Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the LibOwl, the podcast of the Sabbagh Library at ACS Athens.
Today we have Mr. Spyros Arsenikos. Mr. Arsenikos was born in Athens in Greece, was raised in Melbourne, Australia. He has a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry and a Master in Environmental Chemistry and Technology from the National Kapodistrian University of Athens. He has done undergraduate and postgraduate studies with oceanographic and environmental programs since 2010. He has designed several learning projects in chemistry and math for elementary, middle and high school students. And he joined ACS Athens in 2017.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Well said, Dr. Crivellaro.
[00:01:07] Speaker A: Thank you. Appreciate it. It's great to have you here. Thank you for having agreed to come.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: It's great to be here.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Thanks. So it's fair to say that chemistry has quite a relevant part in your interest in your life.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:01:21] Speaker A: Why?
[00:01:21] Speaker B: I used to hate chemistry when I was a student.
[00:01:24] Speaker A: That's something we, we have in common. My grades in chemistry were abysmal. If they were a minus something, I would probably have got it. I love it. I came to appreciate it later in life when I changed the teacher and when I didn't have the nightmare of grading anymore.
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Okay. The subject is the same, but the teachers play a role for sure, right?
[00:01:43] Speaker A: My teacher, my first chemistry teacher, was a wonderful person, very interesting person, very well learned, very cultured, horrible teacher. He shouldn't have taught it in high school. Basically no empathy, no ability of engaging students or interested in engaging students for all that matters whatsoever.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: So your next teacher was the same, but she provided better grades.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: The next teacher, she gave you better grades, he was more. He cared more about us learning stuff, that. That was the reason. So, yes, it was quite important. So why did you hate chemistry?
[00:02:17] Speaker B: Oh, it required a lot of studying, that's why. I mean, I understood math and physics, but for chemistry, you needed to know the Alphabet, you needed to know stuff in order to understand what was going on.
[00:02:28] Speaker A: So, yeah, what changed your mind? Provided I don't think you woke up one morning and say, oh, I love chemistry today. No, obviously it takes time.
[00:02:36] Speaker B: It was. It was a Greek system, the panel of the case system. So I didn't do well in my chemistry test. Actually, I missed the part that I was required to just write theory, to
just write definitions and stuff. And I hated that. Nowadays things have changed because it's more critical thinking, it's more open, it's more. Have you understood the topic? You don't need to write it exactly as it is, but you need to understand what it means. So nowadays it's much better you mean.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: In the Greek system or what you experience globally, everywhere. [00:03:06] Speaker B: Everywhere. It's happening everywhere.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: It's more critical thinking rather than that one.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: We can agree. It's cross subject. I mean, across the subjects. It applies to every subject.
[00:03:15] Speaker B: And you need to have understood and not memorized. That's the difference. Anyway, and then I went to the university. It was interesting because it included a lot of hands on. It was practical.
[00:03:25] Speaker A: Did you chose chemistry as your major already in university when you started?
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Yeah, I succeeded in chemistry. I could have chosen physics, math or. [00:03:33] Speaker A: Anything else, but the field you were interested was that one.
[00:03:36] Speaker B: Anyway, let's say I was interested in science and engineering in general, but based on my results I got into the chemistry department.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:03:44] Speaker B: Anyway, it was nice because it was practical. And then you start realizing, oh, this makes sense. Everything started to make sense around you. The thing is that chemistry was not invented by people. It was actually something that nature made. Ord. Whatever. Okay. And sometimes we try to understand nature and in order to understand something, we try to figure out patterns. We try to find patterns everywhere. Right?
[00:04:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:04:11] Speaker B: And organize the knowledge into groups in order to make it more accessible.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: Okay. We agree that all matter is chemical. So understanding chemistry is understanding how nature works, how nature is built. Yeah. And what you said just now about it's a matter of organizing knowledge and making accessible and easier to study. Actually, that's easier to study. Yes. Which is actually the purpose of basically any library, specific school libraries, academic libraries. One of our main tasks is to devise a system to organize knowledge as a whole, whatever the subject is, implement this system in a feasible, accessible way and make learning, studying, reading easier, more accessible, more effective for patrons of a certain library. It's interesting that you mentioned that it.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Is the first step of the scientific method.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: It's the first step in order to. Scientific method. Yeah.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: A knowledgeable, let's say, guess, Educated guess. You need to be educated. In order to be educated, you need to have bits and parts put together to get the whole picture.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: The thing is, I'm curious about why specifically chemistry? Meaning. Okay. It's safe to say that I have several interests that make me happy. It's not just literature, but philology, philosophy, art history, physics, photography on a theoretical basis. My wife is a photographer. I am completely devoid of any ability in that sense. But I mean, you're the model. I am the model. I did work briefly as a model. Yeah, but you don't.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: I know, I know, I know, I know. [00:05:47] Speaker A: You saw stuff. Okay.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: It's a bit of. This is A podcast, so we don't see the pictures anyway. [00:05:51] Speaker A: But it wouldn't be shared anyway.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Anyway, now I want to see them. [00:05:54] Speaker A: You will not.
Anyway, I wanted to say. But I decided, for example, when I joined college and then for my PhD, I decided to go to classical philology because several reasons. Why did you decide specifically to go into chemistry and to teach it as a student?
[00:06:13] Speaker B: I was a physics and math guy. I wasn't a chemistry guy. [00:06:17] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: I loved math. It made sense. Everything made sense in math. [00:06:20] Speaker A: Engineeringly beautiful.
[00:06:22] Speaker B: Eventually it did. And so it was either one of the three sciences, the main sciences that I was going to study. And the toughest one was chemistry.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: So you. You had it as a challenge. This is the toughest one. I'm going to go there.
[00:06:35] Speaker B: Maybe. I think that life brought me here. It wasn't my decisions. It was actually, you know, when we make plans, God is laughing. Or the other way around. We never know.
[00:06:44] Speaker A: Wasn't it John Lennon? Life is that thing that happens to you while you're busy making plans. Yeah, I attribute it to John Lennon. I didn't veri. It is true or not, it doesn't matter.
[00:06:54] Speaker B: It's the same thing with what we use when we want to give credit to something, right? For example, based on scientific knowledge, or based on this scientific article
or based on that scientific article. 99% of the time, no one checks the articles. No one checks. Of course, nowadays, based on the science. What science? What are you talking about? There are exceptions. For example, if you follow Dr. Kerkines, for example, you will notice that even if he. If he passes what he ate today, he's gonna give you like 10 references. I know scientific articles, which is beautiful.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Kerkines and I used to be gym buddies, so I know his approach. It's. [00:07:30] Speaker B: Good morning. Let me tell you a story about Good morning. [00:07:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I know well, but. Okay, we know this very well. Any kind of
academic, generally speaking, not necessarily scientific. It's is read by a very, very, very small
portion of people, mostly experts in the field. And I would say not even in that case. I recently got publish in. In a book with several other contributors and I'm pretty sure that 10 people in total will ever read the chapter. I. I read a book. My mom wants to read it, but she doesn't read English, so it's going to be a challenge for her.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: This reminds me of an amazing Italian philosopher. Soccer player actually. But he was also a philosopher when he published his first book. I can't remember his name right now.
[00:08:14] Speaker A: Okay, too bad. Anyway, the Whispering is a nice touch.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I know. So the guy, during the presentation of his book, he said, I'm probably the only the world that has read zero books and written one book. You know what I mean?
[00:08:27] Speaker A: Well, you know, Hemingway used to say, Hemingway served during World War I. Yeah.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: You're just saying names now.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. No, no, Hemingway. It's a real name. He really existed. And. And he did say this and.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: Oh, that. Hemingway.
[00:08:39] Speaker A: That Hemingway. Okay. Yes, yes. Herness Nobel Prize winner and great beard, great sense of style.
[00:08:47] Speaker B: Oh, now I remember.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: There you go. There we go. He also wrote a few books. [00:08:51] Speaker B: A few books, yes.
[00:08:52] Speaker A: And he said, half of it, audience write. The other half doesn't read. So. Yeah, and I would say it's quite accurate. Half. Right. The other half doesn't read. So. Okay. Anyway, thank you for that. I wanted to ask you because science is, as we said, a big part of your interest, your life as well.
At some level, it's a big part of everyone's life because it has endless applications and impacts on anything. I was thinking it's something that has occurred to me several, several times how a
scientific approach, scientific justification is wildly used and abused in everyday occurrences. I'm thinking, for example, marketing, advertising, stuff like that. You have a plethora of brands that says, okay, but basically buy this stuff because it's scientifically proven that it's gonna give you this outcome. I'm not gonna mention specific names, but you see an ad and say, clinically tested, clinically proven. And then there is absolutely nothing to prove about it because they say it's clinically proven, scientifically tested. But as you said, it's not that. They provide a list of references and you see, okay, when it comes to.
[00:10:18] Speaker B: Commercial products, it's different. It's a different story. I was talking about articles, but yeah.
[00:10:23] Speaker A: No, no, but the principle is you need to provide references in order for something to be credible psychologically.
[00:10:30] Speaker B: When you add the word science, it used to have a much more important impact. Nowadays it doesn't have that impact. And the reason is not scientists.
[00:10:38] Speaker A: It's what is the reason?
[00:10:40] Speaker B: Politicians that are actually the politicians. [00:10:43] Speaker A: I would say that.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: I would go with the politicians because they have specific agenda. And when the results of a scientific, let's say, research, don't agree with their agenda, they will take out a small part, for example, of a graph. And when you see a clear, let's say, increase in a trend and there is a small, let's say, plateau or a small step, at some point, they will focus on that. And they will say, oh, global change doesn't exist, but we have the data of the information. You didn't know?
[00:11:13] Speaker A: No, I thought it was an oak.
[00:11:15] Speaker B: Listen, I've heard so many people talk about it, so now I'm not sure if it's real. I don't, I don't trust the data anymore. You know what I mean? So it happened to me too.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: Because you know that that's a very relevant portion of people. Yes. That believe, for example that climate change is an oaks to convince you to buy solar panels. You know, you know that we have, we started a library course in, in the middle school this year and I was having a class with eighth graders last week, no, seventh graders, two weeks ago. And I was trying to explain how information overload is necessarily not a good thing. Meaning it's good to have options. When the options are too many, it makes impossible to choose. It's the so called paradox of choice. You have so many things that you cannot, you cannot decide. And there is a very subtle yet unnecessary difference between information and knowledge. One thing is information, a completely different thing is knowledge. You need information to generate knowledge, but they are two different things. And I'll give an example. Can you guys tell me a time where most people thought the earth was flat? Do you know a time where a relevant portion of population believed the earth was flat?
[00:12:44] Speaker B: I think it was 2,000 years after the birth of Christ, Right?
[00:12:47] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. The time where we are living now is actually the first time where a relevant part of the population, educated and uneducated as well, believes that the earth is flat and that have and we know it's aspherical. We have scientific proof, empirical proof
as well that the Earth is spherical. And yet we have people in the age of information that believe the earth was flat. Paradoxically, when information wasn't as easily accessible and shared as now literally everybody knew the Earth was spherical. Augustine in the fourth century knew the Earth was a spherical. Eratosthenes era, that was the example I gave in the lessons in the 4th century BCE he actually calculated the circumference of Earth. He knew. Aristotle knew the Earth was spherical. All the Christian Middle Ages knew, not believe, knew that the Earth was aspherical.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: So what do you think happened? I mean Apart from TikTok and YouTubing, what else happened?
[00:13:52] Speaker A: Well, TikToking and YouTubing are, I believe they are enhancers.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: They don't enhancements of MAL information. Or should we use the term mal knowledge?
[00:14:02] Speaker A: Oh, I like mal knowledge. It's mal knowledge. I like I just made it up. Okay. No, it's good, it's cool. I like it. I'm going to steal that, crediting you, but I'm going to use it.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: Please.
[00:14:13] Speaker A: Yeah, you see, to me that's a very difficult thing to determine. I'm not sure because you know that cultural phenomena take centuries to fully develop, to, to fully show. And I believe that at a certain level, we, as, as a species, as humans, crave for outrageousness, crave for making sure that the next person knows I'm smarter than them. And in order to prove I'm smarter, I will choose controversial topics, controversial opinions. That's gonna upset them, but they will be like, oh, but look, he's going against the stream. He's an original thinker. I think it plays. The psychological part is irrelevant.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: There's a scientific term. I think it's called trolling. [00:15:06] Speaker A: Right.
[00:15:07] Speaker B: It's not only. It's not only trolling, it's very. It's very similar to trolling, but it's. Sometimes trolls start these new movements.
[00:15:15] Speaker A: Oh yeah, of course.
[00:15:16] Speaker B: They start with what you said. I just want to say something outrageous and then someone goes, oh my God, he's amazing. Let's make him the president or whatever. I'm just saying.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: Just saying it's. It's a purely hypothetical scenario. Yes, yes, it's, you know, on the subject, during COVID 19, I remember that some people hypothetically said you could drink detergent to get rid of COVID because, you know, it cleans the stuff so it kills the bacteria.
[00:15:42] Speaker B: Definitely get rid of COVID It's a virus. It can't live without you. So if you're dead, it's not alive.
[00:15:47] Speaker A: Right, Exactly. You know, it's like I have Dane drug. Okay, cut the head. [00:15:51] Speaker B: That was wise.
[00:15:52] Speaker A: Whoever said that is very wise, very scientific. It was, it was scientifically proven.
Purely hypothetical.
[00:15:59] Speaker B: Anyway, I had an interesting discussion with a student of mine. He was asking me, so these ancient scientists, let's say Democratus or whatever, what were they? Were they physicists, mathematicians, astronomers? Yeah, I said they were everything because the amount of knowledge that they had at that point. I mean, if you went to a cribolar organized library at that point, I mean, a well set up library.
[00:16:23] Speaker A: Eratosthenes was a librarian, by the way. You see, he was the director of the library. Where are you?
[00:16:28] Speaker B: Where are you? Can you measure the circumference of the world? [00:16:30] Speaker A: It was again, it was 4th century. I was busy in southern Italy. [00:16:35] Speaker B: Okay, okay, I understand. So what were we talking about? [00:16:39] Speaker A: Who were who were they? Those, those ancient.
[00:16:42] Speaker B: And this. The student comes to me and asked me that question. I said there was. The knowledge was specific, right?
[00:16:50] Speaker A: Yeah, well, there was also different kind of approach in science. Everything but the amount of knowledge that they had, as you said, was. Is astounding, actually. They also used to think and produce knowledge differently than how we do it, it's true.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: But you had a finite, finite amount of knowledge at that point. So you were able. In a lifetime, people were able. The talented people. Yeah, everyone, of course, was able to absorb and understand all that knowledge. And based on that knowledge, they were working on something more for me, more important than the science we have these days where.
Because science these days is just applying things that 100, 150 years ago were proven and we're just on paper. Right. And now we're applying this knowledge and figuring out other things. But back in the days they had the knowledge, the finite knowledge that they had in for astronomy, for mathematics, for physics, for chemistry, for everything. Right. And they were able to philosophy a bit more anyway because the knowledge was becoming more and more. The, the amount of knowledge. Right. Was becoming larger and larger. Eventually you had to separate it. I mean, when I got my, let's say, my diploma as a chemist, the first thing they were asking me was, okay, now what are you going to study? Because there are more fields, you know, you know, the Alphabet. Right. But then I said, okay, biochemistry, you can't say, you can't even say biochemistry. You have to be focused on a specific part, a specific part of the body or a specific organ of the body.
[00:18:28] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, in 20 years there are going to be fields of knowledge specifications that.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: But this, what I'm trying to explain here is that this fact that you have a very, very focused, A very narrow Right. Field takes most people away from science in general. So I don't understand that feel. I trust the medicine, I trust the doctor. I trust science in a way. I mean, the practical part of science, not the impractical part. I don't trust science when it's talking
about global issues or for example, climate change. Right. [00:18:59] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: I don't trust it because I don't want to change my lifestyle. [00:19:03] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:19:04] Speaker B: But if I get sick, I'm definitely going to trust the doctor. [00:19:07] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:19:07] Speaker B: I'm going to trust the science there. But what has happened is that you have a infinite amount of information.
And what you said, I like that too, that we are, we want to go towards the outrageous part. We want to say something that is going to provoke.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: Right yeah, Provocative. Yes, yes.
[00:19:26] Speaker B: Science doesn't do that. Science proves what it sees, right? What I can see, what I can replicate, I can prove. And if I create an experiment that disproves what I just said, it's okay to say I was wrong, of course, and we do it all the time in science. But then we have to always stand against the people who are making outrageous comments about everything. And you have to prove even the simplest things. That's an issue that scientists have. We shouldn't be proving the simplest things. We should promote the social science. Let's say people like Neil DeGrasse Tyson, all these YouTube channels like KuzgersArt or other. Yeah, Very, very important channels on TikTok and YouTube that promote science in a very, very attractive and a very popular, let's say, way. We need to have more of these. We definitely need to have more of these people. The good thing, by the way, is that they have millions of followers. So there is, it's. There is a community of people that is following these channels.
[00:20:29] Speaker A: Okay. When we talk about, for example, TikTok or Instagram or YouTube, social media, generally speaking, there is some approaches tend to say that they dumb down things so they banalize things. Okay. I don't really agree with that per se because of course dumb things can be found anywhere. That goes with textbooks, can be wrong all the time, they often are. And then we find out six months after something was printed we found out that they were wrong. But I believe that as you said, we need more of those kind of accounts, that kind of content, because it drives people in a certain, towards a certain direction. I believe that if you don't give an opportunity to grow positively in, in a scientific, in a reliable way, the general public, who's not an expert about that will never know that is possible. If you don't give that option, the option will never be chosen. I remember that years ago there was a debate in Italy about commercial television versus national television. And several people were saying, yeah, the commercial television's programming is very low quality. There is no educational, cultural value to those programs. And one a CEO said, well, we make these programs because that's what the public wants. And I actually don't believe that because it's somehow a middle ground. If you don't produce good quality, the public will not want it because simply it's not there. The moment you produce something that is good from a quality point of view, as much as is entertaining and engaging and interesting, the public will respond positively. And it's seen all the Time. I was thinking while we were talking.
Have you watched Big Bang Theory? Okay. Do you like the show?
[00:22:27] Speaker B: Bazinga.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: We should come with a Sheldon Lee Cooper T shirt one day.
It was the first TV show my wife introduced me to. Actually, I had no idea that the show existed. We were dating. She told me, you need to watch this. You're gonna love it. Now I know basically every episode by heart. So I remember I read somewhere a few years ago that towards the third, fourth season of the show, Physics department got an increase by 10% of people enrolling in.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: And they were not. They were not good role models. Right. But it was attract. They were attractive characters.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: That's the point. Because honestly, shadow is nothing. [00:23:11] Speaker B: It was nothing about science. Although they were using actual. [00:23:15] Speaker A: Yeah, the references were usually correct. Yes.
[00:23:18] Speaker B: The same as Dr. House. All the cases were actual cases. [00:23:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Not actual.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: I mean, the science was. [00:23:24] Speaker B: The science was there. [00:23:25] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:26] Speaker B: What I wanted to add to what she said is imagine the school as a micrography of society, as micrography of humanity in general. Okay. I'm. Let's say in the middle of this chain and I can decide to do whatever the public, the students want me to. Right. So if I give them the option to watch a YouTube video, definitely choose that over something else.
Although in the mind of these ages, their inquiring mind will ask for. [00:23:57] Speaker A: Yes, but it's going to be an.
[00:23:58] Speaker B: Art for more knowledge, as we've seen in some specific examples. I'll come back to this later.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: Yeah, please.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: You know, Sam Neil and his school, of course. So they were not obliged to go to their classes, but eventually, over a month or two months, they did because they wanted to socialize, they wanted to be with other kids and they literally wanted to learn. Anyway, whatever you give the public, that's what it's going to consume. And there are going to be parts of the public that will agree to that and. Or not agree to that. The majority is going to be watching these silly shows or whatever you say. They are creating a new trend and how we understand the world.
[00:24:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:40] Speaker B: So we're taking out science from. From there. All right. But what I'm saying is that it is the role of these channels, me as a channel or TV as a channel, or the YouTube channels as channels of knowledge to promote things that are more important and basically more true. The Greek word for truth is Alicia.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:00] Speaker B: Which means something that I don't forget. Something that is always going to be the same and true.
[00:25:07] Speaker A: From Lanzano. [00:25:08] Speaker B: Right?
[00:25:08] Speaker A: Lanzano is to forget. [00:25:11] Speaker B: Excellent.
[00:25:12] Speaker A: Lanzano means I don't forget constantly amused me. Yeah. [00:25:15] Speaker B: I don't know if you were young.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: Provided that you didn't have Internet, But I had YouTube, so. Yes, exactly. [00:25:21] Speaker B: How old are you? I mean, you're.
[00:25:22] Speaker A: I'm from 1979. I'm 45. [00:25:25] Speaker B: Oh, my God.
[00:25:26] Speaker A: I know. Looking younger by the day now. It's my wife's that she looks incredible and she rubs off, off. I become younger because of her.
[00:25:34] Speaker B: Okay, thank you. [00:25:35] Speaker A: That's.
[00:25:35] Speaker B: That's why I'm sure she's gonna listen to these parts.
[00:25:39] Speaker A: You know what, you said that one of the beauties of science, it's, as you said, it's actually true. It's because, okay, literature, we can debate infinitely about the value of something or not. Science only demands to be true. And I like the scenario you depicted. If you leave a group, for example, of student, decide what the class is going to be about.
[00:26:04] Speaker B: It's going to be like Italian or Greek television.
[00:26:07] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. The principle is exactly the same. The thing is that I remember that a famous epidemiologist in Italy said this a few years ago. He actually wrote a book about it. Science is not democratic because democracy, politically, it's a value. Okay, but democracy is basically a popularity contest. Whoever is more convincing wins, by the way. And originally, democracy wasn't even a positive word, actually, because kratos in ancient Greek, it is power. That is the power sort of imposed with violence. The authoritative power, the reliable
power in ancient Greek is. It's not kratos per se. Kratos is. Yeah, arche in modern Greek and arche with an ancient Greek pronunciation.
[00:26:59] Speaker B: So democracy means the violence of.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: No, that's the thing, people. And that's again, it is the violence. [00:27:06] Speaker B: Of 51 over 49. But anyway, it's the best.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: Demos originally doesn't have a positive connotation. Oh, demos originally was sort of a derogatory term. Then it became positive that if one wants.
[00:27:21] Speaker B: For marketing reasons for marketing, they had to promote them.
[00:27:24] Speaker A: They had an excellent press company back then. Demos originally, if you have to translate it in English, would mean pleb, not people. So democracy originally means power. The violent power of the populace wasn't a good term originally. So.
[00:27:46] Speaker B: But okay, you see what you're doing now. I'm gonna make a channel and promote.
[00:27:50] Speaker A: We can do it.
[00:27:50] Speaker B: This idea that democracy is a very bad thing. No, it's not. No, it's not. By the way.
[00:27:56] Speaker A: Well, Aristotle was very much against democracy, so. Okay, let's. Let's not.
[00:28:01] Speaker B: You don't have to agree.
[00:28:02] Speaker A: No, we don't have to agree with necessarily. The thing is that science is not a democracy, because doesn't science is not concerned whether an idea is popular or not. It's either true or not. If I say that vaccines are effective and they are totally harmless in a very vast majority of cases, and the 0.00 something percent vaccines could be in some cases harmful, that's a statement that is not questionable. But if the majority of people, if.
[00:28:40] Speaker B: You have the data to prove it.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Yes, yes, it's true, provided that you have the data and the data are verifiable, etc. It's a clean.
[00:28:48] Speaker B: You have the data because that was a debate about the vaccines. Yes, we have enough data.
[00:28:53] Speaker A: Yeah, anyway, but I'm not talking about COVID 19 vaccines, specifically previous diseases. But if you switch from truth to let's go with the majority ones at any cost. If the majority of people believes that these things is not effective, you are not going to implement it because. Okay, well, we agree that the data says it's effective. The data say is effective, but we believe it's not. So we are not going to do it.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: I think. Yesterday an international conference about microplastics and plastics took place. It finished yesterday. The representatives outnumbered the scientific
community by a lot. So they weren't able to present any actual data. And the actual data, if you want to make it, let's say, popular for the people to either like or dislike, or you want to create fear or whatever. The data says that we are finding microplastics everywhere. We don't know the effects. We know that it has to do with fertility, it has to do with clogging, but we don't know exactly the mechanisms and how they work. And I'm not sure if we will be able to actually realize what they're doing. But if it comes to health issues, it matters. Everyone is going to be engaged. And we continuously see that the industry is blaming, for example, the consumers stop consuming our products. But what I'm consuming, if I stop using my straw, for example, Right. It won't change a lot. If we all do it again, it won't change a lot. But if the industry stop producing these kind of products in mass scale, then we will have an effect anyway. Going to see what was discussed in this conference and come back to you. But it's very, very. It's very, very common.
When they were talking about, for example the effect of similar conference in the 40s, before World War II, they were talking about the effect of smoking.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: Yes, the tobacco industry they linked the. [00:30:57] Speaker B: Increase in cancer cases to roads to the asphalt. [00:31:02] Speaker A: Yeah. Or environmental issues. Yes.
[00:31:05] Speaker B: Anyway, you can always not manipulate the data. You can't manipulate the data, but you can explain the data.
[00:31:12] Speaker A: You can choose what the data to present. You can choose. [00:31:16] Speaker B: Coming back to our initial.
[00:31:17] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:31:18] Speaker B: Points. Right.
[00:31:19] Speaker A: I remember specifically the tobacco industry went several steps further. If you check advertising from the 1940s, 1950s, cigarettes were actually marketed as promoting health.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: It was a prestigious thing.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. So it's again. And that was a very perverted use of the scientifically proven effect because I said your doctors smoke, your doctor tells you to smoke because it's healthy.
[00:31:51] Speaker B: It has been proven. [00:31:52] Speaker A: Exactly.
[00:31:53] Speaker B: It has been proven that if you manage to control the smoking, if you just smoke, if you have a very small amount of nicotine entering your system that has very, very positive effects.
[00:32:04] Speaker A: It's a small, small amount.
[00:32:06] Speaker B: I mean, it's the same as caffeine. All right.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: Yes, small amount.
[00:32:09] Speaker B: It has very positive effects psychologically and even physically. Right. I mean, the cigarette gives you a boost, nicotine will give you boost, but it will also relax you. The thing is that we can say that it's scientifically proven.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: Yeah, that one is unreasonable. Yeah.
[00:32:27] Speaker B: How can you say that? It's totally addictive. And if you start with one cigarette, you will not be able to only smoke one cigarette per day or whatever.
[00:32:36] Speaker A: That's what we were saying. You cannot manipulate the data per se, but you can choose what to present, what to present. Because as I said, in small quantities, nicotine or caffeine can have positive effects, given that there are certain conditions, etc. The thing is that if I choose to omit in small quantities. Here you go. It's the sentence is there, but I don't specify in small quantities. Caffeine and nicotine are inherently good. You just change a word and it changes everything.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: And science, numbers are important in real life, words are important.
[00:33:13] Speaker A: You know, years ago I work in store managing, which I hated. Was a torture.
[00:33:19] Speaker B: For you or for the store?
[00:33:20] Speaker A: No, for me, actually. The store was very successful. But I really hated every single moment I spent there. Luckily I was there just very briefly, but one of the lessons that you were taught when you have to manage large amount of inventory and money, etc. Is that numbers don't lie. You just need to learn how to read them. And if you do that, you just read the numbers, they will never lie to you. You just need to read them properly.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: To read them properly.
[00:33:48] Speaker A: That's all there is in the end. The point is that we often don't concern ourselves with reading the numbers.
[00:33:54] Speaker B: Yeah, you have to read behind the data too. Because if you place half of a human in the oven and the other half in a, for example, the freezer, you can say that the average temperature is perfect, so he's going to stay alive. But you're missing me.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: A famous Italian writer used to say statistics is that beautiful science where there are two people in the kitchen, there is one turkey, one person eats the entire turkey, and statistically they eat half a turkey each. Yeah, but the point is that there is the law of great numbers. It's different statistics work on, on a different level. You need big numbers to distinguish patterns and trends.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: You read the dates.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: But you see, and I think we're gonna close on this last reflection. I think that on one hand is some sort of lack of scientific education in the general public. Not among.
[00:34:48] Speaker B: I would say lack of interest.
[00:34:50] Speaker A: Lack of interest. Okay, yes, no, no, I agree. But you know, I work in a school. I work most of my professional life in educational environments. So to me, pretty much everything starts with. With school. So that's why I go with, with the education thing. I believe it's also psychological and cultural because think we were talking about how the label scientifically clinically proven is use abused to sell something. Think of also the contrary, when we put something as natural or chemical free as a synonym of healthy, which is somehow, how can I say, ironic, because if you say that something is chemical free, that thing doesn't exist because chemical is.
[00:35:39] Speaker B: It's the biology and chemistry thing. And sometimes physical. We say it's physical.
[00:35:45] Speaker A: Yeah, but.
[00:35:45] Speaker B: Or, and it has a positive. [00:35:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:47] Speaker B: Sense. Right. Biological. And when it comes to chemistry, you say, oh, it's full of chemicals. And that has a negative meaning. And this is because the chemists at the beginning of the previous century were very smart people and they were able to make new compounds and new things that are used even today. Right. Where they found different ways to make very common chemicals we used as fertilizers and so on. Medicine and all these kind of things.
[00:36:15] Speaker A: Antibiotics in the 1940s and 50s. Yeah.
[00:36:19] Speaker B: It's a matter of marketing. Who had a larger effect. Was it, I mean, Haberda, who nobody knows about him, or was it Einstein who everybody knows about it? These topics were more important back in the days.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:36:33] Speaker B: Einstein led to, if you think about it overall, the end of World War II. Right. Yeah, of course it was not only that, but on the other hand, the chemists were able, were able to make these new Substances or make better ways to create these substances. And when one of these substances, for example ddt was proven to be not super effective, but not that healthy as a choice, who should we blame? The people who use ddt? No, the scientists. Oh, it's the chemists.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:37:02] Speaker B: And why? Because they gave us these chemicals, which is a bad thing, you understand. But wait a minute, what about the medicine? What about the colors that, you know.
[00:37:10] Speaker A: Those are apparently are not everything around you. [00:37:12] Speaker B: If you think about it, the air.
[00:37:13] Speaker A: You breathe is a chemical compound. [00:37:16] Speaker B: I'll give you another example.
[00:37:17] Speaker A: Water is a chemical compound. Hydrogen and oxygen.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: It kills.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: It's. Yeah, I started tell you something else.
[00:37:26] Speaker B: I went to the supermarket the other day and I wanted to buy some breakfast. Automatically I chose the things that had the word protein on top. They're realizing that it's true. And if you go to the supermarket, you will notice that more the word protein is covering a larger real estate of the packaging.
[00:37:42] Speaker A: Obviously.
[00:37:42] Speaker B: I mean, you see that all the time. You see with. It has to do with how the public is going to be persuaded to get the product.
[00:37:51] Speaker A: It's cultural and psychological. [00:37:53] Speaker B: It does. Has nothing to do with science.
[00:37:55] Speaker A: It has nothing to do at all. There was a case some years ago that became very popular of the raw water.
Raw water is basically unfiltered water. There is this guy somewhere in the United States that sells raw water directly from the source. No filtering, no purification process, nothing. So I remember a comedian interview that the guy and then a microbiologist, she asked the microbiologist, I drank some raw water, what can happen? Best case scenario you get dysenteria. Worst case scenario you can die. But we have this idea that natural is necessarily good. Natural, unfiltered, unaltered is good. Therefore water filled with animal feces or other stuff must be good because it's natural.
I can tell you, you try once everything in your life, so you never know, has nothing to do with science. It's completely distorted idea that you fixate on one thing that supposedly is good and then everything else with that label must, must necessarily be good. Raw milk? Yeah, you can't drink it the moment it's out of the cow.
[00:39:11] Speaker B: There was a trend in the early zeros that wanted to devalue, let's say milk. And it has happened eventually. Many, let's say young parents prefer not to give milk, which is not the best thing to do. But anyway, literally I don't know the science behind it. So I.
[00:39:26] Speaker A: No, no, it's okay. I remember that I watch a YouTube video some time ago of this, who was a scientist. Not a biologist, not a microbiologist. I don't remember his field. Now, he was criticizing the habit of drinking cow's milk. Basically the idea is that we are stupid because we are all subjects to marketing. That's why we. We drink cow's milk. Because if you think about it, it's.
[00:39:51] Speaker B: Milk is pure as white. It's beautiful.
[00:39:54] Speaker A: No, no, the reasoning was beautiful in quotes. Because you as a human, you're drinking cow's milk, but that milk is supposed to be for a calf, not for a human. So it's a
natural.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: We're the only mammal that drinks other milk.
[00:40:08] Speaker A: How about grass? Grass is supposed to be for a cow then, not for a human. So, I mean, the logic was completely off. Yeah, that has nothing to do with the science. It's just that you fixate on an idea.
[00:40:19] Speaker B: You need your nutrients. Whatever they are, you need your nutrients.
[00:40:23] Speaker A: Yes, I agree. And whatever. I mean, if you can find it in cow's milk, you drink the cow's milk. If you find it in a carrot, you eat the carrot. Very simple.
[00:40:32] Speaker B: What I'm realizing, what we're discussing is that marketing and popular, let's say sense of reality is what leads the changes. It's not science anymore.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: Yeah. What we are discussing is that it's dangerous when we forget. And one thing is science that is true and sometimes true is not popular of comfortable or convenient. And a completely different thing is how we use science to carry on a certain agenda that can be, as you said, political or economical or marketing. The point is that generally speaking, most people don't have the critical approach to reality to determine this is science, this is marketing, this is.
[00:41:17] Speaker B: Or they don't even want to.
[00:41:19] Speaker A: You know, it takes a lot of time, takes energy, it takes a lot of thinking. And sometimes people are busy, sometimes people are lazy. There are all different reasons.
[00:41:28] Speaker B: We have entered the meta reality era where it doesn't really matter what is true or not, scientific or not.
[00:41:35] Speaker A: What matters is that I want to believe it's true.
[00:41:38] Speaker B: You need to say the word out there and you're gonna have believers, you're gonna have people that are gonna follow your. What?
[00:41:49] Speaker A: Alrighty, Mr. Arsenikos, thank you for being here. Thank you. [00:41:54] Speaker B: I like the way we move around the subject.
[00:41:56] Speaker A: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Arsenikos, and for our listeners. Thank you for listening. This was LibOwl. We'll talk to you next time. Thank you.
