…that scientists wish people would stop misusing.
I’m sure I’ve ranted about most if not all of these over the years.
5 thoughts on “Ten Scientific Concepts”
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…that scientists wish people would stop misusing.
I’m sure I’ve ranted about most if not all of these over the years.
Comments are closed.
Speaking on “Natural”, there was a circle of people discussing “Organic” to whom I showed the list below. “Look what’s in an organic blueberry!” I got a twenty minute lecture about how the evil corporations are polluting the food supply. “Acids! Look at all the filthy acids!”
They simply couldn’t believe that all of these chemicals were both all-natural -and- organic. (Except for the water/air, it’s inorganic, but that’s another fight you just won’t win.)
Aqua (84%), Sugars (10%) [Fructose 48%, Glucose 40%, Sucrose 2%] Fibre (2.4% [E460, E461, E462, E464, E466, E467] Amino Acids [Glutamic Acid 23%, AsparticAcid 18%, Leucine 17%, Argenine 8%, Alanine 4%, Valine 4%, Glycine 4%, Proline 4% Isoleocine 3% Serine 3% Threonine 3%, Phenylalanine 2%, Lysine 2%, Methionine 2%, Tyrosine 1%, Histidine 1%, Cystine 1%, Tryptophan <1%] Fatty acids (<1%) [Omega-6 Fatty Acid: Linoleic Acid 30%, Omega-3 Fatty Acid: Linolenic Acid 19%, Oleic Acid 18%, Palmitic Acid 6%, Stearic Acid 2%, Palmitoleic Acid <1%, Ash <1%, Phytosterols, Oxalic Acid, E300, E306 Tocopherol, Thiamin, Colors: (E163a, E163b, E163e, E163f, E160a) Flavors: (Ethyl ethanoate, 3-Methyl butyraldehyde, 2-Methyl butyraldehyde, Pentanal, Methylbutyrate, Octene, Hexanal, Styrene, Nonane, Non-1-ene, Linalool, Citral, Benzaldehyde, Butylated hydroxytoluene E321, Methylparaben, E1510, E300, E440, E421 and Fresh Air (E941, E948, E290).
Yeah, I noted on Twitter the other day that botulism is organic.
A case study I remember vividly in a class on chemical reactors (in the 80s) on how a company managed to remove “Formic Acid” from their ingredient list.
Formic acid is a ‘surfactant’, if you spray a tiny amount on a vat of foaming food in a mixer (think: like lemon meringue, but foam NOT desired) the bubbles will pop better and the ‘foam’ will collapse.
But the anti-chemical crusade was in full swing, so the company (Proctor and Gamble) was searching for some way to get formic acid in there without using the nice, clean, sterile “food safe” concentrated formic acid they’d made from scratch. They ended up at ground ants. You can filter the solids without losing the “all natural” label … but purification makes it an “artificial ingredient”.
So very dumb.
“Can you really prove that climate change is caused by human activity?” we tend to hem and haw rather than simply saying “Of course we can.”
Hemming and hawing is actually much better than ‘of course we can’, because they damned well can’t.
(#s 3, 5, and 10, though, totally. I see those damn near every day.
I’ve developed the heuristic that I can totally discount any content involving the word “farmacy”.)
because they damned well can’t.
Which strangely, is turned into proof in some peoples minds that we aren’t causing AGW.
My statistics professor distinguished between “significant” and “substantial”. Unfortunately most people, even scientists who blog, use “significant” in both meanings.