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It's all about having the right attitude...dude
 
 
Who's the bad guy?

Ben Goldacre
Thursday October 7, 2004
The Guardian


What is science?
A set of techniques, perhaps, for approaching a problem, or examining and describing the world. It informs, but is different from, technology, which in turn lets us do things like fly disaster rescue missions, phone our parents or manufacture processed junk food, each according to personal taste and preference. Or, if you're a gullible neo-luddite new age moron, science is the universal bad guy. Like in the new Kettle Chips four-page pullout advert. Strapline: "No Science. No Fiction. Real."
 

  
Nice.
"Our potatoes ... " they say, "one season they're planted, it rains a bit, then the next season we dig a few up to check they're ready before harvesting them. Not much science to that." From what I remember, I'd say the completely amazing story of how a little round potato grows, with water and carbon dioxide and sunlight, into a bushy four-foot green plant with loads more potatoes under the ground, is pretty much our core constituency. And the astonishing unlikeliness of how it all works still blows my mind 15 years after Mr Hollander taught me back in the lower fourth about photosynthesis, chemotaxis, and that amazing stuff where the roots know how to grow down instead of up even in the dark.

Back to the advert:
"Salt and vinegar? No thanks. Sea salt and balsamic vinegar for us_ No Science." No, heaven forbid. Salt is a nasty chemical that gives you hypertension and heart attacks. Natural sea salt is a different kettle of chips altogether. Now, stop me if I've lost what little perspective I once had, but to recap: these are crisps, and this is a junk food company, advertising its junk food which it makes in a big factory somewhere. It's promoting rubbish food that will make you fat and ugly, and now it's telling me that "science" is the bad guy that I'm supposed to be afraid of.

Well shake my pot belly and shower me with emboli, why would a junk food company want to turn me against science? After all, science gave it cheaper ways to make junk food, and imaging advances help us see the damage its food does to our arteries, and epidemiology helps us to notice that its food lowers our life expectancy, and materials research helps surgeons to replace our blocked, rotting arteries so that we can keep on stuffing our faces with its posh crisps. Who's the bad guy there, fat boy?

 
Originally from:
www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/story/0,,1320881,00.html