Why scientists should spend more time trying to communicate with everyone else on the planet: Article 1

So last night I went to a gala where the guest speaker, Dr. Raywat Deonandan, talked about how the lack of basic scientific knowledge amongst the general population can have serious detrimental effects to society. As academics, we are often chastised so much during our lifetimes by the general population (geeks, socially awkward, pompous) because of misconceptions, fear and overall inability to want to understand other people.

Academics, scientists, people who dedicate their lives to learning and then sharing their knowledge rarely go beyond their own community to depose their knowledge - people don't take kindly to our approaches and most often enjoy flinging their inaccurate and hurtful names at us. I agree with the speaker from my gala last night, however, and I have decided to jump on the community outreach program so that I can have a good scientific discussion with anyone I meet and not have to get frustrated with misconceptions or even worse, completely false interpretations of what science is.

So today I have found a couple of examples from my weekly newsletters and feeds that demonstrate how science touches all of our lives on a day to day basis, and in some cases it is used (accurately and inaccurately) to fuck with our brains.

So lets see...

Keith Richards (of the Rolling Stones) "To Donate His Body To Science". Science thanks him. Are you wondering how science will use it? Well, says Richards, "I had Hepatitis C and cured it myself. Just by being me. They (doctors) want it so they can study it and figure out how to make other people much better. I mean, I eat everything wrong. I shove terrible things inside me." I question whether Richards is a genius and decided to communicate a complex issue in the simplest way possible or whether he actually thinks only that complex. Either way, I know that most people can not tolerate an explanation for curing one's own Hepatitis C that would be any more insightful than Keith's. It would be nice to know, however, how he got Hepatitis C in the first place - shoving terrible things inside of him perhaps? couldn't we all just avoid this Hep C thing by practicing safe sex and avoid the use of IV drugs - unless we are in the hospital? There are people on the planet who have been unfortunate enough to receive tainted blood from transfusions, and these people deserve treatments and cures. One could also consider the point that without the blood transfusion in the first place, most of those people would likely have died anyhow, which begins to make the whole ethics of the matter confusing.

Next. This one is good. M&M meat shops are encouraging us all to start thinking green - with them! This is crazy! You can't give people cloth bags and then claim to think green. That's like my friends who say they recycle and therefore they are environmentalists. I call bullshit on M&M Meats. So this is my real bit of education for the day. Eat food grown locally and don't eat meat - you'll reduce your carbon footprint by at least a tonne each year. This is why: Meat costs more energy to produce than plants - firs there's the energy cost to house the meat, kill it, package it, transport it, and then there is the energy to produce all of the drugs they give the animals. Then, the animals are fed grains that cost energy to grow (pesticides, fertilizers, gas to run the plow). With plants, the energy used is only the pesticides, fertilizers, and plows. There is transport to the grocery store, and that is why eating foods that grown closer to home will reduce the overall amount of energy used to produce your dinner. Shop with a cloth bag to reduce your waste, but don't fool yourself if you are shopping at M&M. They do make fantastic veggie burgers, and have great frozen stir fry mixes so if you have to eat the meat, get some veggies too!

A massive fire occurred on the 1st of september in Northwastern Spain. The significance of this event was that it occurred at a large chemical distribution plant. The main source of pollution was runoff, mostly toluene, and was mostly contained by a series of dykes and a treatment process with activated carbon, oxygen and sand filters. However the secondary emmissions in the form of smoke and chemical clouds could not be contained, and there was fear that PAHS (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) had contaminated nearby crops. Thanks to the use of some snazzy extraction method and my favorite, HPLC, researchers were able to determine that the levels of PAHs in food items collected from the nearby crops such as cabbage, corn and peppers were well below 1005 ng/kg, considered safe for consumption. This is why I do science - I am a toxicologist, and I love using chemistry, molecular biology and biochemistry to improve our lives and environmental quality.


I hope you found this informative, mildly entertaining, or at least you read to the bottom without getting sleepy.

BD