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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: 2) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday August 19 2015, @12:36PM
Breaking bad is a positive portrayal of chemistry? One of the first things that happens in the series is "how to dissolve a body in your bath-tub". The problem is that the positive side of chemistry is boooooring. You cannot have exciting chemistry in Hollywood. When the evil badguy in the movie threatens to dump millions of gallons of crude oil in the bay, you don't hear, "With the power of these oil dissolving microbes designed by our top biochemists, we can avert this disaster in approximately 3 to 5 years!* Your plans are foiled!"
*subject to funding.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday August 19 2015, @12:48PM
An anti-hero using guns to murder people still glorifies guns and shows off their power. Doing the same with chemistry still fits that cultural role.
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday August 19 2015, @01:17PM
My complaint was that 80% of the article is about trying to shake off the perception that the public is afraid of "chemicals!", or more so that chemists still think the public is afraid of "chemicals!". Then the last paragraph is about how powerful and dangerous "chemicals!" actually are and how the public should learn more about them lest they become afraid of them. That's a complete 180.
"Are there other EVEN MORE POSITIVE portrayals of chemistry" suggests that Breaking Bad was somehow a positive portrayal of chemistry. Which it wasn't. The only chemistry that stands out (to me) on TV in a positive light was on Macgyver.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Wednesday August 19 2015, @01:26PM
Hm. Fair.
Chemicals=scary is actually going to be kinda true when you're doing reactive chemistry, though. The end products, isolated and used for the main function can be quite harmless, but when you're running the chemical process itself, there's something scary going on. Delicious table salt is explosive sodium and poisonous chlorine.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday August 19 2015, @02:19PM
Breaking Bad is about an anti-hero, sure. But it taught that a knowledge of chemistry confers power (such as when Walt uses chemistry to start the motorhome after Jessie kills the battery and strands them in the desert). I see that as a positive message, because it gives people who don't know chemistry or science a specific, tangible reason to care about learning them. It answers the perennial, proverbial whine of, "But why do I have to learn this stuff?" Answer: because it makes you powerful.
Still, more positive portrayals of chemistry that people can relate to would be even better, such that they convey the wonder and beauty of the science.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Wednesday August 19 2015, @03:07PM
or more so that chemists still think the public is afraid of "chemicals!".
Or even more so that chemists and the general public don't agree on what "chemicals" means. Words mean different things to different audiences.
In common use, "chemical" == "something unnatural and unpleasant" is pretty much the definition: "This beer tastes of chemicals" means that someone left the sterilising solution in, not "I'm getting hints of ethanol, unfermented sugars, and dihydrogen monoxide". Spouting platitudes like "sugar and salt are chemicals, too" will not get the message across, however many references in the Clever Person's Encyclopaedia of Science you cite, because that is not what the word means in everyday English. Essentially, you're just saying that everything they know and understand is worthless.
Engage and interest people first - pedantry can wait until the advanced course.
(Score: 2) by EvilSS on Wednesday August 19 2015, @09:00PM
Essentially, you're just saying that everything they know and understand is worthless.
Well as long as we're getting the basic point across then I guess we an call it a success.
(Score: 2) by MrNemesis on Wednesday August 19 2015, @05:32PM
Chemicals == scary for the same reason radiation == scary. Unless you've had a reasonably good science-based education and you cared enough to learn, all those long names are perfectly meaningless and it's impossible for the layperson to tell whether non-ionising radiation is as harmless as non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Generally speaking if you can't immediately see the "harmfulness" but you're told it's harmful anyway AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO PREVENT YOUR OWN MISERABLE AGONISING DEATH MR BOND BWAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHA, then people are going to react negatively to the umbrella term.
Take 'E442: ammonium phosphatides' as an example. Sounds terrifying but it's basically just glycerine and rapeseed oil - both entirely natural - and widely used as an emulsifier in foods. Likewise lots of the synthetics can sound equally awful (ye gods! A ferrocyanide!). In the same vein, DHMO.org [dhmo.org] (someone's mentioned that by now surely?) is the classic take on scaring people by wrapping something everyday and innocuous in "scary" technical language; if you don't understand the technical language you're just left with the scary part. Seeing some of the "points" made by the anti-vaccination movement brought up the same old stuff - "Look! Contains a MERCURY compound! Which is obviously going to kill you! Now hold on a second whilst I eat these crisps covered in delicious sodium and chlorine".
As an aside, one of the silly songs we learnt in our first science classes teaching the importance of understanding labels goes:
I also can't really see why Breaking Bad is used as an example of a "positive" chemistry show; it was almost uniformly used to do Bad Things and after the first two series there was precious little even of that. And yes, the only other show I can think of now where chemistry played any meaningful part of the narrative was also MacGyver... physics and biology seems much better represented in drama.
Exit stage left, looking for a chemistry documentary on BBC4.
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 25 2015, @07:38AM
A clear case of mental illness.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @01:19PM
Well, imagine you've just fought that alien invasion nobody else knows about, and which must be kept secret under all circumstances. But you have all those alien bodies lying around (for some unknown reason the aliens started their invasion in your home; maybe there are only few spots they can open their wormholes). Wouldn't you think that knowledge of how to dissolve a body in your bath-tub would be very helpful in that situation?
(Score: 2) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday August 19 2015, @01:23PM
Except you have no idea of the composition of the alien body, and the potential toxic by products when dissolving them using the chemicals normally used for dissolving human bodies.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday August 19 2015, @02:24PM
Science doesn't say "don't dissolve unknown alien bodies with acid because DANGER". Science says "don't forget to wear a good air-filter and protective eyeglasses because this could be awesome!"
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday August 19 2015, @07:07PM
Cool! So, we're looking at a summer 2016 release? Don't keep us hanging!