One of the most important considerations in any study is the investigational methodology. Early studies employed impaction on solid and liquidized interfaces to measure aerosol volume and properties. Advances in visualization technology have enabled greater temporal and spatial visualization of aerosol generated particles and their trajectories. Among the various methodologies used to visualize aerosols, laser capture imaging, particle counters, air samplers, and droplet capture methods are the most popular. Similarly, methodologies for microbial characterization have demonstrated tremendous advances from the early days of culturing and microscopy to targeted methods such as polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to quantitative PCR to collectively sequencing entire microbial communities. A third component is development of computational models of human behavior and predicting patterns and paths of spread.

Although these advances in pathogen detection, airflow measurement, and disease modeling have had a major impact on understanding the spread of diseases such as Ebola and changed our perception of older diseases such as tuberculosis and measles, several questions still remain to be addressed. For instance, although molecular microbiology has allowed us to identify infectious agents earlier and at much lower concentrations, it is not unclear if these doses are clinically relevant, how the relevance is modified by the type of populations (adult versus children, immunocompetent versus compromised, ambulatory versus hospitalized, and individual versus group living) and most importantly, how many of these organisms are viable. Similarly, the very act of air‐sampling can generate an aerosol as well as destroying the organisms being captured. Importantly, computer machine learning relies on large and granular datasets for accuracy, and when studies from the field are unable to capture all the required components, the model is not reflective of real‐life scenarios.

Thus, any investigation of aerosol characteristics must use well‐validated methods of aerosol capture, incorporate appropriate positive and negative controls to allow standardization of microbial payload, and be sufficiently powered to reduce the ''noise'' generated by random behavior of aerosol particles. Most importantly, they must be quantitative, because pathogen dose is an important element of infectivity. As we will see in the next few sections, much of what we currently know about dental aerosols falls far short of the most basic principles of scientific rigor and reproducibility.