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Except this is how laypeople perceive chemicals when they react to them as a (possible) threat. They conflate "chemical" with a compound beyond natural complexi
by lawn02 6y ago
Except this is how laypeople perceive chemicals when they react to them as a (possible) threat. They conflate "chemical" with a compound beyond natural complexity. Humans excel at creating compounds that naturally do not naturally occur in abundance for thermodynamic reasons. Chlorofluorocarbons come to mind immediately.
So how is it scaremongering? It is both accurate (PFOAs, etc are indeed chemicals) and of the proper connotation in the common parlance (using "chemical" to mean something manmade rather than naturally occurring).
Your argument holds no water.
By the way, an article in Scientific American isn't scientific literature. It's a magazine intended at lay audiences. You might be confusing it with something like Nature journal.
- donatj 6y agoIf someone is patently wrong about something in an unhelpful way, feeding into it is counterproductive. Using chemical to mean something man made is factually incorrect. It's in our best interest to educate against its misuse rather than acknowledge/encourage it, particularly in this case because the line between the two things is hazy at best.
- feanaro 6y agoI think your reaction is a bit too strong, which perhaps makes you miss a subtler point better. This use of the word "chemical" seems to be a thought-terminating cliché of sorts and I would argue it is precisely what leads to overreaction in cases such as dihydrogen monoxide. People learn to associate "chemical" with "bad" and a certain class of "chemical-sounding" names with "chemical". It would be better if the lay knowledge and perception of chemicals was more nuanced, so that it is realized that chemicals are not bad due to their membership in this category, but for other, more complex reasons. There are bad chemicals and there are good chemicals, and there is no shortcut to knowing which is which other than putting effort into understanding the mechanisms. I think penalising this usage of the word "chemical" might further this goal.