Sunday, September 11, 2005
More Bad Science Reporting
This story is about how surfactants work, and it presents it like it is a new discovery.
Richmond compared the molecules to hungry tadpoles that bury their heads in the oil or other contaminant on the surface and leave their tails sticking up out of the water.That's pretty much the theory of surfactant action that I learned in college 25 years ago! These studies appear to use new instrumentation and techniques to verify the hypothesis and fill in some details, but it is far from a "new" discovery -- but then can we really expect a reporter to understand what they report on?
