Derek Sorensen

I hold some conflicting opinions about GM. On the one hand, I can see that GM has the potential to offer much that is good to humanity. On the other, I think it’s a dangerous technology which needs extreme care, and I’m not convinced that enough care is being taken now that it’s become such big business.
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Recently, I’ve been reading lots of rubbish about the so-called LoG (Law Of Gravity). In case you’ve not heard about it (unlikely as that might be) it appears that way back in the 17th century, some smarty-pants called Isaac Newton was sitting under an apple tree and an apple fell on his head. Now, that must have addled his brain somewhat, because he came up with this bizarre notion about objects attracting one another.

But even more bizarrely, when he told people about it, they didn’t say to him “Isaac, you’ve been out in the sun too long.” Oh, no; instead they said “Hmm, you might be on to something there, matey. Why not write a book about it?” And so was born Newton’s Principia which proposes the so-called Inverse Square Law. Now, any sensible person reading the Principia nowadays would dismiss it as complete tosh. Full of arcane formulae and explanations for things that really need no explanation. And to think that he actually tried to give credence to this ridiculous idea by swinging a bucket around his head. Really, Isaac, you should have got out more.
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I’m not normally one to scaremonger, but I think everyone should be aware of the dangers from the widespread use of Dihydrogen Monoxide (DHMO).

The following are taken from www.dhmo.org.

What is DHMO?
Dihydrogen Monoxide, or DHMO, is a colorless and odorless chemical that kills or maims thousands each year, primarily through accidental inhalation. It has also been revealed to be a causative agent in many environmental exposure incidents, industrial contaminations, automobile accidents, and property damage. The dollar amount losses caused, and the lives impacted, by the DHMO threat are virtually innumerable.
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People sceptical of acupuncture have for a long time claimed that it has no therapeutic value beyond the placebo effect. Whilst not dismissing the value of placebo, if that’s all that going on then a heck of a lot of people have been hoodwinked - including, I suspect, most of the practitioners themselves.

So how can we find out? How can you devise a test which will separate out the placebo effect from a real effect, if present? On the face of it, it would seem to be very difficult. However, in 2005 a team of researchers at Southampton University and University College London claimed to have done just that, and I have to say their approach appears to be a good one.
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