“Dihydrogen monoxide” joke gets DJs suspended | Hacker News Reader

“Dihydrogen monoxide” joke gets DJs suspended

arstechnica.com

57 pointssreeix85 comments

"If the public can't even understand a basic chemical formula, then it's probably hopeless to think they'll understand the more complex issues that are typically involved in public health, like complex dose effects and ambiguous epidemiology."

The general public doesn't understand any complex subjects, wether it's chemistry, health, technology or politics (just to name a few). This is why anyone in a suit or lab coat can use field specific terms to assure the public to keep calm and carry on - or panic.

The mainstream media acts as a catalyst to this problem by also not having experts in the required fields reporting on the subjects. And who is to point out the flaws in the those media stories? Blogspot? Twitter? Facebook? Good luck getting anyone to read those that aren't already following of the subject.

Another example of chemophobia in the general public. The perception that all chemicals are bad for you is commonly accepted, although far from the truth.

Slate magazine did an excellent teardown on this issue, I share this link frequently:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...

This was either planned or well handled by the radio station, announce a suspension to generate news and traffic to their website, get people talking about it on facebook, and the DJs were back on the air on Wednesday. It's almost more of a prank on news outlets which will repeat any non-story.

DJ got publicity, Ars got page views, and we get an opportunity to demonstrate basic chemistry competency. Everyone wins.

The big issue here is not that "the public can't even understand a basic chemical formula"--it's that so many people are willing to take something they hear in a morning radio show at face value (and panickedly call up the local utility, rather than search online for verification).

What you are saying is that the problem is that people assume that radio shows fact-check their claims and don't actively try to deceive their audience.

Why would you trust that what anyone (DJ or not) is telling you is the unbiased truth, especially when it includes a specific call to action?

And assume this on April 1st...

Actually, the big issue here is that the radio station took disciplinary action against the DJs, instead of standing behind them. Usually the type of DJs that would do Apr 1 pranks are on the edgy side, and are hired for their edginess. So they were just doing their job. If I were in this station's listening area, I would be on the phone with their advertisers to let them know in no small way that I dis-approve of the action the station took.

Broadcast radio is basically a consolidated hollowed out shell of its former self. Outside of public and college radio there is nothing interesting happening there at all.

The demographic of listeners for wacky radio morning zoo prankster DJs are probably not the smartest.

It's hard to know what to say to this.

No, you can't reasonably expect everyone out there to both 1. understand chemical formulas and 2. understand their long form names (which is a significantly different case, as people here seem to be forgetting).

In my opinion, you also can't blame a couple of DJ's for making what to many of us is just a dumb joke without first considering what many of us would also call an illogical, ill-informed, totally unfounded backlash. They put together a lot of material very quickly and part of their job is being, to a point, controversial.

That this could be construed, through misunderstanding, as something that could be called a felony and termination-worthy... while you can see it (if not agree with it) in hindsight, to suggest that they should have known better seems a bit out of step with reality.

This could and should have been dealt with by way of a mild reprimand and an on-air explanation and apology. That they were fired and that people are discussing litigation (if not pursuing it, which is not clear from the article) is a severe and dangerous overreaction of the sort that's becoming painfully common everywhere.

It's amazing how everybody is so quick to dismiss the general public as "stupid" just because they are not familiar with some domain specific terminology.

I don't think anyone says the public is stupid because they don't know what Dihydrogen Monoxide is. The problem is that no one saw the need to do a one minute wikipedia search for the term before panicking and calling the local authorities. Because that is stupid.

I'm sure most people did.

How many people actually called in? I'm betting a few dozen out of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of listeners.

How much you want to bet the water company didn't know the chemical name of water is dihydrogen monoxide? Otherwise they could have explained to the callers that dihydrogen monoxide is, in fact, water and they were simply victims of an April Fool's joke. But that doesn't seem to be the path that was taken.

the chemical name of water is dihydrogen monoxide

But it's not. From La Wik [1]:

"Dihydrogen monoxide", shortened to "DHMO", is a name for water that is consistent with basic rules of chemical nomenclature, but is not among the names published by IUPAC and is almost exclusively used in humorous context.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide_hoax

"My understanding is it is a felony to call in a false water quality issue"

Is this a local or state or federal issue?

Also, how does essentially saying: "The water supply is full of water" qualify as calling in a false water quality issue?

It was something facetious and intended as an "is your refrigerator running"-style prank. I am sure that most recipients of that call did in fact have refrigerators that were running, too. As a waste of government resources, such pranks are a problem. That line is intended as an emergency number. Chemical spills and biological contamination in water supplies is not a joke. These people just thought they were being clever.

The nose in the tent is that they didn't say it's full of water, they said it's full of [something I've never heard of], and presented in a newsy-alarming way, in venue where people are accustomed to getting snippets of news while they're doing something else. "Traffic on the freeway, be careful." "It's cold today, dress warm." "Something you've never heard of in the water, take precautions."

Suspension and disavowal probably went too far. A corporate and DJ apology would have been enough.

What percentage of people recognize first glance off the bat what hydrogen monoxide is? Europeans versus Americans?

Instead of proclaiming Americans are a bunch of uneducated idiot, maybe one should find out the base rate for knowing basic chemistry fact like dihydrogen monoxide.

Oh stop being so high and mighty. Chemophobia! Really?

H2O is probably the most widely known chemical formula - go out and ask twenty random people what it is and you will get 19 answers for water.

Ask those same 19 people what dihydrogen monoxide is at 8am on a Tuesday when they are trying to get kids dressed and out the door, then say "contaminated" and the answer will be "I don't know but it sounds nasty"

Yes it's true - half of the population is below average intelligence, but amazingly they still seem to hold down jobs, pay mortgages, drive complex journeys and raise children. And when a public policy issue crops up - don't play silly in jokes but use plain English (like water) and explain - the IPCC has succeeded there.

OpEd politics is like programmin puzzles - it appeals to people who like puzzles. If you don't get a kick out of puzzles you won't concentrate on them. And the latest political oped piece, education or science understanding will just seem to most people as vital to existence as fix buzz. But no one here has a convincing explanation or solution to say US education policy - and neither will the people who did not recognise dihydrogen monoxide - but I will bet dollars to doughnuts they can all tell the difference between a good and bad teacher and want their children to go to the school of the former.

A comment recently mentioned how poor the voter turnout was - but given a introspective and mostly deadlocked congress, apathy is a rational response. Even those below average intelligence can work that one out. Those who refuse apathy are above average I other ways, emotionally, optimistically and more.

You're probably correct that those 19/20 won't know at first what dihydrogen monoxide is. The pressing question is though, whether those 19 would/should call the water commission before either:

A. Thinking about it

B. Spelling the chemical formula out

C. Googling it

This has very little to do with being high-and-mighty. I don't believe the author's point was to illustrate how uneducated the general population is, but rather, highlight how little thinking/work the general population does before complaining/protesting/getting up in arms.

I wonder how this discussion would go if they'd call it oxidane.

Also, mentioning on a radio station that it's in the local water supply as though it's news is very different from off-handedly mentioning it in a friendly conversation where you can immediately let them know what the joke is.

You're asserting that, simply because people are capable of holding down jobs, owning homes and producing kids, that the general stigmatization of sciences and pervasive anti-intellectualism is insignificant because people can still intuit what constitutes as good and bad education and policy? This is absurd. Just because people may be capable of functioning in the real world without access to scientific knowledge does not meant that we shouldn't pursue the proliferation of such knowledge. Whether people need to know what Dihydrogen Monoxide is is largely inconsequential. Insofar as scientific knowledge is, unto itself, a good thing, policymakers should strive to promote it, regardless of its practical implications.

It's preferable to be an informed functioning citizen than an uninformed functioning citizen, despite the fact that they are both capable of doing their jobs every day.

As an aside, "Half of the population is below average intelligence" is false. Half of the population is below the median intelligence.

>As an aside, "Half of the population is below average intelligence" is false. Half of the population is below the median intelligence.

Not false. Median is a type of average. He never said half the population is below the arithmetic mean.

>Not false. Median is a type of average

?? I thought those were two distinct things. The median is the "middle" amount in a set of numbers, while the average or mean is the sum of all the numbers in the set, divided by how many numbers there are.

Arithmetic mean, geometric mean, median, mode etc... those are all specific methods of finding the average.

The most common average in ordinary use is the arithmetic mean, but they are not the same thing and the word average is much more general.

In coloquial terms, the average is synonymous with the mean, and the median is treated as distinct. Moreover, if he truly meant that half of the population was below the median, why would he use an ambiguous term like the "average?" At worst, it's incorrect, and at best, it's an ambiguity that is not necessarily correct.

> at best, it's an ambiguity that is not necessarily correct.

It is definitively correct.

You knew what he meant, you just wanted another jab to back up your argument. If you're going to be pedantic at least be correct.

Let's divide the world into 3 types of people.

Type A. Those without enough mathematical knowledge to pick up on any possible ambiguity. Who probably don't really know what median means in the first place (the majority of people).

Type B. Those with enough mathematical knowledge to understand what he means by "average." (probably the majority of people on hacker news)

Type C. Those who got just far enough in math to realize that there is a difference between arithmetic mean, and median, but not far enough to realize that average is a general term.

Which of those types are going to confused by the term average instead of median?

> As an aside, "Half of the population is below average intelligence" is false. Half of the population is below the median intelligence.

If intelligence is normally distributed, then the mean and median are equal.

> H2O is probably the most widely known chemical formula ... Ask those same 19 people what dihydrogen monoxide is ... the answer will be "I don't know but it sounds nasty" ... Yes it's true - half of the population is below average intelligence

I'd go further.

It's really easy to think the meaning of "dihydrogen monoxide" is obvious if you already know how to parse terms written in that language. But it's far from obvious.

To understand what "dihydrogen monoxide" means, you have to know that "di" means "two", and that "oxide" refers to oxygen. You also have to realise that "mon" in this context means "one" - note that it's not "mono", because if it was "mono" then it would be "mono-xide". Actually, it's harder than that, because you need to know how you should break down the words into their components - e.g. that "dihydrogen" should be broken down into "di"-"hydrogen" but not "dihy"-"drogen".

If you haven't learnt the language used to spell out chemical formula you don't have a way to understand the details. I'm sure there's plenty of smart, well educated people who don't have this specific knowledge yet know full well that water is two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

This issue is more a matter of knowledge than intelligence.

I don't know about education in US, but I suspect basic chemistry is a part of compulsory education program. Or I'm wrong?

When I was in high school (graduated in 2006), we were only required to take chemistry OR biology, but not required to take both. Those in my class who were afraid of math (most of them) took biology, while the rest of us enjoyed our chemistry fun.

I can't recall about here in Australia - I did Chemistry as an elective in the final 2 years of high-school, but I can't recall if everyone did that kind of thing in chemistry in earlier years or not.

...but you also have to remember that high-school was a long time ago for a lot of people, and facts like what the prefix "di" means is hardly something most people are going to need to keep in their heads, so are likely to fade over time.

This demonstrates how many people get their news from radio DJs...

How many calls did the water plant get?

Depressingly, how many would they have got if the presenters used H20 instead of dihydrogen monoxide?

My sad, sad guess is... about 10% of dihydrogen monoxide.

H twenty?

Yes.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x68y4g_look-around-you-modu...

The not-so-funny part is water quality around the US really is rapidly diminishing.

So they will call in about the water but will say "oh well" to pollution that doesn't immediately affect their morning.

As an European, all I can say is "Fuckin' stupid American rednecks".

Jeez, do the US have at least A BIT chemistry lessons in their education system?

Yes, of course. But the overall cultural assumption that science is something dangerous that Washington is pushing on the Real Americans is pretty powerful. And since that cultural assumption is a power base and a profit base, there are a lot of entrenched interests keeping it right where it is.

But this particular issue isn't even that. This particular issue is the fact that Americans have been trained for decades to jump at shadows, to worry about every possible threat. This is partly because frightened people are easy to control, and partly because hidden corporate powers really are allowing their health to be at risk to make a slightly quicker buck.

It's easy to be alarmed about a technical term you've never heard before, and "monoxide" sounds like "carbon monoxide", which everybody knows is an undetectable gas that can kill your children in their sleep.

It's not as simple as just "stupid". It never is.

True about the "it's not as simple" point - but why did the people call the water department first instead of a quick Googling of the term?

I mean, it should be widely known that US news organizations often have a massive bias cough Fox News cough, so it should be the first thing to do to do at least a bit of fact checking.

"If people Googled before believing what they see or hear, I wouldn't have so many quotes misattributed to me." - Albert Einstein

It's not as simple as just "stupid", yes. But it's not too complicated, either, is it?

These guys got punished for making fun of the general stupidity of others. It would be okay if the people weren't so ignorant (or conditioned) that they'd be terrified so easily.

If you think about it, it's not too different from people being afraid of making certain kinds of cartoons out of fear of offending certain groups of people. Think about it.

Punishing them was a simple and convenient knee-jerk response. It should've been used as an opportunity for education instead.

It's funny and sad how often we struggle to educate people on a day to day basis, yet we throw away fantastic educational opportunities like this one. It's not everyday you have everybody's attention. And what do we choose to do with that attention? "Look at this fearmongerer, mocking you people! We shall punish them."

Few politicians have the guts to tell the electorate that they're dumb. THAT'S where it's "not so simple". We perpetuate and participate a system where we will never tell the electorate that they're stupid, uninformed.

It's not as simple as just stupid- it's intelligence being punished for having fun with stupidity, and representatives choosing to ingratiate themselves to the stupids because they're dependent on them for their livelihood.

Sigh

> It's not as simple as just "stupid". It never is.

You are of course correct. It is not "stupid" but it is "ignorant" (both of the chemical terms used in the prank and of the critical thinking skills necessary to work out that "dihydrogen monoxide" is just "water")

As an American all I can say is that the truth isn't always politically correct: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commentary/watch-that-educati...

This article just won a Godwin point: basically if only the rich whites are taken into account, the American school is better than the Canadian one ... sure, that's a nice way to evaluate an education system ...

Yup, you must be right, there are only rich white people in America. I was commenting that although the vast majority of European countries and also Canada tend to have single-digit percentages of visible minorities compared to 34% of the United States, they are often quick to accuse the U.S. of racism, or fail to understand the implications of a truly multicultural society. Germany has 6% of its population with ancestry outside of Europe, yet there is this "Integrationsfrage" that gets a more lip service than you can imagine. Basically, it is encouraging a lot of countries quite literally to look in a mirror before judging. The U.S. education system has failings, but its populace is fundamentally different what the above commenter was trying to compare it to.

Well, the problem with minorities in US, Germany and everywhere else, is that usually they are immigrant, poor, living in bad neighborhoods, so yeah, they will pretty much score lower at school, have much more crime, etc. But not because they are Mexican, Gipsy, Turkish, but because they are poor immigrants.

Right... so the article was pointing out that there are fewer of them in most European countries...

As an Australian, all I can say is "Stop being a racist European". Thanks.

Since when is American a race?

Fine, jingoist or elitist... whatever.

Race doesn't necessarily mean ethnicity.

Nationalities are not races.

You're missing my larger point. The original comment was bigoted. I'm not a fan of bigotry.

So you're bigoted against those who exhibit bigotry?

If Europeans could just get over the chip on their shoulder maybe they could actually do something besides whine about Americans.

"As an European, all I can say is [...]". Not "As I officially represent all Europeans and their opinions on this topic [...]".

Of course, and there is quite a lot of good science coming out of Europe. I really should ignore blowhards.

European countries score much better on LOTS of performance indicators, several of which have been on HN the last weeks:

Medical coverage (both insurances, and the quality of the medical service itself), school education levels in standardized tests, financial stability (both the country itself as well as the individual states), average wealth, poor-rich spread, amount and quality of science research... so yes, we Europeans DO get something done. In contrast to the USA, where everything actually important is either blocked off by extremist tea baggers or cut down by the sequester (which is a side effect of the mentioned teabaggers).

Fine your satisfied with Europe, that doesn't mean you have to be an ass.

It's not my fault that the USA in general doesn't care about their external image. I'm just pointing out what the rest of the world thinks about the USA.

Maybe think for yourself next time.

To the European - I previously visited Europe and one thing I remember is the Europeans love to smoke cigarettes. If Europeans are so clearly educated in chemistry they would clearly not inhale something that contains formaldehyde (used in rat poison and bug spray) and other toxic chemicals.

Also, I suggest asking your father or mother if they understand what "Dihydrogen Monoxide" actually is. The article does not mention the age of the callers...I'm willing to bet they are elderly people.

What's cigarettes for us, is alcohol and firearms in the USA, especially the firearms part, given the near-anarchist position in the USA, and the abolishment position prevalent in most of Europe.

> What's cigarettes for us, is alcohol and firearms in the USA, especially the firearms part

Since we're on topic of science and ignorance, no it's not.

>> Using cross-sectional time-series data for U.S. counties from 1977 to 1992, we find that allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons deters violent crimes and it appears to produce no increase in accidental deaths.[1]

This whole thread denouncing ignorance is full of depressingly ignorant opinions.

[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=10129

What about the gang-related murders and gun violence in the "black" regions of cities? The multiple school shootings which happen EVERY YEAR in the US? And still nothing, absolutely NOTHING happens on the weapons control laws?

I can't even remember when the last gun-related school shooting was here in Germany.

Is this sarcasm? Gun related shootings have been happening regularly in Germany. Search for "amok" in German language news sites.

By far not as regularly as in the United States. Just take the list from http://www.rp-online.de/panorama/die-schlimmsten-amoklaeufe-... - most of these are US based.

Or, take the list at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoklauf_an_einer_Schule#Deutsc... - six in the last 11 years, way more (and especially: much more violent!) in the US!

This is just a symptom of what is actually wrong with our society. It has nothing to do with skin color. We have a lack of opportunity for young people coming from a poor background. People do fall between the cracks...

Also, let's be fair. Germany is not one to talk about gun violence. Last I remember, Germany was an aggressor in both World War I and World War II. Both wars accounted for roughly a 100+ million dead or wounded. Could you explain how "weapons control laws" could have prevented these wars? Don't get me wrong, I am for gun control...but really, it is not going to help until we fix other, more immediate socio-economic issues.

I'm a Brazilian-American living in London. Binge drinking here is worse than any of the 5 North and South American cities I've lived in.

I still think the europeans drink more than americans. The germans have an entire week of festivities focused on beer; I don't recall the americans having anything similar. Their drinking age is lower, and you can always find beer/wine dispensers at local bistros where you can just fill up your cup without showing any ID.

Europe's just as full of uneducated people as the rest of the world. But on top of them, we have tons of pseudo-educated pseudo-intellectual smart asses that make smarty "educated people" jokes that equate knowledge of how things from chemistry or physics are called with real scientific knowledge of those things and spread fud like "science is about facts" or "physics is about memorizing equations".

What I love about the US is that there seemed to be very few "pseudo-educated" people or "pseudo-intellectuals", just tons of uneducated people and few smart and educated ones, but without this annoying "middle layer" that seems to suffocate most European countries I know.

...all that said, I still can't stop enjoying the "are you American or something" jokes :) (http://i.imgur.com/OQYYA.jpg)

I would be surprised if the joke did not work as well in e.g. France.

The only thing specific to the US compared to Europe is the influence of hard core christian on things like evolution. But for every other usual pseudo science crakery like astrology, magnetism, etc... there is little difference (see e.g. http://www.pseudo-sciences.org/spip.php?article1132 where a majority of French and American believe you can heal people with the power of thought....)

Yes.

The UK is going through measles outbreaks caused by the lies of Andrew Wakefield and an anti-science bias in the media.

  (http://tallguywrites.livejournal.com/148012.html)

You might want to examine the underpinnings of your desire to find fault with Americans since this kind of comment raises much more questions about your psychology than it does about Americans.

The fact is that this joke sometimes even temporarily fools people who are familiar with water's molecular make-up (and yes they do teach this in every American high school) because most common substances are not referred to by their chemical name.

I have to admit that especially in Germany there is a huge, huge bias (from our news media) towards pointing the USA as a nation of radical right-wing retards.

US-related news here is mainly about: Tea Party, gun violence, wars, more Tea Party, corruption and dumbness on both popular parties, sheer political idiocy (sequester), and a record amount of bigotry throughout the society.

To the USA: deal with your external image before starting to whine when other people laugh at you.

Sorry who are you talking to? Americans by and large are completely oblivious that anyone would be laughing at them.

So you're saying that Germans are equally prone to uncritically accept misleading media coverage?

I'm sure you have no television/radio shows listened to by primarily morons. Anywhere in Europe.

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