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> The study, by researchers at the advocacy group Toxic-Free Future... It's interesting that we routinely dismiss studies funded by corporations as "biased" an
by tqi 2y ago
> The study, by researchers at the advocacy group Toxic-Free Future...
It's interesting that we routinely dismiss studies funded by corporations as "biased" and "junk science", but never seem to scrutinize studies from other such advocacy groups. With a name like "Toxic-Free Future" it seems pretty obvious to me what their conclusions were going to be even before the study was done. Not because of nefarious reasons, but because confirmation bias is a difficult thing to overcome.
- dylan604 2y agoit's human nature. anything that confirms the direction you're already leaning will just be accepted without further scrutiny.
- tqi 2y agoSeeing the authors double down on their paper (characterizating it as a mere typo, saying it doesn't affect their conclusions) does not inspire confidence.
- dylan604 2y agoit's still >0, so it's just less bad not that it's not bad. At least they corrected it instead of just letting it linger out there
- semiquaver 2y agoI imagine it’s difficult emotionally to let go of the prestige conferred by a paper that got such wide recognition in the media for the mere fact that its conclusions are wrong.
- sigmoid10 2y agoVery often these are actually astroturfing competitors. There's certainly no shortage of plastic free "eco," "organic" or "green" kitchen utensil manufacturers. The only real approach here is to scrutinize everything and always be especially critical when someone comes up with something that sounds drastic.
- Rastonbury 2y agoIt is a nice theory when you look at it like that but it doesn't have to be so nefarious. First, we have a history of letting that through, leaded gas, insecticide etc but we learnt. Any research is going to suffer from the effect of wanting to confirm and publish, but I'm glad people looking at this stuff. I'd be so much more skeptical of anyone saying X is not toxic so some corporation can keep doing whatever. Next is that any utensil manufacturers easily has the ability to change the colour and slap on that eco marketing. There is barely any financial incentive for Big White Utensil Co to go and pay scientists to slag off black plastic. The typo is really unfortunate. But wouldn't anyone be glad to know that black plastics have more of a toxic chemical than white ones? Even if both are below a threshold, I'd like to keep my toxin consumption as low as conveniently possible, maybe nothing will happen to me either way but spatulas are like 10 bucks
- sigmoid10 2y ago>wouldn't anyone be glad to know that black plastics have more of a toxic chemical than white ones? Why wouldn't anyone be able to do that? If you can verify the research, you can do whatever you want. Just don't fall for newspapers and blogspam, which also goad you into these things because that is literally how they make money. That way we're not even talking about the actual industry behind it.
- hombre_fatal 2y agoWell, that's why we should judge methodology and compare the results to other lines of evidence instead of dismissing research based on mind-reading.