of the commercial mixes is a reasonably consistent and accurate reproduction of the mineral content in natural ocean water. This is scientifically the least bad of a number of imperfect alternatives. The main drawbacks are the high costs of the laboratory grade chemicals and the labor intensive measuring and mixing of these raw reagents. Traditionally the oceanographer has brought his laboratory to the sea. As long as oceanography remained a qualitative and descriptive science, this procedure, although sometimes inconvenient, was for the most part adequate.
Science is a highly refined type of human experience, and an experiment is a controlled experience.
Commonly the goal of an experiment, implicit or explicit, is to vary a single parameter, holding all other parameters fixed, in order to isolate the effects of that particular parameter on the phenomenon under investigation. This is virtually impossible to accomplish under natural conditions at sea - there are far too many uncontrollable and even unknown variables. Little wonder, then, that more and more of the younger generation of marine scientists are bringing the sea to their laboratories and performing seawater research under stringently controlled laboratory conditions. There is an old adage that chemists perform sloppy experiments on very pure substances and that physicists, with the greatest elegance and precision, investigate the properties of dirt. All too frequently oceanographers, I regret to say, have seemed to occupy an extreme position in this scale considerably beyond that of the physicists.