Comments on: Making sense about science

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 04:54:26 +0000

You might want to rethink promoting Sense about Science. Do a bit of googling, and you’ll find that behind the reasonable sounding website is a less than sound history. They are basically a biotech corporation funded lobby group. This doesn’t mean they are bad, but yI’d encourage you to look a little deeper.

George Monbiot’s article in the Guardian is one place to start: l

By: Orges

Orges — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 09:21:44 +0000

Great!! I am always trying to explain people things like those, but they always prefer the alarms in the green section of the Sunday supplement of the newspaper (very scientific)

By: John

John — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 22:22:51 +0000

Along with the radiation story, a biochemist friend of mine was telling me that potassium is radioactive enough that bananas can be detected with a Geiger counter, and shipping containers full of them are causing tons of false alarms at our ports. And yet my friends look at me like I’m crazy when I wonder aloud when our supermarket will finally start carrying irradiated eggs.

By: Jørgen

Jørgen — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 17:32:21 +0000

Haha, great post. Loved the comment about the radiation notice

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 06:55:52 +0000

Kiwi,
One can draw resonance structures of propanethial-S-oxide, but for the illustration I decided to only use one of the structures:

CH3-CH2-CH=S=O CH3-CH2-CH=S(+)-O(-)

Matthieu,
Thanks for the information about the the owner of the domain! I was not aware of this. It’s important to bear this in mind when visiting the site. Knowing this I would take all the information provided about GM foods with a pinch of salt. However, I still fell that the discussions of chemical misconceptions is very good. You also make a good point about toxcicity: it’s not the chemical itself but the dose that kills!

By: Trig

Trig — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 16:22:38 +0000

What do these people thing happens when they fry a steak or peel a potato? Of course there are chemical reactions happening constantly while we cook, but these are chemical changes that occur naturally in our foods. The use of chemicals in genetic modification and such are much the subject of concern, mainly because they are issues that can be understood by and argued by the masses.

By: Matthieu Weber

Matthieu Weber — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:03:30 +0000

The domain name belongs to Tracey Brown, London, UK. A bit of googling returns this: http://www.lobbywatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=143

“Tracey Brown is the Director of the pro-GM lobby group Sense about Science . [...] Brown’s analysis is precisely that of the LM network who claim that as, in their opinion, there is no empirical information to show that GM foods are dangerous, the job of government, scientists and business is to defend the technology and the importance of innovation and experimentation which are the basis of progress.”

In other words, she’s trying to propagate the idea that genetically modified organisms are not harmfull, an issue that has been debated many times and never solved. The protocols of experimental supposed to show the inocuity of GMOs were quite doubtful (as well as the ones trying to show the opposite). Let’s put it this way: the website is not aimed at explaining to the general public that life is made of chemicals, but to promote GMOs.

To go back to the original topic, I’ve also heard Hervé This trying to explain on the French radio that cooking is essentially chemical and that it doesn’t make sense to try to separate “natural products” and “chemical products”. Its’ one of his current crusades, along with “science is not evil, it doesn’t kill”).

But what must be made very clear to everyone IMHO is that the important factor is the *amount* of chemicals you ingest, and their concentration in your body. Water can kill you if you drink too much of it (something like 8 L) in a short period of time. And you don’t die if you ingest (very) small amounts of tetrodotoxin.

But the average citizen has no way to measure what amount of which chemicals he absorbs every day in his food (and this includes salt, sugar, soy lecithin, trans-fatty acids, preservatives, pesticide residues, you name it). Therefore the average citizen has no idea what he is actually eating, and what effect it will have on his health, especially in the long term. But on the other hand, he already has noticed that when using industrial food, he can’t escape some chemicals which are forced upon him by the industry (it’s not about being treated as a guinea pig, but simply that these chemicals are handy for preparing cheaper food, and that seems nowadays more important than taste, quality or healthiness).

By: mph

mph — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 12:48:56 +0000

Great post. I went to grad school in California, and the law there was that businesses had to post signs warning of known carcinogens. The signs usually said something like, “This building contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer.” My friend’s apartment building had such a sign in the laundry area, and they didn’t quite get it: It said, “This building contains chemicals.”

Along the same lines, I then worked for a defense contractor, and received a new safety handbook that I had to read and acknowledge. It required that we notify our manager if we believed we were exposed to “radiation of any kind.” I promptly emailed my manager, informing him of the requirement, and telling him that I was being exposed to EM radiation in the visible part of the spectrum (from the office lights), and from roughly 300 kelvin blackbody radiation.

By: kiwi

kiwi — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 11:27:40 +0000

good post – this is the sort of thing that needs to be said in public more often. but you might want to double check that structure