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from the cartoon-chemistry-always-goes-boom dept.
Scientific American has a piece on how the public and chemists perceive and mis-perceive attitudes about chemistry:
What my colleagues and I have found is that public perception of chemistry, chemists and chemicals is far more positive than we believed. Like other sciences, people think the benefits chemistry brings to society outweigh the risks. The problem, as described in a report published by the U.K.'s Royal Society of Chemistry, is that many people are confused about what chemists are and what they do. Additionally, people tend to be neutral about chemistry and don't see how it's personally relevant. They have limited "encounters" with chemistry and low awareness about its applications and the role it plays in various industries and sciences. But they are not "anti-chemistry".
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When we looked into chemists' attitudes towards the public we found that our community tends to paint a very negative picture compared to the reality of public opinion. Many are particularly worried that chemicals have a bad reputation and we found that chemophobia is often mentioned as the cause and/or the effect of this reputation. This is now a well-established narrative in many discussions, but one that our community developed without real evidence.
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Understanding this, I have to agree with University of Hull senior lecturer and science writer Mark Lorch who argues that "chemophobia is a chemist's construct" and that "it's time for us chemists to stop feeling so unloved." According to Lorch, "It is almost as if we are experiencing the fear of chemophobia: chemophobia-phobia."Before we can hope to influence public attitudes we need to change our attitudes towards the public. We need to create new, positive associations instead of focusing on the old negative ones. We should avoid talking about chemophobia (Lorch suggests we hang up the #chemophobia hashtag) or framing our communications in negative terms such as "fighting ignorance" or "debunking errors". Instead we should try to be more positive, showing people how chemistry makes us feel and championing the cause of chemistry in society. Let's not forget that we are all acting as ambassadors for chemistry.
Breaking Bad has perhaps helped create public perceptions of chemistry as something powerful, important, and worth learning. Are there other even more positive portrayals of chemistry that chemists can refer non-chemist acquaintances to, and learn from themselves to speak about the practice of chemistry in a more positive way?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @11:01AM
Probably the problem is overgeneralization. Many people are against certain applications of chemistry (for example, non-natural chemical substances in the food, often even restricted to a specific set of substances). Now the easy way to deal with it is to just claim these people have a general chemophobia, and be done with it because a general chemophobia is, of course, irrational. And then, the average chemist hears often of people with chemophobia, and believes it.
Add to this the general effect that those who complain are more recognized than those who just are fine with the situation as is (which makes about every protest seem larger than it is), and you'll have perfect explanation of chemophobia-phobia.
Note that the specific fears may or may not have a base in reality, but in both cases, not addressing the specific fear, but just declaring it as a general chemophobia symptom helps neither side.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @12:58PM
Many people are against certain applications of chemistry (for example, non-natural chemical substances in the food, often even restricted to a specific set of substances).
Or "unnatural-sounding" chemical names that are really just fruit/vegetable extracts but need to be accurately named for FDA reasons.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday August 19 2015, @01:21PM
Evil All Natural Kiwis!
https://jameskennedymonash.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/ingredients-of-an-all-natural-kiwi-poster-2.jpg [wordpress.com]
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Wednesday August 19 2015, @05:49PM
Well it certainly has not helped with lying scumbag companies that have introduced chemicals without the proper testing leading to many, many instances of harmful side effects in people/animals/plants. When that inevitably gets exposed every other chemical introduced gets painted with the same bad feelings/reactions to the slimmy bastards that gave the problems to us to start with. In short it is a normal human reaction to be suspicious of bad things happening again when they have in the past due to this. Also does not help with the media over the top reporting on everything in sight going to kill you, don't know how many time I have seen this or that is going to do you in only to learn later they were full of shit about it.
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