Scientific Illiteracies that will shock you again! (Literally)

There is no dearth of willful illiterates in this world. My father always says that eyes closed due to sleep can be opened, but eyes closed due to ignorance are the most difficult ones to open. It really triggers me when a person does not want to open their eyes to reality because it seems difficult and requires effort. They fail to see the light of knowledge beyond hard work. While it may seem insignificant on the face of it, it is very dangerous to let this kind of ignorance seep into ourselves. This is the kind of ignorance that leads to more and more people talking about subjects that they have no knowledge about but have learned a thing or two about. The self-proclaimed “Google doctors”, believers of moon landing being fake, and the Flat Earth Society are leading examples of it.

As the world seems to be developing, the gap between science and general knowledge also seems to be growing. Teachers, scientific writers, science slammers, etc. are putting in so much of their efforts to bring the logic of science to the foreground. But scientific illiteracies don’t stop. Remember my older article on Scientific Illiteracies that will shock you? If you haven’t, go check it out. There is so much misinformation in this world, that idiocracies never seem to stop. I realized that it is time for part 2. Some myths that I debunked in the first part:

• There was a campaign to ban water in 1997! Yes, you read that right.
• Anything chemical is bad, anything natural is good.
• When clueless authorities decided to deny funding to research that would later yield ground-breaking results.
• Microwaves cause cancer!
• Earth is flat, the Moon landing was fake and Sun orbits the Earth
• When the wrong recipes for hand sanitizers were spread during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 5G technology is a system for tracking us through the chips inserted into us with the COVID vaccinations.
• Taking satirical websites seriously

Although I have talked about scientific illiteracy in part 1 of this topic (link above), I will go over it briefly for a start.  In short, a scientifically literate person has the competence to make decisions for themselves by evaluating and researching matters because our world economy, personal lives, and political issues are intertwined with science. This is simple, but how many are capable of following it? No wonder it is so easy to brainwash people. So, here are some more examples of scientific illiteracy, where some are stupid, some are concerning, but some are very dangerous too:

Moon is a source of light

If you are hearing about this for the first time, I should tell you that thousands of people in this world believe this. But if you are one of them, it is time to explain why that is impossible. Moon is a rock in space that does not have any materials on its surface that emits light, and neither do any processes happen on its surface that would emit light of any wavelength. It just reflects sunlight. People present an “opinion” that if the moon is a rock reflecting light in space, then any rock on the Earth should do the same, but they don’t, and hence the Moon is a light source in itself. But this argument is void because the concept of refraction and environment comes into the picture on Earth, and there is none in space. So, on Earth, light is scattered and diffracted, and refracted. But none of that happens in space because there is no environment on the Moon. Moreover, the moon is seen against the black background of space, so obviously it would appear to shine against the light from the Sun.

“We don’t need gravity”

These are exact words said by an actual person on a podcast. In short, during one of the episodes of the podcast called “Frenemies”, a well-known American YouTuber Trisha Paytas said that we don’t need gravity. According to her, nobody really “cares about gravity”. Shockingly, she is not alone. There are a lot of people like her. It really doesn’t matter what you have achieved in your field if you confidently make tone-deaf comments on subjects that you don’t know about. As a physicist, these kinds of comments really hurt me because it seems to invalidate all the hard work that scientists, including myself, put in to advance science and make life easier and simpler for common people. You might think that the knowledge that gravity exists is common sense, but there are people who think gravity is a thing that was invented. Gravity in simple terms is the attraction that any two objects feel in the vicinity of each other. Yes, even small objects like you and I attract other objects. It’s just that we are too small to cause a strong attraction, but celestial bodies like planets, moons, stars, etc. are big enough to show the effects of gravity. But the reason for this effect is that we basically live in an invisible web. So, if there is a disturbance in one part of the web, the nearby objects are going to feel the tug. And as the object gets bigger, the tug gets stronger. Eventually, when the size of the object is as much as a planet, the tug is strong enough to hold smaller objects on its surface, just like we all are stuck to the surface of the Earth. A very easy and short explanation of this is here -> Science in Ten Minutes: Gravitational Waves.

We use only 10% of our brain

This claim has been around for a while. We don’t really know who started this, but it has been attributed to many famous scientists, for example, Albert Einstein. The human brain is very complex and performs so many tasks for us. However, “We use only 10% of our brain” is a completely wrong statement and has come from misquoting the original research. This is a real-world example of the joke that when a scientist says, “My research is useless if taken out of context”, the media just quotes him as “Scientist says his research is useless”. Ironic? Coming back to the brain example, the original research over decades of research tells us that our nervous system is made up of neurons and glial cells. Neurons are responsible for receiving and transmitting signals, while the glial cells support neurons in doing their work. In our brain, 10% are neurons, while 90% are glial cells. We know what neurons do, but we are not yet completely aware of what the remaining 90% is doing. So, the correct statement that can be made is that we know what 10% of our brain does, but we don’t know what the remaining 90% is doing even though it is functioning. So, if somebody asks you, “What if we use 100% of our brains?”, you can tell them that everyone is already doing it.

Healing the “vaccine victims”

Credits: DanielD5

This one literally made me facepalm. I saw a tweet made by someone and hoped that it was a joke, but it wasn’t. Apparently, this person was going to get “unvaxed” (unvaccinated) because all the chemicals from vaccinations went to their brain which has led them to make stupid decisions. Hilariously, it was followed by a comment, which I cannot tell was a joke or not, that they used magnets to attract the toxins through the skin and the commenter had healed more than 178 “vaccine victims”. The number of anti-vaxers is increasing and it is highly concerning. If more and more people decide to skip vital vaccinations, several life-threatening diseases might be seen making a return. It is very important to understand how vaccinations work. They are not a bunch of chemicals put into your body. It is like training a soldier to identify threats and following a protocol to eliminate those threats. If a soldier sees an enemy in his area during a war, he would fight them or kill them. Likewise, we are introducing weak forms of the microorganism to the body. In response, the white blood cells form a protocol on how to deal with the weak threat, so that when the real disease is ever encountered, it knows how to eliminate that threat. So, you are not introducing a bunch of chemicals to your body, you are simply training your body to fight diseases. But the fact that anti-vaxers will do everything in their power to stop their body from receiving life-saving training seems very stupid to me and falls under the bracket of not just scientific illiteracy, but illiteracy in general.

The effects of not vaccinating our bodies are starting to show already. After having eliminated the poliovirus almost entirely from the world (barring a few regions where the fight is on), it is seen making a comeback in the most urban and developed regions in US, UK, and Israel. Read about it and also understand how vaccinations work here – Science in Ten Minutes: Why is Polio resurfacing after having been almost eradicated?

Bacteria is our body’s immune system and viruses are detoxing mechanisms to kill toxins

This one is definitely dangerous to believe, but I was also appalled when I came across this view of some people. According to some people, viruses are produced by our own bodies and kill toxins. They also believe that bacteria are our immune system itself and keep our bodies healthy. This is crazy, dangerous, and very concerning. If people start believing this, they would stop treating themselves when infected, which can either kill them or kill someone around them whose immunity might be weak. Bacteria is a family of microorganisms and there are good as well as bad bacteria. Bacterial infections are caused by bacteria that are not supposed to be there in our body, and there are good bacteria like lactobacillus which play a role in breaking down food and absorbing nutrients. And viruses are not really living microorganisms, but they are pieces of information that can tell the cell how to work, replicate, or die. They are just DNA or RNA encapsulated by a protein coat for protecting that DNA or RNA. So, if a body is affected by a virus, it is telling those specific cells to malfunction, and the reaction our body has is a mechanism for our body to destroy infected cells and replace them with new, healthy cells. Read here for a short and quick explanation of how viruses work – Science in Ten Minutes: Viruses aren’t really alive?

Do not heat your cup of water in a microwave!

There is one thing that is common in America but is hated in Europe – heating water in a microwave. It is encouraged to use a water kettle, which is called Wasserkocher in German (literally, a water cooker). But why is it so discouraged? The most common reason is of course, cultural. But also, most people also believe that microwaved water is dangerous as the “micro-waves” themselves change something in the composition of water, making it unhealthy to consume. That is not the case, and the reason is very different. We need to take a step back to understand the components involved in this situation. First of all, water is a compound consisting of H2O and probably some minerals, depending on the source of the water. Microwaves are waves of photons that move within the frequency range of 300 megahertz to 300 gigahertz. This high value is the property that allows it to heat up food. Many people consider microwaving food or water to be dangerous because they believe it changes the chemical composition of the food or drink. However, any kind of cooking does that, and that is the basic principle of cooking itself. But are there any particular effects of microwaves themselves? Nothing apart from giving energy to food molecules to vibrate, which is nothing but heating the food by converting microwave energy to heat energy.

Coming back to the main question of heating water in the microwave, we can already understand that there is no chemical change in water. However, there is still a very dangerous disaster waiting to happen if we are not careful. The boiling point of water is about 100 degrees Celcius (212 degrees Fahrenheit), and it can vary between 30 degrees above and below this temperature based on the atmospheric pressure at that location. If we boil water in a pot on the fire, we see water bubbling as soon as this temperature is reached. But when we use a microwave, it does transfer all that energy to the water, but the water doesn’t bubble because all that energy (maybe more than that required for boiling) is trapped under the surface of the water in the closed environment of the microwave. So, as soon as one removes the cup and tries to pour or insert something to break the surface tension of the water, it blasts because the water is not just boiling hot, it is hot beyond boiling.

So, the next time you use a microwave for heating liquids, keep this in mind and be careful!

This is not all. There are so many people who make conclusions about the human body based on studies on rats, or consider computer simulation to be equivalent to real experiments. In general, scientific illiteracy can lead to a lack of understanding and appreciation for science and its role in society. It can also lead to a lack of critical thinking skills and an inability to make informed decisions about important issues that affect our lives. There is so much more in this world of scientific illiteracy that I feel I will be publishing several parts of this series. What are some examples of scientific illiteracy that you have seen or experienced? Let me know!

Be Priyafied!